Those sneaky Amazon.com Inc. engineers are at it again. While rumours swirled that Google Inc. was preparing to launch their cloud-based Google Music service, Amazon.com has gone right ahead and stolen their thunder with a streaming solution of their own!
Launched just a few hours ago, Amazon Cloud Player will allow users (only in the United States, for now) to upload up to 5 gigabytes of music (although if you purchase an album you’ll get upgraded to 20 GB for free for one year) to Amazon.com’s Cloud Drive – also a new service launching today, which can then be streamed to your device of choice – although currently those choices are limited to only desktop and Android clients.
Interestingly, the 5 GB free storage only counts for music you wish to upload – if you purchase music direct from Amazon.com they will host it for you gratis. If you’re looking for more storage you’ll have to pay $1 per GB per year, up to 1 terrabyte.
If you don’t feel like storing music, you can simply use the Cloud Drive as a dropbox-style cloud storage option, although there’s no word yet on if the Cloud Drive will see similar integration on smartphones.
The Cloud Player will be rolled into the existing Amazon.com MP3 Android app, which now also allows playback of local music – meaning Amazon.com is trying to usurp the standard Android music player with their own service before Google can get out of the gate.
With Amazon.com’s Appstore already here, and now with the launch of the Cloud Player, does anybody really doubt the retail giant is gearing up for a tablet launch of their own? The amusing part of all of this is that Google bundled Amazon.com’s MP3 store with stock Android phones to address the lack of an iTunes competitor in their ecosystem – we’re betting Google are shaking their fists angrily now Amazon.com have swooped in and updated the un-deletable app to include a service they will soon be competing with.
