Storage cost is $1/yr/GB which is similar to Amazon's S3 reduced redundancy storage. It is unclear which level of reliability Amazon is promising for the cloud drive. If it is the higher level, it is a good deal.
If you use enough bandwidth it's a good deal even for the reduced redundancy storage. Only having a web interface makes it a lot less simple than Dropbox, though.
Lack of an iOS player is interesting. I don't see a technical reason why Amazon couldn't make one. Ditto with an iOS video player for Amazon Video-on-Demand. Not making either of those (plus the Amazon Appstore & Kindle) makes me think Amazon is working on an Android platform of their own. They have the capabilities for a pretty solid media-ecosystem (music, video, apps, books, etc).
It actually looks like they could make the web-based UI work in Mobile Safari without too much work. (Easy for me to say.) The UI renders perfectly already. As far as I can tell, playback is the only thing that doesn't work. (But if you "download" a track it'll open in the built-in quicktime player and start playing.)
Despite the Flash requirement for uploading, they're already doing non-Flash playback. I don't have Flash installed on my desktop and playback works great.
Seeing as Safari has had background audio support since before it was granted to third-party apps, the web UI would be a decent stopgap in lieu if a native iOS app.
In a recent article about html5 audio there was a lot of talk about how safari intentionally didn't support automatic audio playback (vs. say chrome and chrome lite). I'm guessing that this would mean you'd have to click a button each time the song changed in your playlist - this would probably suck enough that it explains why they didn't launch with mobile safari support.
Damn, you're right. I'd played around with Cloud Player a bit last night in Safari/Mac, but I guess I never let it play two songs in a row. I just tried to play an album and it stopped after the first song.
That and the Cloud Player can be accessed on Android devices. Meta info wins me over. It's frustrating to see inconsistent meta tags on things like Grooveshark.
In case you missed it in Amazon's terms, the free upgrade is temporary. It expires in a year, at which point you can start paying or be bumped back down to the free level.
...you will be automatically eligible for the 20 GB plan for one year from
the date of your MP3 album purchase. Unless you set your account to auto-renew
to a paid plan, the 20 GB plan will revert to a free plan one year from the
date of your MP3 album purchase.
I doubt this will stick. The reason is because ultimately that means Amazon will be put in a position to delete peoples' files (if they fail to pay for their 20GB that month it reverts.) That could lead to lawsuits etc, probably not worth the chump change they'll save by revertting those plans.
Maybe they'll just render some random portion of the files inaccessible unless you pay up? Or just make your account read-only until you clear out enough of the files. Plenty of ways to handle it without wholesale deletion.
Just put aside that, is it actually any legal reason for using things like dropbox to upload music purchased and streamed for private uses?
BTW that one album/20GB offers only last until the end of the year, and it only last for a year. After that, you would have the habit of using the service but be reverted to the free plan.
However since all the new purchases on amazon are automatically saved without counting towards the quota, I guess that solves the problem for many android users. Just that I don't listen to many of bands/artists that put their songs on Amazon MP3 may make this offer less appealing.
I'm in Australia and that's what it looked like to me initially too, but after manually uploading an MP3 and then attempting to play it, the Cloud Player then worked.
Just that I don't listen to many of bands/artists that put their songs on Amazon MP3 may make this offer less appealing.
I don't know much about this but cdbaby[1] will do that for what seems like an affordable price. It just takes a bit of effort and sacrificing some profits in lieu of better distribution. I'm not saying it's right for everyone, but it's possible to get music out there if you are an artist. And cdbaby will let artists choose where/how they digitally distribute so artists could just choose Amazon MP3 if they wished.
I don't understand these types of comments. I have the same problem with Spotify in the US, but I don't feel the need to share that I can't use Spotify whenever a Spotify discussion comes up -- everyone is well aware of country restrictions already.
The difference is that this is a new product. You are comparing one that came out long before. This could lead to people verifying this claim and hey, people have tried to make it work out of US.
Besides that, I also try to attract people with the backgrounds of the legal side in US, to explain the ground for making this service legal and the issues on fair-use particularly in US.
