Amazon Officially Launches Cloud Drive [Amazon Cloud Drive Brings Online Music Storage Along With Cloud Player For The Web & Android Smartphones]

Posted on TFTS by Robert Nelson on Tuesday, 29. March 2011 under: Audio,Visual, Mobile/Cell Phones, PCs, Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets

Amazon has officially launched their online music locker. The service has been dubbed the Cloud Drive and it comes along with 5GB of free storage as well as a Cloud Player for the web and a Cloud Player for Android.

Basically, the Amazon Cloud Drive will allow you to have a copy of your music in the cloud which you can then play using any web browser as well as an Android smartphone or tablet. In other words, giving you on the go access. But perhaps more important, the Cloud Drive will also serve as a backup for your music collection. And as you would expect, the Cloud Drive service integrates nicely with the Amazon MP3 service.

But before we get into the tie-ins with Amazon MP3, lets cover the pricing and storage options for the Cloud Drive. A basic account will give you 5GB of storage space for free. And extra storage can be purchased for $20 per year for 20GB. Getting back to the tie-ins with Amazon MP3, an album purchase will give you extra storage. According to the details coming from Amazon, you will get 20GB of free storage for one year with purchase of an MP3 album. Bottom line here, buy an album for (on average) $10 and get 20GB of storage and do that at least once each year and you will essentially have a free account with 20GB of storage.

Also worth noting is that while the Cloud Drive seems focused on music, both in terms of playback and storage — the drive can also be used to store other files such as images, videos and documents. Another perk comes in the form of album purchases;

“New Amazon MP3 purchases saved directly to Cloud Drive are stored for free and do not count against a customer’s storage quota.”

In terms of on the go access and playback, the Cloud Drive for the web will work with browsers to include Chrome, Firefox, Safari for Mac and Internet Explorer. Lastly, music playback support comes in the form of MP3 and AAC files.