Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player

Amazon recently rolled out their cloud player and cloud drive systems, and I am a believer.  I have been a long time Amazon MP3 customer for a number of reasons:

1.No DRM
2.I already use Amazon
3.No crappy software tying me to an OS I don't want to be using (I'm looking at you iTunes)

Amazon mp3 has been great for me, but I always feared the loss of my precious mp3's since you can't go back and download them for free.  Now, you have the option to save them on your amazon cloud drive.  Once there, you can freely download local copies, stream them directly, or create playlists.  You can also upload your own music to your free 5GB space or shell out at $1/gigabyte per year for more space.  Any mp3's you purchased before cloud drive will have to be uploaded like other non-Amazon music, but Amazon purchases stored on the cloud drive at purchase time from now on will not count against your space. 

It may raise some privacy issues since you are trusting Amazon not to report on your files to various IP gestapo agencies if they are of suspect origin.  I probably wouldn't go dumping pirated files on there if you had any.

Anyway, that price for cloud storage is very good IMHO.   It comes in cheaper than Ubuntu One by quite a bit, and Amazon is known for having reliable web services.  It doesn't preserve directory structure for files, so you would have to tar any directory backups you wanted to make if you were to use it for that purpose.

At first, I thought all this was pretty cool.  I get a nifty new service for free.  I get to archive my purchased files online, play them on any computer, download them at will, upload my own files, and make playlists which can then be played on any web-connected computer.  Then, however, I saw that they have updated the Amazon MP3 app on android to work with cloud drive, and I knew this was a game changer for me and likely many others.

Changing The Game
How does this change the game you may ask?  I, like most Americans, have an iPod.  I got it back before I was a card-carrying Linux geek.  Long ago, I got a car stereo with an iPod connector, and I used my iPod for workday listening and in-car audio.  My iPod does not play well with any Linux music apps so I load it with songs from a copy of iTunes on one of my dual-boot boxes which can run windows.  Whenever I got new music from Amazon in the past, it would be auto-downloaded to my fileserver by an Amazon downloader app on my Linux boxes like Clamz or Pymazon.  After that, I had to get my iPod out of my car, reboot that one computer into Windows (since it registers with the iPod so you can't synch it on another box), load the music, then plug everything back in out inside my car.  Playlists are then problematic for use anywhere outside of the iPod or iTunes.

Fast forward to now.  The android Amazon mp3 app lets me choose to have it auto-download any new purchases placed on the cloud drive (any it sees within the last 90 days that it doesn't have on the device).  It also grabs playlists, and I just confirmed that it is smart enough that it won't attempt to stream a file it already downloaded even when you are playing it on the "cloud drive" tab.  What this means for me is no more being tied to a computer to sync my tunes.  I only need to load all my existing music once, and anything I add in the future will be on my android device without any intervention on my part.  This is freeing, and this is how it should be.

I am so excited about this that I am now ditching my old car stereo for one with bluetooth audio support which I will be able to use to control the media player on my phone and stream my music seamlessly.  I am breaking free of my iShackles.  Will you join me?