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Best Buy is entering the increasingly crowded online music locker market with the introduction of Best Buy Music Cloud. The service is the latest to allow users to upload their music to the cloud and stream it to any device, and will challenge similar offerings from Amazon, Apple, and Google. Best Buy’s Music Cloud is made possible by Play Anywhere and features applications for Mac, PC, Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry. A $4 per month premium subscription is available as well as a free package with slightly more limited capabilities.
Please raise your hand if you HAVEN’T launched your own music cloud service.
The cloud really isn’t all it is cracked up to be. While I do have my music on Google Music, I still prefer to keep a local copy on each of my devices.
I have. No really, I did. My personal music library + Synology DiskStation NAS unit + DynDNS.org account + Android app = My own cloud music service!
Yup… I went Synology + HTPC + AudioGalaxy + Android App…
I know!! I was gonna ask who doesnt have a cloud music service? I used to go to Best Buy to here samples of tracks years ago to see if I wanted the album. Dont anymore. I can hear the whole song on Youtube.
Why keep that many copy’s on your devices? I mean, Google Music let’s you stream to the cloud, and you can download the songs you want to keep, so that you don’t have useless space on your phone. LoL!!
Hmm…
Because sometimes the internet doesn’t work so well and some places it doesn’t work at all. If my musical mood changes when I’m caught w/o a connection (oh, let’s say spending a few hours in flight), I’d be SOL if I didn’t like what I had pinned from the cloud. With a local copy, that’s a non-issue. I go a lot of places where NO ONE has a connection.
Oh! And empty space is useless space. Space taken up with local copies of, well, anything, is used space and is only useless if you never use those items. To which I would have to ask, why do you have it if you never use it? My local copies of my music, I use.
Hmm… You sound like someone who travels a lot, so I guess cloud servers wouldn’t benefit you that much.
For the space thing, since I don’t have 2GB of music hogging space on my phone compared to the 100MB of pinned music. That leaves space for something else. I thought that be obvious, though. LoL!!
Memory is cheap. I’ve got 32GB, more than enough room for anything really.
Thats all well and good,but I’ll be impressed when someone wants to sell me music at a reasonable price. Anything over 50 cents per song is a rip off. I guess its a pirate’s life for me until then. YARRRR!!!!
Unless Best Buy can beat Google’s offering of 20,000 free songs, regardless of bitrate or file size, I don’t know why they’d even try. It’s hard to imagine anyone paying for a monthly service where they still have to upload their songs when they can just do it for free via Google.
Not all cloud services are equal. Google (and Amazon) have launched without backing from the record labels, so they’ll likely by facing litigation. And of course Google’s service most likely won’t be free once it’s out of beta.
PlayAnywhere has the backing of all the major record labels, so like Apple’s service, this one won’t be threatened by litigation.
I agree that Google’s is by far the most appealing right now, but the dust hasn’t settled yet.
Ummm…You are aware that Amazon sells music right? Why in the world would they face legal problems?
Google should not risk litigation either. Both Amazon and Google merely act as on-line storage drives, that’s it.
Amazon has the advantage in that it can be a cloud player AND store music, whereas Google does not have the rights to sell any music.
Meant to say that Amazon’s advantage is that it can be a cloud player and SELL music. My bad.
Because the record labels believe these services require licenses and agreements with them (and likely an implementation with copyright protection like DRM) to allow users to stream music from them, and neither Google nor Amazon were willing or able to reach agreements with the labels before their launches.
I agree with Amazon on this, why should they have to shell up a licensing fee for a user to pay for their own music to be streamed? Amazon would make less money on every mp3 sold so whats the point of even offering the service if that’s the case? The record labels are living in a fantasy land and I doubt that what they perceive as reality will win in court.
limited data plans = no cloud music service for me (and I suspect the majority of users)
Tried out google music, it’s great for when you’re constantly around 4G/Wifi networks… But as soon as I went up north for the weekend and in a constant 1X zone… can’t stream more than a stutter a minute, and makes the service entirely useless when passing through sketchy service areas. I much prefer my good old 32GB SD card….
*face palm*
Why did you even try it in a 1x zone? It’s obviously not going to work. That’s like complainging you couldn’t watch much youtube on a 56k connection.
You realize you can pin things to download them to your 32GB SD card while you have good signal, right?
Um… What horrible service you got. I’m data capped at 2G right now with Tmo and everything streams perfectly for me. I was scared that 2G wouldn’t stream fast, but since it’s just music, everything is fine. I don’t know what kind of reception you gettin. LoL!!
Hmm so lets see, will I up’n select Best Buy’s music cloud on my Android or just goto Google Music which is beautifully integrated to my phone service and will last as long as Google has an office. Best Buy is tethering on the verge of collapse and they really expect me to risk moving my stuff to their servers? What , are they havin’ a laugh?
I didn’t even realize they had anyone on staff to build a web service let alone the hosting for one. Just seems like the worst choice anyone could make in terms of options.
As an American, I’m just eagerly awaiting the launch of Spotify. It seems like the best of all worlds, even if they do charge $10-15 per month.
All Your Music, Wherever You Are?
How about this tagline: All Your Music Are Belong To Us!
Pay us to listen to the music you already own.
According to PC Magazine, the “lite” version only lets you play 30 seconds of your own songs. I don’t have any songs that short.