Fortunately for us non-US folk, this Minimum Viable Product also has a Minimum Viable BarbarianWall that's easily circumvented.
In this case, the only step of the process that checks your foreign-ness is the first one, where you accept the license agreement. So if you have a US VPN, you can quickly bypass the wall and get signed up. Then it's open to use directly from there.
Or better still, since it's Amazon, you can fire up one of their handy EC2 Windows boxes in New Jersey, remote desktop in and IE your way to http://amazon.com/clouddrive. It's a few minutes of pain, followed by a nickel charged to your Amazon account, but it gets you in to try this thing.
I wonder how telling this is:
"We do not guarantee that Your Files will not be subject to misappropriation, loss or damage and we will not be liable if they are. You're responsible for maintaining appropriate security, protection and backup of Your Files."
Is it "use at your own risk no matter how much money you pay us"?
I think Amazon is trying to become the backbone for the 'alternative' set of Android core apps that will inevitably be developed. These apps will appeal to any carrier/OEM that wants to stop licensing from Google, or from companies like Amazon and Facebook who may launch their own devices with splintered versions of Android.
My guess is that Amazon will own content delivery for these devices (books, movies, TV, music) and that Microsoft will round out the rest, with a Bing Maps app and an email app that supports Gmail etc but syncs nicely with Hotmail (which has been totally overhauled since you last tried it). This is entirely a guess on my part, mind you.
I think it's bold of Amazon to launch essentially a minimum viable product and beat Apple to the punch. Now they have customers and are getting meaningful feedback to make future improvements. You rarely see this outside of Apple and startups. I'm glad to see Apple running into some real competition.
Go look at all the complaining from when the iPhone original was announced and came out. It didn't have a number of features that were considered at the time required:
The original release of the operating system included Visual Voicemail, multi-touch gestures, HTML email, Safari web browser, threaded text messaging, and YouTube. However, many features like MMS, third-party apps, and copy and paste were not supported at release. These missing features led to hackers "jailbreaking" their phones which added these missing features. Official software updates slowly added these features.
Looking back now they clearly did the right thing. In articles at the time when journalists did a feature comparisons it lost. But when people and journalists actually used it - it was awesome. I argue a product can be both a MVC and have simple, powerful, useful, polished features. Just look at the ipod and iphone (yeah similar reviews happened for ipod. See the infamous Slashdot quote).
Another example is the 1st generation iPod. Did just enough to solidify market share, then started evolving. You don't see people ooh and ahhing over a wheel anymore now that we are firmly onto touch pads.
Edit: Another example is iTunes (why couldn't you buy things directly on your device) or their office productivity suite.
I mean I'd hardly consider the original iPhone a minimum viable product. Smart phones had been around for years, and what the iPhone did was redefine the smart phone. I guess in some weird sense you could say that it was a minimum viable product for the future of other products that were like it, but you could say that for any product. In general, I would definitely not typify Apple as a company that gets to the fight first, but rather one that changes the fight when it gets there. That was true of the iPhone in the smart phone market, true of the iPod in the mp3 market, true of the iPad in the tablet market, and will likely be true of whatever special sauce Apple is planning for mobileme in the virtual locker market. My point is that Apple is not a company that throws out a product into consumer space with the knowledge that it is incomplete and seeking tons of consumer feedback. They release extremely polished products to a market, often with what I would argue is an unparalleled mastery of minimalism in their features (in terms of leaving a lot out of their products and only keeping in what they deem absolutely necessary to most users), which could be confused for minimum viability if you didn't know better. I would suggest Google as a better example of a big company that often releases products with the intention of quickly updating them once they start getting feedback. Facebook might be another less convincing example.
