Just in case Google and Facebook forgot about other things going on in the cloud, the competition will be fierce.
Amazon Takes Lead Again in Cloud Music by Offering Cheap Unlimited Storage
Now that Apple has played its hand with the iCloud service, online retailing giant Amazon.com has raised the stakes in the looming battle for cloud-based music services and is offering unlimited storage of music files for a low yearly fee. The change comes packaged with a few other enhancements to Amazon's music service that the company hopes will make the service more enticing to users.
"Customers are already enjoying Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, and now for just $20 a year, customers can get unlimited space for music," said Amazon Music Director Craig Pape. "Additionally, we are adding free storage for all MP3s purchased from Amazon MP3, and support for the iPad. Our customers love Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, and we're excited to innovate these services on their behalf."
Amazon was the first of the big three—the others being Google and Apple—to announce and release a cloud-based music service this year. At the time, I noted that while Amazon's service was excellent, the cost was problematic. "Amazon's pricing chart for Cloud Drive amounts to roughly four times the cost of similar tiers for Google's cloud storage scheme," I wrote, comparing Cloud Drive with Google's (non-music based) cloud storage. For example, "Google offers 200GB for $50 a year, but that amount only gives you 50GB on Amazon." With this change, Amazon nicely undercuts Google, though it's possible that the online giant will respond in time.
It also undercuts Apple. Apple was widely expected to launch some form of music service as part of its iCloud platform, but the company won't attempt to duplicate the ability of Amazon and Google services, which let customers upload their entire music collection to the cloud and then stream music to PCs and devices. Instead, iCloud will offer no streaming at all and will provide storage only for newly purchased songs. (For an additional $25 per year, iCloud users can purchase iTunes Match and receive high-quality AAC versions of many of the songs in their music collection; these songs will be stored in the cloud but still cannot be streamed.)
Put simply, Amazon's changes put it back where it was when it first announced the service: ahead of the pack. And that will remain the case until and unless Google and Apple make changes to their own services.
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