Competing Cloud Music Services

Featured, Tech, The Internet — By on July 7, 2011 9:33 am

Cloud music allows you to play music wirelessly without having to store music on either your phone, laptop or computer! Just run the app and if you have an internet connection, you have access to all of your uploaded music*. There are currently 3 options and I’ll run through each one: Amazon Cloud, Google Music and Apple iCloud. Having used only 2 of the 3 (Apple’s has not been released yet), I can at least weigh my opinions on this.

There is 1 caveat to the entire cloud music service though… Data. I currently use both Amazon and Google Music and I stream music from my phone pretty much all day while I am working. Although I currently have an unlimited data plan through Verizon (I have the Thunderbolt), I have used 0.7GB in the 14/30ish days this cycle. If this rate continues, I’ll use at least 1.5GB this month without tethering! (Yes I tether… 4G speeds for my laptop anywhere is so useful) With Verizon’s new tiered data plans coming out (or AT&T’s data cap), I could only wonder how much data people would use per month…

Amazon Cloud

Initially, Amazon had a cloud storage service where you could store any files that you wanted for a charge per GB used as well as the data transfer fees. This wasn’t such a bad deal since you pay for what you need and use. But then came the talk of cloud music streaming and Amazon decided it would be a great idea to give everyone 5GB of storage on their cloud free! And even better, if you purchased an album online on the Amazon store, they upgraded you to 20GB free (for 1 year, then $20/year after). Sweet! 20GB is some pretty decent storage that is free (esp. when you buy an album for only $0.99). Other storage services charge anywhere from $10/month for 50GB (which is $120/year) but compared to Amazon’s prices, other cloud storage services can’t compare ($50/year for 50GB or $1/GB/year). But just yesterday, Amazon announced that if you had any cloud storage plan above 20GB, your music would not count towards this storage! So you essentially have an unlimited music storage service with 20GB to back up your photos, documents and whatever for just $20/year. To me, this is an exceptional deal! Unfortunately though, if you stick with the 5GB storage that is free, your music storage will be counted. But really, how expensive is $20/year for files you can access anywhere you have an internet connection. OH! And their music player app is cross-smartphone compatible.

TL;DR
Pros:

    Cheap
    All-purpose storage
    Unlimited music storage (for paid only)
    Cross-platform music player (app)
    5GB FREE

Cons:

    5GB is not a lot of space

Google Music

I initially used Amazon cloud first since it was the first available to me and I thought it was awesome until my friend got into the Google Music beta (before me, and also before Amazon’s unlimited music storage). Google offers storage and streaming of your 20,000 songs. Songs, not size! So if you bought your CD (yes, I still buy CDs) and ripped them at a high bit-rate, your files will be considerably larger than the typical MP3 or M4P files. So I requested to be put into the beta and when my invite came, I immediately uploaded my music from both my laptop and desktop. Now, I knew there would be duplicates and I figured that I would parse through everything later… but Google already did that for me once everyone was uploaded. No duplicates and whenever I add new songs to my “Music” folder, it automatically adds them to Google Music. Talk about your seamless syncing! And they even gave me about 20 songs free to listen to as it should “fit my taste.” So as I write this, I am listening to my 2100+ songs on the web based app on my work computer. And when I am away from my desk, I play music through my Droid app on my phone. But how much is 20,000 songs? If you estimate about 4MB/song, you would be looking at 80GB of storage. And remember, this is just for music only! The biggest downside to Google Music is their app, which is only available for Android phones only!

TL;DR
Pros:

    FREE
    Storage for 20k songs (which is a LOT)
    Seamless sync between computers
    “Smart” file management
    Some Free songs

Cons:

    Music only
    >App is Android phone only

Apple iCloud

Now, I sold my iPhone 4 just over a month ago and it took less than 2 minutes to sell on eBay. In hindsight, I should have sold it for more, but I was glad to be rid of the phone. Not that there is anything wrong with the phone, I happened to enjoy my Android phone so much more. Anyways, back to iCloud, the new Apple cloud storage system that replaces MobileMe, which was their paid ($99/year) cloud storage system for a measly 5GB which was then upgraded to 20GB. Now, iCloud is free for all iTunes users (Mac or PC) and you get 5GB of storage! This storage is similar to Amazon’s where music, picutres, documents and videos can be kept but Apple also introduced iTunes Match. iTunes Match scans your iTunes library for songs and compares your library with the one Apple has. Match then creates a list of songs that you have and will play the one already on their own servers (at the higher bit-rate of 256kbps). If you have a song that Apple does not have, then the song will be uploaded to their servers for access. Pretty simple and in this case, you don’t need to sit there and manually upload your entire library, which is awesome and such a time saver! And the upgraded song quality is also very nice (although your “unique” songs will not be upgraded). So really, the only storage you would need, would be for the songs that iTunes doesn’t have already which saves a lot of extra space! The biggest problem with iCloud is that you need iTunes… so this will not work on Android devices and computers that do not have iTunes (like my work computer since I can’t install anything myself). All of this can be yours for $25/year!

Another beef that I have is with this graphic:

Not only is it outdated, but the data is completely skewed! Amazon now doesn’t charge you for music storage so the cost is really $20/year but you get 15GB more of general storage! So not only is it cheaper, you get more! And it doesn’t take weeks to upload your entire library. It did take a couple of hours for 2100 songs, but I just let it upload overnight while I was sleeping. Easy peasy!

TL;DR
Pros:

    iTunes Match (reduces upload times)
    Upgraded bit-rate for songs you have that iTunes has (which is pretty much everything)
    All-purpose storage

Cons:

    5GB of storage
    $25/year (most expensive of the 3)
    Requires iTunes
    >Not for Android phones

Conclusion

So there you have it. The 3 top music cloud services. If you ask me, I’ll stick with Google Music and use Amazon for documents, pictures and videos. And if I ever get an iPhone again, I might use iCloud, but the chances are good I’d just use Amazon because of their increased storage capacity.

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