Amazon is not looking to dominate the Android app marketplace (I doubt that either google or the carriers/phone manufacturers would allow that to happen) but is positioning itself as a viable alternative to iTunes. The free 20gb offer with the purchase of an album is clearly intended to get users in the habit of buying media content from Amazon. This is especially interesting because of what it may mean for the kindle. Apple was able to launch its impressive media empire because of the synergy of iTunes and the iPod (and eventually iPhone and iPad). With a viable media store and content locker, we may see music and video on kindles or new kindle-related devices soon. Cheap kindles w/ video playback + a legitimate media store and locker service may be just the recipe to challenge not only the iPad but the Apple eco-system. Because I am a fanboy and just can't help myself, my money is on Apple =)
I think Amazon is going to be more tight with their platform than even Microsoft. (e.g. Carriers would not even be in the OS update path)
While many of the pieces will be available to any android device, I don't think carriers/OEMs are likely to partner too tightly with a company that aims to release its own first-party hardware.
You agree not to do that, and Amazon has your real name if you've ever made a purchase &| uploaded >5gigs of music. Most people I know use their Amazon account for other purchases and won't risk their account being closed for violating the terms.
Yeah account sharing is watched and when detected the suspect account will get flagged for a TOS violation. I can't tell you how quickly the ban hammer may come down as things go, but 2 devices is likely not going to trigger it.
Can anyone see AmazonMP3 tracks in their library? I've purchased tons of music from AmazonMP3, and Cloud Player shows an empty library & 0 purchased songs. It seems like a big miss to launch this way. Hopefully it's just a bug.
If that's the case, I'd bet it's for license reasons. An AmazonMP3 purchase made after Cloud Drive is launched could be described as having been copied for personal use, at the time of purchase, to your Cloud Drive.
Allowing previously purchased tracks to be streamed without first uploading them looks more like what Lala was doing, and they had to negotiate streaming licenses. Though I'd wonder if there is any real implementation difference in Amazon's case.
If you want a free service to stream your music from your home computer to your work computer/android/iOS device, check out my service: http://www.audiogalaxy.com
Since we don't store the music in the cloud, we don't have any size limits (the current winner has about 530,000 files). Obviously this only works if you leave your home computer on, but we've found that isn't a problem for most folks.
Wow! I'd been thinking about researching iTunes -> iPhone streaming apps, but now I don't even have to — I know wholeheartedly that anything y'all put out is going to be awesome. It's weird to realize that 'brands' really do have worth.
Audiogalaxy 1.0 was the first to really execute on an amazing new UX since the days of IRC Fserves and Napster, and after your legal problems it wasn't till OiNK (and now what.cd) showed up years later that anything nearly as good was available.
The one where you searched from your browser and then opened some small hash file into the client which did the sharing, right? Not unlike the later BitTorrent.
Yeah, everything was browser based, except for the small app that ran on the desktop. We handled all the queues and the download scheduling on the server though -- no need for the client to open anything.
That was brilliant. I left the client up at home and could queue stuff up while at school. When I got home I had a bunch of new music to listen to. Great idea!
Thanks! That was my first lesson in how inspiring constraints can be -- we didn't have the resources to make a good client UI, so we put it on the website instead.
My music sits on a ReadyNAS Duo (fantastic value, low power, always on), which runs Debian. It would be very nice if the helper application worked there too.
Everything looks fine on my end. Shoot me an email (see my profile) and we'll figure it out. YC doesn't hit quite as hard as LifeHacker did last year. :)
I'm currently using subsonic on my home server to stream my music, subsonic is guaranteed to be free forever, is open source, runs anywhere java does, transcodes formats, does video, allows downloads/uploads, has multiple full-featured mobile apps for almost every mobile platform, pretty much everything you could want. Setup is easy as pie, and it will even give you a subdomain in subsonic.org if you donate to the developer.
As far as I can see, your service is subsonic + the hassle of registering, yet another company with your personal details, less features and the possibility that it may become a freemium service in the future.
Just downloaded it. Is there or can there be an option to keep the traffic inside my LAN, on the home side of my router? Seems a waste of my ISP bandwidth to stream from one room in my house to another.
Streaming seems a bit silly when I've got 16 gigs sitting empty on my phone. I just want synching. I'll use Pandora if I want to stream. And then I'm not restricted to just my library.
