For the past few years, lot has been talked about storing media in “ Cloud “, but sadly so not much action had been taken as such. Except a few start ups like mSpot and MP3tunes tackle the music locker idea while options like SugarSync and Dropbox lure users looking for more general file backup solutions. But they all failed to provide a concrete online media storage solution that, with CloudDrive Amazon is trying to do that . The online megastore’s ( Amazon ) – Cloud Drive online storage service starts with a free 5GB base plan that can be increased to 20GB, 50GB, 100GB, 200GB, 500GB, and 1,000GB, priced at $1 per gigabyte, per year (so that a 200GB plan costs $200 per year). To boost its new service (Cloud Drive), for a limited time, customers who purchase an album from Amazon MP3 store are automatically upgraded to a 20GB trial account for one year. Well this is certainly a good idea as you get plenty of options to buy MP3 from Amazon Music .
Positives Of Amazon Cloud Drive
The promise of a product like Amazon’s Cloud Drive is that you can upload all of the precious media files from all of your computers and devices (home, work, phone) to one common place, so that you’re never stranded without access to your digital media, as Amazon has already established ts name in the field of “Most Reliable Cloud Services ” with its services like Amazon Compute Cloud and Amazon Elastic Cloud .
Aside from Amazon’s handy cross-platform uploader and downloader utilities and its browser-based tools for viewing, downloading, and streaming your stuff, Amazon is also throwing in a Cloud Player feature within the Amazon MP3 application for Android. Using the free app, you can stream all the music you have stored in the cloud, or download your tracks on the fly for offline playback.
Get your Cloud Drive Now .
Negatives Of Amazon Cloud Drive
As a music storage and management package, Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player combination is easy to use and easy to recommend. There are some holes in the music service, such as limited format support (strictly unprotected MP3 and AAC), the somewhat dry user interface, a reliance on the Adobe Air platform, and the lack of an iOS app. If and when Apple comes out with something similar, it will likely run within iTunes, dovetail with iOS devices such as the iPhone , iPad, and iPod Touch , and support Apple’s lossless audio format.
The biggest disappointment is how Amazon handles storage of non-music files. There are dozens of services out there that are more adept at intelligently archiving and organizing photos, documents, and videos. The uptime reliability of Amazon’s servers is nice, and the plan pricing is competitive, but services such as SugarSync and Dropbox are better tools when it comes to routinely backing up critical files and folders.
Conclusion
For music fans, Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player get an undisputed thumbs-up from us. But if what you want to do is automatically back up files other than your music collection, there are better products and services for that out there.
