Cloud Music Services – the best way for music listening?
Is the Cloud Music approach the way forward in the music industry?
In recent months we have seen how cloud based music services have started to emerge from both the large cloud providers, including Google, Apple and Amazon as well as a plethora of smaller players. It seems that this type of music storage and delivery is definitely the future of personalized music services.
From a mobility point of view the benefits are obvious, users can listen to their own music from their device of choice without worrying about syncing between them, whether that is a smartphone, tablet or a PC/laptop. The streaming vs. downloading is another obvious benefit, saving time and hard-disk space.
While online-radio music streaming services have been around for a
long time from the likes of Pandora and Last.fm, the cloud based storage
and listening of your own music library is a much more recent service.
However, there are already a great number of services to choose from.
Not surprisingly, the main service providers in this field include
Google, Apple and Amazon, each with their respective platform and
desktop or web-based music players:
These three will only play music that you already own or purchase from their online store whereas services like Grooveshark and Spotify also let you listen to peer-to-peer music from members that have uploaded MP3 files for streaming to others users. While some people claim there is no longer any need to “owning” the music when you can use online streaming services like Grooveshark and Spotify and others, I believe there will always be a large group of people that prefer to store and listen to their own music from a Cloud Music service, due to several reasons. Hard to find music, independent artists, existing valuable library, higher quality playback etc. are some of the reasons people prefer using such services rather than free or subscription based streaming services.
Comparing the three big Cloud Music services
Google Music, still only available in the US, allows users to upload up to 25.000 songs to the web and stream it back over Google’s webapp or Android Music app. Google Music has generally received positive reviews but, as it is in beta, still lack some important features. The online music store still offers a very limited selection of music, compared to iCloud (iTunes) and Amazon. This means that users need to purchase music elsewhere, e.g. at Amazon, and upload to the service. Certainly a drawback, but will most probably diminish as the music selection increases.
The Apple iTunes Match is of course much more than just for cloud-based music storage and streaming, as it is central cloud storage of all data that users want to access from different Apple devices. However, through direct connection with iTunes, users immediately have their music replicated into the music storage locker. Songs also appear in iTunes on computers, or in music apps on iPads, iPhone and iPod devices – easily streaming and listening to the music from the device of choice.
Finally, the Amazon Cloud Player has received some impressive reviews for its ease of use and manageability. Similarly to iTunes Match and iCloud, the Amazon Cloud Player uses the Amazon Cloud Drive for music storage and equally offers a free 5GB storage allotment. In fact, it seems that Amazon is targeting its Cloud Player service directly against Apple’s iTunes as its features and pricing options are indeed very similar.
Both the Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player services offer an native Android app (and unofficial iOS app) for syncing, managing library and purchasing music while obviously Apple has a similar native app for the iOS – but none for Android users.
In recent months we have seen how cloud based music services have started to emerge from both the large cloud providers, including Google, Apple and Amazon as well as a plethora of smaller players. It seems that this type of music storage and delivery is definitely the future of personalized music services.
From a mobility point of view the benefits are obvious, users can listen to their own music from their device of choice without worrying about syncing between them, whether that is a smartphone, tablet or a PC/laptop. The streaming vs. downloading is another obvious benefit, saving time and hard-disk space.
Courtesy of all that improbable blue
- Google Music (only available in the US as beta)
- iTunes Match (iCloud)
- Amazon Cloud Player
These three will only play music that you already own or purchase from their online store whereas services like Grooveshark and Spotify also let you listen to peer-to-peer music from members that have uploaded MP3 files for streaming to others users. While some people claim there is no longer any need to “owning” the music when you can use online streaming services like Grooveshark and Spotify and others, I believe there will always be a large group of people that prefer to store and listen to their own music from a Cloud Music service, due to several reasons. Hard to find music, independent artists, existing valuable library, higher quality playback etc. are some of the reasons people prefer using such services rather than free or subscription based streaming services.
Comparing the three big Cloud Music services
Google Music, still only available in the US, allows users to upload up to 25.000 songs to the web and stream it back over Google’s webapp or Android Music app. Google Music has generally received positive reviews but, as it is in beta, still lack some important features. The online music store still offers a very limited selection of music, compared to iCloud (iTunes) and Amazon. This means that users need to purchase music elsewhere, e.g. at Amazon, and upload to the service. Certainly a drawback, but will most probably diminish as the music selection increases.
The Apple iTunes Match is of course much more than just for cloud-based music storage and streaming, as it is central cloud storage of all data that users want to access from different Apple devices. However, through direct connection with iTunes, users immediately have their music replicated into the music storage locker. Songs also appear in iTunes on computers, or in music apps on iPads, iPhone and iPod devices – easily streaming and listening to the music from the device of choice.
Finally, the Amazon Cloud Player has received some impressive reviews for its ease of use and manageability. Similarly to iTunes Match and iCloud, the Amazon Cloud Player uses the Amazon Cloud Drive for music storage and equally offers a free 5GB storage allotment. In fact, it seems that Amazon is targeting its Cloud Player service directly against Apple’s iTunes as its features and pricing options are indeed very similar.
Both the Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player services offer an native Android app (and unofficial iOS app) for syncing, managing library and purchasing music while obviously Apple has a similar native app for the iOS – but none for Android users.
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CLOUD COMPUTING
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