Tech Watch: Amazon Introduces A New Music Locker, Beating Apple And Google
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS/AP) - Amazon.com Inc. wants to be more than a destination for shopping online: It also dreams of being a place where you can store your music, photos and videos and access them any time, from any computer.
Amazon has beat Apple and Google to the punch by introducing a digital music locker that will let customers store mp3s in the cloud.
The online retailer launched two offerings late Monday: Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player. The first lets you upload and store files such as music, videos and photos on Amazon's servers, which you can get to from a Web browser on a Mac or PC. The second lets you play songs you've uploaded on your computer or on a smartphone that runs Google's Android operating software. The "cloud" in the services' names refers to the practice of storing content online and streaming it to a computer over the Internet.
CNET Editor-at-Large Brian Cooley said that it's supposed to be a lot easier than listening to music on your iPod.
Right now you put music on your iPod with copies on your laptop and maybe even your car, Cooley explains.
"These are all separate collections you have to manage. What Amazon is saying is keep it all on the cloud, which means just on the Internet, and access it through a wireless connection through any laptop, any smartphone, any tablet and connected cars. So you're moving it from a bunch of hard drives to one place on the Internet."
Google Inc. and Apple Inc. also are believed to be working on similar services to allow consumers to store and access music and other content when away from their home computer.
While Amazon will charge for the Cloud Drive service, it's offering anyone with an Amazon account 5 gigabytes of free storage. That's less space than you'd get on the smallest iPod Touch, but it's a move that's likely to woo plenty of users who might later decide to pay for more storage space.
KCBS Technology Analyst Larry Magid Comments:
The Seattle-based company, which already runs an online storage service for companies called Amazon S3, decided to roll out a consumer cloud service to make it easier for customers to access digital content no matter where they are, Amazon music director Craig Pape said.
The offerings could also benefit Amazon's bottom line: The company realized customers were hesitant to purchase music digitally at work because they didn't want them tied to their office computer, Pape said, so Cloud Drive and Cloud Player may drive more impulse music shopping.
"At the end of the day we're trying to delight customers, but we're trying to sell more music, too," he said.
The company also wants to sell cloud storage. If your tunes and videos take up more space than the 5 GB Amazon is giving out, you can pay an annual storage fee to use Cloud Drive: The use of 20 GB of storage, for example, will cost $20 (and this includes the 5 free GB). For an undisclosed period of time, however, Amazon is offering 20 GB of free storage to those who buy a digital album from its Amazon MP3 store.
Documents or videos you've uploaded to Cloud Drive will open with programs on the computer you're using, Pape said, while songs in the standard digital formats, MP3 or AAC, will be playable through the Web-based Cloud Player.
The player offers simple controls: you can play, pause or skip tracks, or build your own playlists. For users who want to listen while on the go, an updated version of the Amazon MP3 digital music-buying app will include Cloud Player, letting users play music they've stored with Amazon's service on their cell phone as well as tunes that are already on their handsets.
You can hear CNET Editor-at-Large Brian Cooley's Tech Watch report Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:50 P.M. on KCBS All News 740AM and 106.9FM.
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