Amazon Cloud offers unlimited music

[Sydney's Mom]

I just signed up for Amazon Cloud service. For $20 a year, you get 20G, and unlimited music and playlists. Obviously wanting to untether us from itunes, I signed up. I have a lot of music, and this will seemlessly work with the Fire.

It is going to take another 99 hours to upload the music. Then I can start with the movies I converted with Handbrake, and of course my books!

[toddos]

That's unlimited storage of music, not free/unlimited access to all of Amazon's mp3 library. You have to populate your music from your own library and/or by purchasing from Amazon.

This is in comparison to Microsoft's ZunePass service which gives unlimited streaming/download access to their entire library for $15/mo.

[JeremyR]

I really don't get this sort of thing. It's like sending your dvds in the mail to your cable company just to watch them on TV.

[SeaBookGuy]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I just signed up for Amazon Cloud service. For $20 a year, you get 20G, and unlimited music and playlists. Obviously wanting to untether us from itunes, I signed up. I have a lot of music, and this will seemlessly work with the Fire.

It is going to take another 99 hours to upload the music. Then I can start with the movies I converted with Handbrake, and of course my books!

Wouldn't it be easier to buy a 16G storage card?

[Sydney's Mom]

Well, I have 14G of music, so the unlimited is great for me. For the 20G, I can get my entire Calibre library and a couple movies.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

I really don't get this sort of thing. It's like sending your dvds in the mail to your cable company just to watch them on TV.

I'm not sure DVD players have quite the same kind of issues as a mobile device that has fixed internal storage.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

Wouldn't it be easier to buy a 16G storage card?

I don't own lots of music, but I have bought some of it from Amazon.

I like the idea of having the files backed up to the cloud, in case of hard-drive failure.

Same as my usage of Dropbox for my ebooks and my personal business.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

I'm not sure DVD players have quite the same kind of issues as a mobile device that has fixed internal storage.

Well, that's the point of selling a cheap device with non-upgradeable memory, isn't it? As a result you can sell all other sorts of services.

20 GB is almost nothing nowadays. 20 GB wouldn't even be enough for my music files. My photo camera churned out more than 50 GB of photo files just during the last vacation. I rather buy several hard discs for regular backups and keep one of them locked at my office in case of fire or burglary.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Well, that's the point of selling a cheap device with non-upgradeable memory, isn't it? As a result you can sell all other sorts of services.

True.

[sadievan]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Well, I have 14G of music, so the unlimited is great for me. For the 20G, I can get my entire Calibre library and a couple movies.

I have 34G of music so I may look into this. Can you pick playlists from iTunes to upload.

Are you storing your DRM free books on there too.

Sounds interesting. And price is right.

Carol

[Daithi]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

I really don't get this sort of thing. It's like sending your dvds in the mail to your cable company just to watch them on TV.

I don't have this service, but I could see where it would be useful. I have a ton of music on my PC and on my phone, but when I listen to music it is usually to Pandora through my TV and cable system. I do this because it is convenient, and I also have a nice speaker system connected to the TV.

So this kind of service might be worth it for me. I could hook my PC up to the TV, but it is less of a hassle to just let the TV handle everything. No more HDMI cables, no software running on the PC while I'm trying to post to mobileread, etc.

[FatDog]

When I signed up for Amazon Cloud a few months ago - only music bought from Amazon is free. And you cannot "mount" the cloud storage so Calibre can see it. You have to use a web tool to upload or download files.

It's not a bad service - but I wanted you to know the details.

This is in comparison to Microsoft's ZunePass service which gives unlimited streaming/download access to their entire library for $15/mo.

Want the streaming part for free?

MYSPACE

If you want music - just go to MySpace. Search for your favorite albums and click the little "Play" button. A flash player will open up and your music will start.

They have nearly everything. All my family's favorite albums from Wicked, Phantom, Rent, Cats - etc. All the Lady Gaga albums, Weird Al Yankovich, G&R, Aerosmith, ZZ Top - anything and it is all free as long as you are connected to the internet.

You dont even have to sign up for a MySpace account. If you sign up - you can save your play-lists. (Although be careful as each playlist has a 100 song limit and the Player has a bug - it will add every song you listened to, not just the visible songs.)

It's streaming but for free it's outstanding.

(A friend now works for MySpace. Years ago the owners got the major record companies to agree to let MySpace stream unlimited content for a flat fee. The recording companies never thought streaming audio would be important.)

[FatDog]

I really don't get this sort of thing. It's like sending your dvds in the mail to your cable company just to watch them on TV.

No - its like uploading your DVD's to your email so you can access them from work, from home, from visiting relatives, on trips, etc. You are NOT tethered to your cable company.

[sadievan]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I just signed up for Amazon Cloud service. For $20 a year, you get 20G, and unlimited music and playlists. Obviously wanting to untether us from itunes, I signed up. I have a lot of music, and this will seemlessly work with the Fire.

It is going to take another 99 hours to upload the music. Then I can start with the movies I converted with Handbrake, and of course my books!

Do you know if you can you upload folders like Dropbox?

Carol

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by sadievan

I have 34G of music so I may look into this. Can you pick playlists from iTunes to upload.

Are you storing your DRM free books on there too.

Sounds interesting. And price is right.

Carol

Yes. But the music is still uploading! As soon as that is done, I will upload my books - but it seems I cannot make the cloud my calibre library, which was what I liked about Dropbox. But, I could upload my current library, and then email all new books to my kindle - that way they are automatically backed up under personal documents. Decisions, decisions!