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Business & Tech

Music in the Cloud

Amazon announced its cloud-based music service to free your music from your computer, other sites are planning to follow suit

Amazon recently announced Amazon Cloud Service  which allows you to store your digital files on their servers that can be accessed from the web via your computer or portable device. There are many cloud data storage options available which allow you to free up room on your computer, host backups of your files or to share documents and photos with friends or colleagues by giving them password protected access. The newsworthy aspect of this announcement was that it also allows you to stream your music from your cloud storage over an internet connection on any computer or via an app for your Android phone.

The basic 5GB is free, and you can upgrade the amount of storage by either purchasing a bigger plan or get a free upgrade to the 20GB plan if you purchase an album from Amazon.

This doesn't require synching your device or copying your files onto each computer.  You can listen to your stored music via streaming. The idea of a cloud-based music streaming service has been the subjects of a lot of rumors, but up until now the rumors involved Apple and Google. 

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There are many other music streaming services (such as Pandora and last.fm) but they each have restrictions such as listening limits or limited playlists. The advantages they offer is music recommendations and if you don't have a collection of your own, it is a great way to find the music to build one.

Being able to upload your own music collection to the cloud means that your music is treated as your music--you can access it from an unlimited number of devices (iTunes and Zune allow up to 5 each). You can upload any music you own in the .AAC and .MP3 file formats--ripped from your CDs, purchased from any digital music retailer including Amazon and iTunes, or that you have created yourself.  Using Amazon's Cloud Player you can listen to your playlists or search your collection by song, album or genre. Your portable devices wouldn't need to use their own storage or processing power to deliver your music to you.

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Having grown up with vinyl, cassettes and CDs, the ability to have 1000s of songs (after ripping hundreds of CDs) available to listen to anywhere is almost too good to be imagined.  If Amazon is able to overcome the concerns of the record industry regarding whether or not you have the right to copy music you purchase for your own personal use, Google and Apple will surely follow suit with their own offerings.

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