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Amazon Cloud Drive for music thread

ari-free

ari-free

Android Expert
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I think it makes more sense for tablets. I'm on my couch, buy a song on my tablet and I can have it on my PC
 
mikedt said:
Quite pointless IMO.

Basically you're paying for storage to upload your music to, and then download it again, probably at an inferior quality, possibly using most of that meagre 3G data allowance. Of course no internet connection = no music.
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You're only paying if you want to use more than 5 GB.

It doesn't download in inferior quality. It's the same quality as you uploaded. It's basically just a storage service.

If you want, you can stream it using a wireless connection instead of your data plan. You also have the option to download instead of stream (which means the first time you'd use data to download but every time you played the song afterwards, it would be playing from the local storage on your device).
 
ari-free said:
So is this like itunes except you don't have to plug anything in and do everything from browser?
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Correct, Personally I've been waiting for this to drop any traces of Itunes from my PC. It's like "Dropbox" but instead of your files it stores your music.
 
And amazon already the music content from amazon mp3. The circle is now complete. They just need to get everything pre-installed on phones and tablets.
 
I'm digging it already. At first I thought it was for music only purchased on Amazon. Then I found out I could upload my own music. Plus, they upgrade you to 20 gb if you purchase an album. If you're like me, you may have accidentally deleted an album you purchased and had iTunes hassle you and tell you couldn't download it again. With Amazon, this isn't a problem. My first reaction to this is to be a huge fan. I can put music on my SD card and the music that I don't want on my SD card or don't have room for, I can put in the cloud and still have access to.
 
Of all the Cloud like services that stream your music to your Android the Amazon Cloud Player is the only one (that I am aware of) that does no re-encoding of your music.

I prefer to buy CD's and rip them myself usnig EAC and FLAC since there is no quality loss. However I am fine with compressed music on a portable.

So I encoded about 5 albums from FLAC to 320 CBR AAC-LC and so for it's working well.

I think Amazon got it right man!

Although if anyone else knows of any other similar services that do NOT re-encode your music then I would be willing to look into them.

But for now I'm sticking with Amazon Cloud
 
Yeah, I think Amazon got it right on several levels.

1. Only $1 a gb per year for storage. 50 gb - $50. 100 gb - $100. That's dirt cheap.
2. Purchases from Amazon don't count against that quota. I've got 50 gb of media on my computer now. If I upload all of it and only purchase from Amazon going forward it won't touch any of that 50 gb quota. Sweetness.
3. They don't re-encode your music.
4. Your music is still your music. It's not locked in the cloud. If you see Amazon floundering and getting ready to go under a year from now or ten years from now, you can simply download all your music to your computer and go someplace else. I lost several GB of music when I was poor college kid because a service I was with went under.
5. It's frakking Amazon, not some start up you've never heard of. They have market credibility and you can safely bet that they'll be around for awhile.

The only thing I'm not liking is that I can't simply import all the music I've purchased from Amazon before to my cloud drive and not have it count against my quota. I would like to be able to do that. I may call Amazon and ask.
 
Is anyone having any issues with this new service. I uploaded about 26 songs just to try it out and I have yet to see it when I log into the Amazon MP3 app.

I have logged out and back in several times and still nothing.

I am on VZW with a Droid Incredible.

Any ideas?

Update: I downloaded the free song and when I did the download it asked for permission to use the MP3 service. Then my songs showed up.

As a side note I cannot even listen to a song. It keeps crapping out on me and saying there is a network error. I have full bars and am in 3G.
 
BiggestManEver said:
If you find the solution for this, please share. Same problem here.
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I just called them. I have nothing but good things to say about Amazon's tech support. You get a real human being fairly quickly and it's someone who speaks English. Anyhow, they told me that anything purchased going forward can be xferred to the cloud drive at the time of purchase and won't count against your limit. Anything purchased from Amazon prior to today will have to be uploaded from your computer and will count against your limit. The answer I got was that this is the way it was and I was given the impression that there were licensing issues involved. I didn't push them on the subject though. :(
 
sitlet said:
You have to go to www.amazon.com/cloudplayer first, and accept the terms, even after you uploaded your music. then sign out on the app and sing back in again. It tells you this exact thing in the app.
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I had done exactly that prior to downloading the free song of the day. Once I did that download, and that was on my phone, I was asked to accept the terms. I did this and all was good.

The Amazon Music uploading program is pretty decent as well.
 
sitlet said:
Does anyone know how to "shuffle all" tracks? I can see you can shuffle tracks within an album, but I would like to shuffle all the tracks.
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I think the player is pretty half baked. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't currently support that.
 
A.Nonymous said:
They're not streaming really and it's not their files. They are going to argue that it's a hard drive, not a streaming service.
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Streaming: the transmission of digital audio or video, or the listening and viewing of such data without first storing it; Deliver a file from a server in "real time," ie, play a file as it is being downloaded

It is streaming there is not a question about it. The question is does Amazon need to have a license to allow users to upload their own music and stream it to the user's device.

I personally love the idea, I've got more than 5 GB of music I would be more than happy to upload and free up some space on my SD card but I will wait until the licensing info is resolved as I don't want to lose my music or have to redownload it all.
 
I am still in the middle of uploading my 26GB music library to the cloud, but I have a few comments on the whole thing:

-From what I've seen, it looks to be a promising service. I can't wait to see where this will go in the future.
-I am disappointed that there is nothing between the 20GB and 50GB plans. Such as 30GB, or 35GB. I have a little over 20GB, and am forced to go with the 50GB plan - which I will NEVER fill up.
- Since I have SO much available space, I would LOVE it if I could upload movies to the cloud!
-I also have not tried it yet, but when you buy music from the Amazon store on your phone you are given the option of saving it to your phone, or to the cloud. I wish I could do both (even if it does take up space on the cloud, since I have so much available space, I don't really mind). I like having my music on my HDD and in iTunes (I will still use iTunes for my computer - this service is simply for getting music to my phone, without taking up SD Card storage)
 
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