I have around 60GB of FLACs on my hard drive. At LAME's V0 encoding, that's around 20GB of MP3s. And it's ever increasing. Considering that SDHC has a max of 32GB and SDXC doesn't have much support (much less microSDXC), there's definitely a market for something like this. (Probably very niche, but eh... Amazon seems to be positioning this as kind of a Box.net thing with an emphasis on music storage and playback)
I think the hype has raced ahead of the technology here. "Streaming everything" on today's smartphones seems to give you about 2 hrs of battery life, a problem for which there does not appear to be a near-term solution. Moreover, no wireless network in America could support that mode of usage on a large scale, and that will also be true for the foreseeable future. Or so it seems to me -- anyone in the know care to comment?
There is a solution, which several companies already implement (Rdio and Spotify, at least). You can sync tracks to your device. I haven't used MOG or Rhapsody so I'm not sure if they do it as well (anyone?) but it seems like the obvious solution. It's the best of both worlds, as you can still stream if you want.
I wouldn't imagine "streaming everything" is the way to interpret this.
Think of it more like Dropbox-style-sync for your whole phone (likely configurable to only happen when in wifi), plus the option to stream if you really want.
The average user will be using the wifi-sync by default without even realizing it and probably never even consider streaming all their music.
I tried uploading a file to the cloud drive using Chrome, and then I viewed the file. I copied the URL and pasted it into Firefox, where I was not logged in to amazon.com or their cloud storage. It still loaded the file. If you tried doing this with a gmail message, gmail would prompt you to log in. I am not too familiar with cloud storage. Is this a security issue?
The first time I tried it, I used a PDF file, since it opens in the browser and I could easily access the URL. I just tried again, and I was able to replicate the issue I mentioned, this time using Chrome and Internet Explorer. I tried uploading a different file type (a simple text file) that also loads in the browser, and I was able to replicate with that file as well.
I don't get your example? You cite one use of the iPad and compared it to my statement. So this means I'm looking at it too narrowly? Elaborate please?
You cite one use of Amazon Cloud Drive, which I compared to. Yes, the point was to illustrate you're looking at it too narrowly.
To elaborate:
Yes, Amazon Cloud Drive can act like iTunes, insofar as you buy tracks from Amazon and can play them thru a browser via the MP3 player. No question Amazon will, like Apple & iTunes, expand this ability by using this "cloud drive" as the focal point for an assortment of applications, now that Amazon is in the e-book, e-movie, e-music, etc. business. I expect the Kindle will start using this in both overt and covert fashion. As Amazon observes what people use their "cloud drive" for, they will provide matching services to enhance and lock-in use thereof. The intent is to make this a disruptive product: its full potential may be unclear, but it's the groundwork for new ways of doing things - and new ways for Amazon to make money.
I guess I was looking at it from a point of view of 'what it is now'. A kind of dropbox+iTunes mashup.
You're coming from a 'what it could be' which is at best guess in your own words, unclear. Right now they are using music as a beach head into the market. In future it could be something video or word processing related.
Yes. You don't give away a million 5GB cloud "drives" for free without some plan to leverage it beyond mere paying for more storage. The model may work for Dropbox, but Amazon has bigger plans.
I wonder if they're doing anything clever to reduce storage size. For example - an MP3/AAC song purchased from the same service has a small unique header (e.g. where your iTunes account name is stored) and then identical music data.
I imagine the music companies would have a hissy fit and demand streaming payments if that was the case though.
In my mind there is no question that they'll be doing de-duplication here. You don't need to rely on a header key, you just take something like a sha1 hash and the size. Services like dropbox do this - even making it so you don't have to upload non-unique files. I have always assumed that all of the non-encrypted remote backup solutions that live on s3 or elsewhere do this too. It's just too easy for a massive storage space savings to not do it.
What happens if your phone is in a poor reception area, or without internet connection? Then you can't listen to music? Can the app manage which songs you'd also like to have stored locally on the phone?
