Cloud music services (Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify, etc.)

[jlb1705]

There has been stuff in various threads around here about cloud music services, and it seemed to me like a good idea to bring it all together in one thread.

I saw yesterday that Amazon has sweetened the pot a little bit with their Cloud Player service - they were already giving away 5GB for free. Now, if you subscribe to one of the premuim plans (at any price point) they're giving you unlimited storage of music files - whether you purchase them from Amazon or upload them yourself.

I've argued against the usefulness (for myself anyway) of these cloud music services in the past but I've started to soften my stance. Several weeks ago I got an iPad and it's 16GB leaves virtually no room for music among my other apps and files. I've found myself using the iPad at home in place of my laptop about 90% of the time, making my music somewhat inconvenient to access. I've found out that iTunes Home Sharing doesn't work for shit, and neither does the the Stream2Me app that I tried using.

Apple's initial cloud music offering has left me a bit underwhelmed. There's no streaming - only the ability to backup and download your previously purchased music (and for a fee, the ability to do the same with any non-iTunes music as well). As it turns out, this is even less useful to me than I thought streaming would be. I read a WSJ article recently that this may not have been an omission on Apple's part, but part of a strategy as they possibly see native storage for music remaining vital as bandwidth caps start to put a squeeze on streaming music services.

Google Music looks promising to me, but it's still an invite-only beta. The beta's free storage for up to 20,000 songs would actually be enough space for me, but their future pricing is uncertain and seemingly so is the support for non-Android devices.

Spotify is finally coming to the US, but I have no desire to "rent" music.

Amazon is starting to look more and more promising. I'm trying out the 5GB tier for free with a couple of my iTunes playlists to give it a test drive. I'm also waiting for a Google Music invite to take it for a spin as well. Maybe this cloud music thing won't be so bad after all.

 

[AuTX Buckeye]

There has been stuff in various threads around here about cloud music services, and it seemed to me like a good idea to bring it all together in one thread.

I saw yesterday that Amazon has sweetened the pot a little bit with their Cloud Player service - they were already giving away 5GB for free. Now, if you subscribe to one of the premuim plans (at any price point) they're giving you unlimited storage of music files - whether you purchase them from Amazon or upload them yourself.

I've argued against the usefulness (for myself anyway) of these cloud music services in the past but I've started to soften my stance. Several weeks ago I got an iPad and it's 16GB leaves virtually no room for music among my other apps and files. I've found myself using the iPad at home in place of my laptop about 90% of the time, making my music somewhat inconvenient to access. I've found out that iTunes Home Sharing doesn't work for [Mark May], and neither does the the Stream2Me app that I tried using.

Apple's initial cloud music offering has left me a bit underwhelmed. There's no streaming - only the ability to backup and download your previously purchased music (and for a fee, the ability to do the same with any non-iTunes music as well). As it turns out, this is even less useful to me than I thought streaming would be. I read a WSJ article recently that this may not have been an omission on Apple's part, but part of a strategy as they possibly see native storage for music remaining vital as bandwidth caps start to put a squeeze on streaming music services.

Google Music looks promising to me, but it's still an invite-only beta. The beta's free storage for up to 20,000 songs would actually be enough space for me, but their future pricing is uncertain and seemingly so is the support for non-Android devices.

Spotify is finally coming to the US, but I have no desire to "rent" music.

Amazon is starting to look more and more promising. I'm trying out the 5GB tier for free with a couple of my iTunes playlists to give it a test drive. I'm also waiting for a Google Music invite to take it for a spin as well. Maybe this cloud music thing won't be so bad after all.

"Cloud" based music is great and all but I've seen what "cloud" based music will do to networks.. I started at OSU in the heyday of Napster (1999).... There were 4 guys that were sharing tons of music over the network in the Dorms... Well eventually OSU gave them a ceases and desist letter, stating that those 4 guys were responsible for 25% of OSU's network traffic, because kids in the dorms were playing music off of their machines. Makes me wonder what ISPs will do if this starts picking up in popularity, considering their gonna start capping because of NetFlix. At this point HD space is cheap... and really how much music do you actually listen to.. if you listen to 20k songs great... but for me... I want my music as close as possible, not out somewhere on the web... call me old fashion i guess :)

 

[CentralMOBuck]

I've used both google's and amazon's cloud storage and really liked them both. Haven't used them much more than playing around though. I've got a ipod classic that's still kicking and as long as that thing is still working I'm not going to give it up. My phone's battery life isn't that great either, so listening to music on it isn't worth it if I don't have access to a charger. Having my library available to me on any computer is probably my favorite feature of cloud music.

