Big Changes for Amazon Cloud

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by khalleron

They never told me it was a year - I bought an album and they said, 'hey,here's 20 GB storage!". Then a few months later they said, "hey, here's unlimited storage for music!"

They never said anything about 'this is only temporary' which is why I'm disgruntled.

.

Yes it was a special promo for a year only. Google it. If you looked at the payment area it would of given you a renewal date. Mines was August 10th which has now been extended to the 19th. The unlimited space always said a limited time by it.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Yes it was a special promo for a year only. Google it. If you looked at the payment area it would of given you a renewal date. Mines was August 10th which has now been extended to the 19th. The unlimited space always said a limited time by it.

Mine expires on the 18th. In the year plus that I've had 20GB of data and unlimited music, I've used 0GB of data and uploaded 0 songs. I'll revert to the free plan of 5GB of data and 250 songs and won't notice any changes in how I use their cloud. The 1,000+ songs I have on there are all Amazon purchases, so they get stored free anyway.

[Catlady]

Only the music I purchased from Amazon is stored in the cloud--mostly classical music bought with mp3 credits. What I have is free--what I had to get to download an album--I think it was 5gb beyond the Amazon-purchased material, and it's all unused except for a couple of Amazon-purchased mp3s that Amazon doesn't recognize for some reason.

I still buy CDs and then rip mp3s from them; I load them on one of my Sansa mp3 players (2 Clip+ and 1 Clip Zip, each with a 16gb or 32gb micro SD card). My home stereo plays mp3 files from flash drives, so I have a bunch of those for different types of music. The stereo also plays mp3s from CD data disks, so I burn those as well--I can get up to 10 hours' worth of mp3s on one CD. I sort these by artist, usually, so I can get all my Beatles albums on a couple of CDs, all my Andy Williams albums on one CD, etc.

Frankly, I'm completely confused by the e-mail today from Amazon. I don't understand the "improvements" the letter claims they've made, and I don't understand the difference between the Cloud Player and the Cloud Drive. But as I was only taking advantage of the free backup, so as long as I don't need to do anything or pay for anything, I don't much care what they do.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

I did try Spotify as some Facebook friends use it. However, I couldn't figure it out. Maybe I'm getting old or it doesn't work with Android (my only personal computer is my Android tablet). I couldn't figure out Pintrest, either. A 16G Walkman would keep me going for a long time! I love my 4G Walkman. It is a tough little device and gives great sound.

Covingtoncat, just yesterday I received an email from Spotify announcing their new free app for android. It might be just the ticket for you.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Only the music I purchased from Amazon is stored in the cloud--mostly classical music bought with mp3 credits.

Same here. Thanks to those credits and others offers, I now have over 1,000 songs.

Frankly, I'm completely confused by the e-mail today from Amazon. I don't understand the "improvements" the letter claims they've made, and I don't understand the difference between the Cloud Player and the Cloud Drive. But as I was only taking advantage of the free backup, so as long as I don't need to do anything or pay for anything, I don't much care what they do.

The Cloud Player is designed to not only store your music, but also to play it through the built-in player. The improvement is the premium service. Instead of uploading your collection to the player, Amazon scans your hard drive and identifies your songs. It then matches those songs from its vast catalog and places them in your player as 256 Kbps MP3s. This is very similar to Apple's iTunes Match.

The Cloud Drive is designed to store documents, pictures, videos, and music. Music stored here can't be played from here. It needs to be downloaded to a player first. The Cloud Drive is Amazon's version of DropBox.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

The Cloud Player is designed to not only store your music, but also to play it through the built-in player. The improvement is the premium service. Instead of uploading your collection to the player, Amazon scans your hard drive and identifies your songs. It then matches those songs from its vast catalog and places them in your player as 256 Kbps MP3s. This is very similar to Apple's iTunes Match.

The Cloud Drive is designed to store documents, pictures, videos, and music. Music stored here can't be played from here. It needs to be downloaded to a player first. The Cloud Drive is Amazon's version of DropBox.

Thanks. Sheesh, I don't want Amazon scanning my hard drive for songs!

I must be missing something, because if you already own a song and have it on your hard drive, why would you need Amazon as a middleman? Why not just load and play the song yourself?

