This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Review • When you think of the word "cloud," you may conjure up soft-focused images of mountains, flowers and flying angels.
But Amazon.com, the online retailer, wants you to think of music, a big virtual vat of music.
The company has introduced Cloud Drive, a digital storage service that serves as your personal locker for any kind of digital file. In this virtual storage bin, also known as a "cloud" service, you can store videos, documents, MP3 songs and just about any file you can think of.
Amazon isn't the first company to introduce such a service — Microsoft and Dropbox are just two that already offer cloud-based storage. But Amazon is the first major Internet company to offer one specifically designed for music, beating out a rumored similar project being developed by Apple.
For the last week, I've tinkered with Amazon's Cloud Drive and find it a simple, intuitive, mostly helpful way to store files that can be accessed anywhere you're at.
Amazon offers 5 gigabytes of storage free. Just register on Amazon's website, and you instantly open up your virtual bin.
You then can upload any digital file to the Cloud Drive and access it anywhere in the world where there's a computer. You also can stream the music live from your the Cloud Drive to your Android-based smartphone via a free Amazon MP3 application.
Pros • The interface is easy to use. After installing two programs — one to upload and another to download files — you simply click on the "Upload to your Cloud Drive" button and select the files to send to the cloud. There is a 2-gigabyte limit for each file.
Once the files are in, you then can use Amazon's web-based music player to play any MP3 or Apple-based AAC files. That means you can hear your music anywhere you're at a computer.
And the Android application allows you to stream the music either using Wi-Fi or a 3G connection. It also will play your playlists, and the music can be organized by songs, albums, genres and artists. It also graciously transfers all the album art, too.
Not only does Amazon give you the first 5 gigabytes free, but if you buy an album from Amazon's MP3 store, that limit shoots up to 20 gigabytes for free for a year. And any digital music you buy from Amazon is automatically stored in your cloud storage but doesn't count toward whatever your Cloud Drive limit is.
Finally, you can also download the files to any computer instead of just stream them should you want a copy elsewhere than at your home. This is so you can, say, load more music into your music player from anywhere.
Cons • Based on the speed of your Internet connection, it will take a long time to initially upload your music collection, especially if you have a lot of music. My measly 2.5 gigabytes of music (502 songs) took more than two hours to upload.
So far, the service doesn't work for Apple iOS devices like the iPhone, though Amazon likely will put out an application for those players soon. And it doesn't seem to work with video files. I tried playing two different types of videos, to no avail.
There isn't a document reader either. In order to view either, you have to download the whole file to your computer first before playing it.
While Amazon generously provides 5 gigabytes for free and 20 after that if you buy just one album, the fees for even more storage can be high — equaling a dollar per extra gigabyte per year. The highest tier is a terabyte (1,000 GB) per year for $1,000. You could buy a 1 TB drive for as little as $69, hook that up to your home PC, and create your own cloud-based server.
ohmytech@sltrib.com. Twitter: twitter.com/ohmytech.