Goolgemusic
Google has their own music services currently in beta {ed note – now out of beta, spring 2012} aptly called ‘Music beta by Google Who isn’t using Google for somethign these days? Email, calendars, documents and of course searching the internet. Adding a music service to this mix becomes very appealing. Sign-up is free, but requires a short wait for your invitation to be sent by Google to join the service. Music beta by Google offers relatively unlimited storage – with a upload limit of 20k music files. A pretty good deal for free. The buzz around the internet water cooler suggests Google may never take the service beyond beta, or may reveal a paid/tiered data plan much like the other services. The Music beta upload app works well enough, offering synching of your iTunes playlist, manual folder selection and manual or automatic uploading. However Music beta by Google’s file system simply errors out on files types and bit rates it doesn’t recognize. 320kbs mp3/aac is the quality limit.
Amazon has launched ‘cloud drive‘ coupled with the web and android based ‘cloud player’. Every Amazon user gats a free 5gb of cloud drive storage which can be used for just about anything. Tiered data plans offer additional storage space with a yearly fee. I took advantage of a promotional offer to get an upgrade to 20gb of storage and unlimited music storage with a purchase from the Amazonn music store. Amazon’s ‘cloud drive’ recognizes many file types and can be used for almost any sort of computer file you want to back up and have random access to from anywhere you can log into your Amazon account. You can upload apple generated lossless audio files (from iTunes) however these files won’t playback and count against your data plan. The same goes for aiff and wave files. Amazon’s uploader works well an is generally faster than googles. Apple’s iCloud uses matching to limit the need for uploading everything. Amazon’s file handling could be a bit smoother, adding your music to playlists and managing folders is cumbersome.
All your music all the time, synched and connected to the internet. It’s becomming an affordable reality. Some of these services are great ways to back-up your own recordings. Services from Google, Amazon, Apple, and Spotify are gearing up to become the latest way you’ll enjoy your music.
ModGuitar is not affiliated with Googlemusic, Apple, or Amazon cloudrive