Is this meant to supplement your old ways of syncing music to the phone or replace it?
Glad to see the comments flood in for this and see it hit #1 on HN so quickly as I was beginning to wonder when it would ship. I was contracted to work on the Amazon MP3 v2.0 app rearchitecting the download architecture and adding cloud drive download support. It was "very interesting" being the only outside contractor / software architect level dev to be hired by A2Z / Amazon to work on core architecture for Amazon MP3. I finished my involvement mid-Feb. I guess I'm just posting to get an account started here on HN as I'm launching some very compelling Android platform / middleware soon called TyphonRT. I've been bootstrapping for years and this recent Amazon MP3 contract has opened up enough runway for me to launch my tech in the coming months. Hopefully I'll have some more time to post in the future too.
Free persistent storage of Amazon digital downloads is the big feature here (to me). I've always thought it was insane how Steam lets you download dozens of gigabytes of video games ad infinitum, yet Apple's and Amazon's music stores require you to backup your digital purchases.
I think there are two really interesting things about this:
• This is the first time Amazon has pulled together the two major branches of their business, retail and cloud infrastructure, into something (dare I say it?) synergetic.
• Amazon is taking the first steps into the non-retail consumer web, where, if successful, they'll probably give a good scare to a handful of startups as they sweep across segments (and without the Google / Facebook-like startup shopping).
Not necessarily true, really. When you save your current location on a Kindle, that's handled by an app running on EC2. That's just an example: I am sure pretty much all of Amazon's products use the AWS infrastructure.
182 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadPS: Sorry for hogging your upstream Alan.
Despite the Flash requirement for uploading, they're already doing non-Flash playback. I don't have Flash installed on my desktop and playback works great.
Seeing as Safari has had background audio support since before it was granted to third-party apps, the web UI would be a decent stopgap in lieu if a native iOS app.
Here's hoping it's just a bug!
First time in a while I got a warm fuzzy for having an Android device.
Is it the added meta info about music and other things that Amazon can use since it has a huge collection of music?
They don't compete with dropbox's sync functionality, but they sure do on price and the mp3 cloud player!
Just put aside that, is it actually any legal reason for using things like dropbox to upload music purchased and streamed for private uses?
BTW that one album/20GB offers only last until the end of the year, and it only last for a year. After that, you would have the habit of using the service but be reverted to the free plan.
However since all the new purchases on amazon are automatically saved without counting towards the quota, I guess that solves the problem for many android users. Just that I don't listen to many of bands/artists that put their songs on Amazon MP3 may make this offer less appealing.
I'm in Australia and that's what it looked like to me initially too, but after manually uploading an MP3 and then attempting to play it, the Cloud Player then worked.
But when I tried to install the Android player it said it wasn't available on my carrier (Optus)
Uploaded an mp3 manually and tried to play, but got the warning of being outside the US :(
I don't know much about this but cdbaby[1] will do that for what seems like an affordable price. It just takes a bit of effort and sacrificing some profits in lieu of better distribution. I'm not saying it's right for everyone, but it's possible to get music out there if you are an artist. And cdbaby will let artists choose where/how they digitally distribute so artists could just choose Amazon MP3 if they wished.
[1] http://members.cdbaby.com/whatwedo/default.aspx
I don't understand these types of comments. I have the same problem with Spotify in the US, but I don't feel the need to share that I can't use Spotify whenever a Spotify discussion comes up -- everyone is well aware of country restrictions already.
Besides that, I also try to attract people with the backgrounds of the legal side in US, to explain the ground for making this service legal and the issues on fair-use particularly in US.
In this case, the only step of the process that checks your foreign-ness is the first one, where you accept the license agreement. So if you have a US VPN, you can quickly bypass the wall and get signed up. Then it's open to use directly from there.
Or better still, since it's Amazon, you can fire up one of their handy EC2 Windows boxes in New Jersey, remote desktop in and IE your way to http://amazon.com/clouddrive. It's a few minutes of pain, followed by a nickel charged to your Amazon account, but it gets you in to try this thing.
