In case you didn't see the news yesterday, Amazon launched a music in the cloud service called Cloud Player. Upload your music to Amazon Cloud Drive (also just announced) via their Adobe AIR uploader tool and play your music from anywhere with their Cloud Player or Android app. 5GB of storage free, 20GB for $20 per year, 50GB for $50 per year... all the way up to 1TB for $1,000 per year.
Uploading music to Cloud Drive for Cloud Player
First thoughts? Reminds me of Anywhere.FM, of which I was a big user before imeem acquired them. But in the last 2-3 years I have noticed something about my music consumption. I don't actively manage my iTunes library or acquire new music anymore. I rarely even fire up iTunes these days. I get my music fix from sites and services like Spotify, Rdio, Hype Machine and Pandora One. Managing music is too much of a hassle. I would much rather browse for new music on a curated site/service, click to favorite an album or song and add it to a playlist that is accessible from anywhere or any device.
Cloud Player for Web
Amazon is simply providing that functionality to those that already have a massive music archive they wish to keep around. Is the trend going in their favor though?
Arguably, the bigger news here is the release of the underlying consumer-friendly Cloud Drive service. I've been raving about Amazon S3 for years. It seems like Cloud Drive is S3 for the masses. Cloud Player is of course the first of many Cloud Drive-backed products to come.
Thoughts?