I tried to log in to the Cloud Drive and/or the Cloud Player, and I'm presented with a box requiring me to accept the new TOS. Which means I need to wade through pages and pages of legalistic gibberish. I think I just want to opt out!

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I must be missing something, because if you already own a song and have it on your hard drive, why would you need Amazon as a middleman? Why not just load and play the song yourself?

YW

The point of having your entire collection in the cloud (ie, on someone else's servers) is the ability to play or download your music anywhere you have a net connection.

Pro: you're no longer restricted to what your device can physically hold.

Con: you absolutely need a net connection in order to use it.

[piper28]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Google can't be shared between two phones unless they are both using the same google account and we're not. He has his and I have mine but we can share Amazon's stuff which is why I prefer using them. Also I can't use Google on my Kindle Fire so Amazon Cloud is really my best choice and $25 a year is relatively cheap.

You can have Google's service use a second account to pull music from. I've got multiple google accounts setup on my phone, and just selected one of them for where to pull my music from. You can add that second account and just set it not to sync anything, so you wouldn't have to deal with mail or calendars or anything.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by piper28

You can have Google's service use a second account to pull music from. I've got multiple google accounts setup on my phone, and just selected one of them for where to pull my music from. You can add that second account and just set it not to sync anything, so you wouldn't have to deal with mail or calendars or anything.

Ah okay. I don't have space on my phone for another big app but that's good to know for future reference.

[LovesMacs]

Let me get this straight: with the new version of Cloud Player, their computers scan my computer and then place Amazon mp3s that correspond to my own ripped CDs at my disposal?

Some of what I have was ripped at 320 Kpbs, and some of it is imported or out of print and not available from Amazon.

I also regularly swap music on and off my computer due to space considerations. That was/is part of the attraction of the Cloud Player, the fact that you can archive music off your system and still have ready access to it.

The Cloud Player changes don't seem like an obvious upgrade, but I'm not surprised at the new fees. I knew that free unlimited storage couldn't last.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by LovesMacs

Let me get this straight: with the new version of Cloud Player, their computers scan my computer and then place Amazon mp3s that correspond to my own ripped CDs at my disposal?

Some of what I have was ripped at 320 Kpbs, and some of it is imported or out of print and not available from Amazon.

I also regularly swap music on and off my computer due to space considerations. That was/is part of the attraction of the Cloud Player, the fact that you can archive music off your system and still have ready access to it.

The Cloud Player changes don't seem like an obvious upgrade, but I'm not surprised at the new fees. I knew that free unlimited storage couldn't last.

Yes, just like iTunes Match. If Amazon doesn't find a match, the song is imported from your computer. But the songs are at ripped at 256 Kbps. You could call and see if you can bypass scan and match.

The fee includes both music storage and data storage. It's a package deal. You get 50GB at $25 per year and 100GB at $50 per year. Both plans include 250,000 songs. After free, the next jump at DropBox is 100GB at $99 per year and no music player.

There's always Google with 5GB of data and 20,000 songs for free or 25GB of data and 20,000 songs for $30 per year. They don't scan and match like Amazon and Apple do. But I wouldn't be surprised if they started to do it too.

[tubemonkey]

The major players in ecosystems with clouds are Amazon, Apple, and Google. They all have mobile devices and large content stores; and they're definitely watching each other.

I fully expect Apple and Google to make moves to counter Amazon's new plans; which offer the best bang for the buck between the three of them.

See posts #1 and #10

[Blossom]

I just imported 500 songs in 20 minutes. I am loving the new feature! I no longer have to keep music on my hard drive. This is great!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Thanks. Sheesh, I don't want Amazon scanning my hard drive for songs!

I must be missing something, because if you already own a song and have it on your hard drive, why would you need Amazon as a middleman? Why not just load and play the song yourself?
..

The advantage is that once it is on Amazon cloud, it can be played from ANY of your devices without having to copy the file to each device. Of course it does require bandwidth -- either wifi or 3g/4g.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Mine expires on the 18th. In the year plus that I've had 20GB of data and unlimited music, I've used 0GB of data and uploaded 0 songs. I'll revert to the free plan of 5GB of data and 250 songs and won't notice any changes in how I use their cloud. The 1,000+ songs I have on there are all Amazon purchases, so they get stored free anyway.

Yep, just checked mine. "Downgrades to 5G plan on 8/26.."