Enjoy!
My guess is that Amazon will own content delivery for these devices (books, movies, TV, music) and that Microsoft will round out the rest, with a Bing Maps app and an email app that supports Gmail etc but syncs nicely with Hotmail (which has been totally overhauled since you last tried it). This is entirely a guess on my part, mind you.
The original release of the operating system included Visual Voicemail, multi-touch gestures, HTML email, Safari web browser, threaded text messaging, and YouTube. However, many features like MMS, third-party apps, and copy and paste were not supported at release. These missing features led to hackers "jailbreaking" their phones which added these missing features. Official software updates slowly added these features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(original)#Software_Hist...
Looking back now they clearly did the right thing. In articles at the time when journalists did a feature comparisons it lost. But when people and journalists actually used it - it was awesome. I argue a product can be both a MVC and have simple, powerful, useful, polished features. Just look at the ipod and iphone (yeah similar reviews happened for ipod. See the infamous Slashdot quote).
Edit: Another example is iTunes (why couldn't you buy things directly on your device) or their office productivity suite.
Amazon's cloud product is aimed at Android
Apple's cloud product will almost certainly ignore Android users because they'll use it to bolster the iPhone/iOS stack (+ enticement to switch to).
They're aimed at two different markets.
While many of the pieces will be available to any android device, I don't think carriers/OEMs are likely to partner too tightly with a company that aims to release its own first-party hardware.
yet the normal clouddrive uploader works. weird.
edit: It also imports playlists, etc.
[edited for clarity]
Allowing previously purchased tracks to be streamed without first uploading them looks more like what Lala was doing, and they had to negotiate streaming licenses. Though I'd wonder if there is any real implementation difference in Amazon's case.
Since we don't store the music in the cloud, we don't have any size limits (the current winner has about 530,000 files). Obviously this only works if you leave your home computer on, but we've found that isn't a problem for most folks.
Audiogalaxy 1.0 was the first to really execute on an amazing new UX since the days of IRC Fserves and Napster, and after your legal problems it wasn't till OiNK (and now what.cd) showed up years later that anything nearly as good was available.
As far as I can see, your service is subsonic + the hassle of registering, yet another company with your personal details, less features and the possibility that it may become a freemium service in the future.
So, what, exactly, does your service offer?
Think of it more like Dropbox-style-sync for your whole phone (likely configurable to only happen when in wifi), plus the option to stream if you really want.
The average user will be using the wifi-sync by default without even realizing it and probably never even consider streaming all their music.
To elaborate: Yes, Amazon Cloud Drive can act like iTunes, insofar as you buy tracks from Amazon and can play them thru a browser via the MP3 player. No question Amazon will, like Apple & iTunes, expand this ability by using this "cloud drive" as the focal point for an assortment of applications, now that Amazon is in the e-book, e-movie, e-music, etc. business. I expect the Kindle will start using this in both overt and covert fashion. As Amazon observes what people use their "cloud drive" for, they will provide matching services to enhance and lock-in use thereof. The intent is to make this a disruptive product: its full potential may be unclear, but it's the groundwork for new ways of doing things - and new ways for Amazon to make money.
You're coming from a 'what it could be' which is at best guess in your own words, unclear. Right now they are using music as a beach head into the market. In future it could be something video or word processing related.
Is that what you're trying to say?
Except:
> You have 5.0 GB of Cloud Drive storage. Upload your entire music collection.
I don't think this is going to work...
I imagine the music companies would have a hissy fit and demand streaming payments if that was the case though.
Is this meant to supplement your old ways of syncing music to the phone or replace it?
• This is the first time Amazon has pulled together the two major branches of their business, retail and cloud infrastructure, into something (dare I say it?) synergetic.
• Amazon is taking the first steps into the non-retail consumer web, where, if successful, they'll probably give a good scare to a handful of startups as they sweep across segments (and without the Google / Facebook-like startup shopping).
I'm pretty sure I heard that in a talk on AWS given by an Amazon product manager, but I could be wrong (or he could be wrong).