Mobile cloud music is a highly 
competitive arena these days, and some of the biggest players in mobile and music have entered the game. Even a few surprising entries are trying to build a business in the newest entertainment space. Amazon made a big splash when they launched their cloud player with virtually no warning, no deals with record labels, and before the long-rumored competitors from Apple and Google. Now they’re set to make a new splash, with a limited time deal that’s almost too good to miss for some users.
Right now, you can buy any Amazon Cloud Drive paid plan and get unlimited music storage free. New Amazon MP3 purchases were already stored free, but this is a nice bargain for those of us who had collections larger than the free 5 GB account when the service launched or like to buy our music somewhere other than Amazon. Now, $20 a year gets you unlimited music storage plus 20 GB of space for storing other files in Amazon’s Cloud Drive.
The terms of this deal are a little vague. There’s no indication of how long it will be offered for except the ambiguous “limited time”. It’s also not explicit that buying in for one year of unlimited music storage means no limits permanently or just for the first year (Amazon’s last Cloud Drive deal, “buy an album and get 20 GB”, was one-time-only). Hopefully, Amazon will clarify both points soon.
Unfortunately for Amazon, they’re up against some tough competitors. Apple’s iCloud lets you re-download any song ever purchased on iTunes for free, and Google’s Music Beta is free as long as you have an invite (I don’t know anyone who’s actually hit Google’s 25,000 20,000 song limit). Even with the stiff competition, a deal like this might be enough to draw in some new paying customers.
So, who’s going to head over to Amazon this morning and buy some unlimited music storage?
I actually Exceeded the Google 20,000 limit. I would have made it if it was 25,000 though.
Is there an Amazon Mobile music player app? How does it fare when compared to the Google one? These are the sort of questions I’d like to see answered.
Thanks for the info, I’ve updated the post.
The Amazon MP3 app for Android, which used to be only for purchasing music, was updated to include Cloud Player when the service was released. I’ll do a review of it later this week, and compare it to Google Music.
Keep the feedback coming.