Amazon to store Music and Movies in a Cloud

Amazon has just released their newest product. However it is not something that can be shipped with their signature Prime shipping or download to their e-book reader, the Kindle. Welcome to the Cloud.  Beating Apple and Google to the punch, the Cloud Drive is Amazon’s newest cloud based music storage and playback service.

The Cloud Drive is a service that allows users to store their music and the contents of the computer online versus the traditional storage device.

Music and documents are available online as well as in the form of an app for devices running by Google Android. The service is not compatible to any of the Apple devices (as of yet) such as the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. Customers will be getting 5 gigabits of storage for free which is equivalent to the first iPod that was released in 2004, 1250 songs or 2000 photographs. From there, 20 gigabytes for $20 a year. Right now as part of a promotion, Amazon is giving customers 20 gigabytes of free storage with a purchase of any MP3 format album. It’s unclear how long the “gift with purchase” will last.

Any new music purchased from Amazon is saved directly to the Cloud Drive but will not count against the storage count. All music can be saved in MP3 or AAC format that way it works in iTunes for Mac music player users.

Amazon is expanding their business to include online content. They already provide MP3s, Video On Demand, and last month Amazon launched a new movie streaming service as a part of its Prime membership service. Now with Amazon Cloud Player, Amazon is trying to increase their sales in other sectors other than physical books and CDs that their known to sell at great prices.

Having been available less than a single day, Amazon has already been met with backlash. Sony Music was upset with Amazon’s decision to launch the Cloud Drive without new licenses for music streaming, according to Reuters.

Image from loiclemeur via Flickr.