By Request is an ongoing series of reviews and tips requested by our Techcited commenters. Head for the comments section on any article and let us know what you want to know.
With Amazon Cloud Drive back in the news, Techcitement reader Nuke asked us to take a look at how Amazon’s cloud music player for Android stacks up against the competition.
Amazon’s Cloud Player for Android isn’t so much a stand-alone app as it is a new section in an old app. You get it just by downloading the latest version of Amazon MP3. On first run, it asks you if you want to enter the store to shop for music or turn on the player. If Amazon is your source for buying music, this integration can a useful convenience, especially since Amazon includes a “Shop this artist” link throughout the library as you browse your own music. This is one of Amazon’s key advantages over Google’s Music Beta seeing as Google doesn’t yet have a music store of its own.
After you get to Cloud Drive, you see the player neatly divided into two sections: the songs on your device and the songs in your cloud. The division is a bit disruptive if you want to go back and forth between the two collections for some reason. In particular, the player lacks a shuffle all songs option, so you can’t just start a mix that includes both the device and the cloud. Personally, I prefer Google’s implementation on this point, which by default shows all music, with an option to show offline only in the menu for when you want to save battery life or are in trouble with your data cap.
Both services allow you to download music from your cloud to on-device storage, but the implementations are very different. Amazon lets you choose songs individually. Google only lets you choose artists or albums to keep offline, but it has the advantage of optionally storing your recently played items for offline use, so you’ll always have a bit of variety in addition to the songs you chose.
Uploading music can be a significant distinction between these services, and the apps they use to get your music in the cloud underline the different ideas behind the services. Amazon clearly intends for you to buy your future music via Amazon, store and manage all your music on Amazon, and then play your music on Amazon. As a result, the Amazon MP3 Uploader is an Adobe Air application that lets you choose a folder from your hard drive to upload from. It runs, and then you close it. If you want to upload more, you need to run it again. Google’s Music Manager, on the other hand, was clearly designed with Google’s lack of a music store in mind. Music Manager can sit in your system tray full time, monitoring your iTunes, Windows Media Player, or folders of your choosing for new music and playlists, and then upload all music automatically. That way, no matter where you get your music, you can make sure it ends up in Music Beta with no extra effort.
When you actually play your music, both apps have similar levels of performance. You have sections for Playlists, Artists, Albums, and Songs (Google has also added a section for Genre). Neither service seems to be compressing the data enough to impact sound quality much. Both buffer quickly enough to get your music started fast. Overall, they’re similar but slightly different experiences. Either one should leave most users happy.
The biggest distinction between these services is price. For a free account, Google provides storage for 20,000 songs. If you have more music than that, you’re out of options with Google. Amazon gives you 5 GB of free storage (about 1,000 songs worth, assuming your Cloud Drive holds nothing but music), but if you take any of their paid plans (starting at $20 a year for 20 GB), you get unlimited music storage.
Both services have been around for a little while now, so that’s give you a chance to test them out for yourself. Which do you prefer?
That’s what I’m talking about!
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