The idea of a music locker isn’t new. Google, Amazon, and Apple all launched one fairly recently. They all allow users to keep their music in the cloud. Until today, Apple’s iTunes Match was the only service that scanned your library and matched songs dynamically. That allowed users with large libraries to get their music in the cloud much faster since songs that are already in the iTunes Store don’t need to be uploaded to Apple’s servers. Today, Amazon is taking iTunes Match head on.
Amazon PR:
Amazon.com, Inc. today announced Cloud Player licensing agreements that bring significant updates to Amazon Cloud Player. The agreements are with Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more than 150 independent distributors, aggregators and music publishers. Amazon’s scan and match technology gives customers a fast and easy way to get all of their music from their computers to the cloud. Cloud Player customers can then enjoy their music on their favorite devices, including Kindle Fire, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android devices and any web browser, and soon, Roku streaming players and Sonos home entertainment systems.
Interestingly, the price is exactly the same: $24.99 USD per year. Undoubtedly, that is the lowest the music companies would go. Amazon seems more than happy to lose money so that they can compete with Apple. This is good for consumers, and it will hopefully lead Google and Microsoft to offer the same deal.
Curiously, the TV and movie industry seems years behind the music industry on digital distribution. How long until we see something along these lines for TV and movies? Maybe never since ripping video is less common (and more difficult) than ripping music, but it would be nice. What do you think? Take a second to sound off about this move in the comment section below this post.
Source: Amazon PR