 

[SloopyHangOn]

So say I wanted to check out one of the music clouds, which ones do you guys suggest and why?

Which ones are free? Which are /month? Which are 1 time payment?

I love this concept, but haven't felt like it was developed enough to be useful, anyone have any contrary opinions?

 

[CentralMOBuck]

So say I wanted to check out one of the music clouds, which ones do you guys suggest and why?

Which ones are free? Which are /month? Which are 1 time payment?

I love this concept, but haven't felt like it was developed enough to be useful, anyone have any contrary opinions?

Amazon has 5gb free. Really simple to use. They've got a program that recognizes your itunes/wmp playlists/library and you can select from there what you want to upload.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore

If you can get a invite to google music's beta I suggest going to that route. Their uploading program is super simple.

 

[SloopyHangOn]

Amazon has 5gb free. Really simple to use. They've got a program that recognizes your itunes/wmp playlists/library and you can select from there what you want to upload.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore

I use a fairly uncommon media player MediaMonkey because for what it does it does it better and more efficiently than iTunes, Winamp, WMP and the likes. It doesn't create a library .xml like iTunes (and I assume wmp), but I have all of my media in a single directory. Does Amazon's cloud have the ability to read straight from a directory, no middleman?

Also, I'd probably only use the 5gb as a trial (which is probably its intention) seeing as I'm looking to cloud over 100gb of music, but their price of $20 a year isn't half bad if it actually works well. I'm fairly mobile and I tend to always wish I had my entire music collection with me at any given moment (and I'd rather it be fluid than stuck on an iPod), so a good cloud would definitely be worth a decent price.

If you can get a invite to google music's beta I suggest going to that route. Their uploading program is super simple.

That's been my objective as of now.

 

[CentralMOBuck]

Does Amazon's cloud have the ability to read straight from a directory, no middleman?

Yes you can read straight from a directory.

I know a while back if you bought a cd from amazon they upgraded you to the 20gb plan for a year automatically. I don't know if that's still ongoing though.

 

[jlb1705]

Yes you can read straight from a directory.

I know a while back if you bought a cd from amazon they upgraded you to the 20gb plan for a year automatically. I don't know if that's still ongoing though.

I think the new promo that they announced yesterday replaced that one. FWIW, even on the free 5GB tier they are permitting unlimited storage for mp3s purchased from Amazon.

I wouldn't plan on purchasing mp3s from Amazon myself - I still buy CDs and might start buying some vinyl too. For me that means that the 5GB tier is essentially a trial and that $20/year would be the price if I wanted to truly buy in.

Today I uploaded my 2010 and 2011 albums playlist from my iTunes to Amazon. It was slow, but it was dead simple. The browser-based player is simple and offers little in the way of options or settings, but it executes what it sets out to do. It works well on my iPad. I could see myself using this, and it would essentially be free with the $20 credit I'll be getting for buying NCAA 12.

I'd still like to take Google Music for a spin though. Does anybody here have an invite, or are those available only directly from Google?

 

[CentralMOBuck]

I'd still like to take Google Music for a spin though. Does anybody here have an invite, or are those available only directly from Google?

I think it's google invite only. I looked around for about 5 minutes and found nothing about being able to send out invites yourself to other users. To me google music and amazon's cloud are about the same thing.

 

[Tlangs]

the amazon android app is glitchy. It will work fine then freeze up. You will have to go into settings and "unmount" your sd card (even though the music isn't stored there) and then mount it and it will work. sometimes you have to restart your phone.

I have had problems on my samsung droid charge and have heard similiar complaints from people using other android phones.

