The Evolution of Technology

Posts Tagged ‘cloud’

Google has been a little busy sending out invitations for its cloud storage service, but that hasn’t stopped others from rolling out the same. If you’re still waiting for that invite, you might want to check out a new service from mSpot. Actually, there are two new services that work hand in hand. The first is that cloud storage service. The second is streaming radio. You might like your Pandora or Slacker — even the new Slacker Premium — but mSpot’s streaming service adds a personal twist that the others don’t quite have.

The cloud storage works as you might expect. You can head over to mspot.com and sign up for a free account. From there you can upload your music, up to 5GB for free. After you download the Android app, you can access those songs from the cloud. This is clearly a feature that we’ll see more of in the coming months and years. Everyone seems to be releasing a cloud storage service, since it means streaming without using on-device memory. mSpot is also offering a premium plan, which allows you to upload 40GB and access those songs from up to five mobile devices (from the free plan you get just one device). That costs $ 3.99 per month, which is pretty reasonable given the cost of other music services.

As I’ve repeated ad infinitum, the one area where I think Android most sorely lags behind Apple is in music management. It’s not that Android lacks options. There are plenty of media players that have desktop sync apps as well, and most of these also sync with iTunes. That makes things a bit more convenient, but it’s not quite like Apple, which has made ubiquitous its iTunes media player (at least on Apple computers) and its iTunes store. Android doesn’t have that native function. There was hope, and for about a year we’ve been anticipating Google’s next move in that regard. It was a disappointment late last week when we learned that Google’s talks with record labels stalled. Yesterday we got further disappointing news.

This was more of an emotional disappointment than an actual setback for Google. Though their talks with record labels might have hit a temporary impasse, I expect something will still get done in the near future. It’s really in everyone’s best interests. Google needs to deliver its Android users a better music experience, and record labels, perpetual whiners about declining income, stand to make significant bank on the deal. But to have Apple beat them to the punch? That just hurts. According to a Reuters report, that just might be the case. Commence sobbing.

You might remember the saga from earlier this month. Three weeks ago we found that if you make a few changes to your rooted Android, you could sync your music with the cloud. A few days later I chronicled my experienced with the Honeycomb cloud music player. I know some people have found success with it, but for me it was an utter failure. It’ll come eventually, so I’m not too upset. Making me less upset is Amazon’s recent announcement of its own cloud storage and streaming service. They’ve made it quite easy, and I’m jumping on board as I type.

I caught this on Engadget, but all the information is in the press release that Amazon circulated. Here are the important numbers. Everyone gets 5GB of free storage, but there are plenty of plans beyond that. The best way to increase your storage is to buy an MP3 album from Amazon.com. That gets you 20GB of storage for a year, which normally costs $ 20. Additionally, music purchased from the Amazon store doesn’t count against your quota. This is quite brilliant, as it incentivizes people to purchase from Amazon. It also disincentivizes people to buy DRM music from the iTunes store, since that can’t be uploaded to the cloud.