 

[SloopyHangOn]

the amazon android app is glitchy. It will work fine then freeze up. You will have to go into settings and "unmount" your sd card (even though the music isn't stored there) and then mount it and it will work. sometimes you have to restart your phone.

I have had problems on my samsung droid charge and have heard similiar complaints from people using other android phones.

That surprises me. The other Amazon apps I have on my phone are typically the LEAST glitchy ones I've got.

 

[SloopyHangOn]

So, I got an invite to Google's Music Beta 3 days ago.

I'm currently uploading my 13k+ tracks from my external, but it is taking FOREVER. It's been uploading for 3 days straight and it's only at ~2000/13000. Though the in-browser player and Android app work great with the songs that are already uploaded. Maybe in a week or so I'll be able to report on how well it all works, haha.

 

[jlb1705]

So, I got an invite to Google's Music Beta 3 days ago.

I'm currently uploading my 13k+ tracks from my external, but it is taking FOREVER. It's been uploading for 3 days straight and it's only at ~2000/13000. Though the in-browser player and Android app work great with the songs that are already uploaded. Maybe in a week or so I'll be able to report on how well it all works, haha.

I got my Music Beta invite on Monday and I'm uploading about 8600 songs. It's still going, and also painfully slow.

I've played some files so far from my PC, and it works great. On my iPad - not so much. I have to press the play button 3-4 times to get a track to play, it lags considerably and in order to play a song from a different artist or album (something that requires navigating to a different page) I have to hit the refresh button in order for it to work. Granted, I hear Amazon was much the same way until they made some updates last week.

I prefer the UI of Music Beta to what Amazon has, but Amazon just plain works.

Spotify has also been released in the US. I'm giving it a second look since it appears that I can have it stream my own collection rather than messing with the whole subscription/music rental thing. Spotify does require a Premium subscription ($10/month) to us it thru their mobile app - but right now there isn't a native iPad app anyway so the browser would be the best option if it actually works. I'm waiting on an invite here too - I may as well check it out. EDIT: Spotify apparently doesn't have a web app or play through a browser. I managed to snag an invite tonight but it's prompting me to download the client in order to continue with setup or actually use the service. Yet another less-than-ideal solution.

I'm planning to use my $20 credit from NCAA 12 to order Madden 12, and if they're still running the $20 credit for that game too I plan to use it to pay for Amazon Cloud Player for a year. However if one of these other services can impress me before that second $20 credit comes through, I'll be open to it.

 

[jlb1705]

Some more impressions:

Google Music Beta: Finally finished uploading all tracks. Did a good job of pulling album art from my iTunes library for the most part, but it missed the artwork for about 5% of my collection. Thankfully it gives you a way to edit metadata such as that thru the browser. I'm hoping they expand this to be more inclusive of iOS devices because other than that lack of support it's a real winner

Amazon Cloud Player: Amazon does not seem to pull album art from my iTunes library but rather from their own database. In the limited amount I've uploaded (as opposed to having uploaded the entire library with Google) it seems to have been accurate in matching up the correct image with each album. My main gripe is that the images they provide vary in proportion, and any matches they come up with that do not have a 1:1 aspect ratio get black bars either horizontally or vertically with the album art. This is something that I've always been very picky about in iTunes, trying to maintain that ratio with all the artwork I tag my music with. Unfortunately, Amazon also does not seem to provide a way to edit album art or other metadata, so it looks like I'd be stuck with it. All of my complaints with Cloud Player (album art, lack of a native app for iOS) are more cosmetic than functional. For now it just plain works, though it may need to continue improving to stay on top for me.

Spotify: It's insane how many hoops they make you jump through just to listen to the music you own rather than rent through the service. I gave up when it told me that I had to do it by wirelessly syncing the songs I wanted to be able to listen to rather than simply streaming. If that's what I wanted to do I would simply sync with iTunes like normal in the first place.

 

[MaxBuck]

Having been somewhere that internet coverage was spotty for the past week and a half, let me say that the whole "cloud" thing has completely lost its luster for me. Was glad to have all my entertainment with me, where I could actually access it on airplanes, boats, remote rural areas, etc.