亚马逊的云播放器在流媒体方面击败了苹果

Amazon announced a new service over the weekend that allows its customers to store MP3 content in the new Amazon Cloud Player, accessing it from almost anywhere with the Amazon Cloud Player for web and Android devices.

任何人都可以注册云驱动器, 免费获得5GB的存储空间, which puts storage in Amazon's free version of its storage-locker-in-the-cloud service at a significantly higher amount than the free version of DropBox (2GB), 但低于微软的SkyDrive (25GB).

去年，我们报道了苹果公司的两项重大举措新数据中心和收购拉拉.com——亚马逊云驱动的宣布抢占了这两项优势.

价值10亿美元的新数据中心, 总部设在梅登, 北卡罗莱纳, is thought to be part of Apple's strategy to modify its languishing MobileMe service—which provides 20GB of storage space for a $99 annual fee—but the data center's operational start has been plagued by set backs. Analysts believe the 新数据中心 could be geared toward a very similar scenario as Cloud Drive, 可能会免费提供MobileMe存储空间, 这样用户就可以存储电影和歌曲. 至于收购拉拉, the long-anticipated cloud version of iTunes that it supposedly portended is nowhere in sight.

The reasoning behind Amazon's the 20GB-storage-for-an-album transaction might not just be coincidence, 有两个原因.

首先，亚马逊已经开了先例亚马逊Prime免费流媒体服务 last month, showing a new model of pay-for-play that Cloud Drive seems to be following.

第二个, Amazon may be showing the record labels that it can incentivize the purchase of more than just single-song MP3 files from the Amazon store, at a time when album sales have slumped both online and offline. Think of it as a Amazon's "performance tax" or a cleverly modified version of the recording tax that France and other countries placed on blank CDs and even on iPods, 资金将用于支持唱片公司. 在这种情况下, 亚马逊证明了自己是一个很好的团队合作者, 而且大多数顾客不会介意花9美元.99美元来支付一年的存储费用.

一年之后会发生什么? 亚马逊将其云硬盘的定价定为每GB约1美元, 所以20GB的年费是20美元, 50GB售价50美元, 等等....... 相比之下, DropBox提供50GB的存储空间，年费99美元, and Amazon's new Cloud Drive offers 20GB of storage for anyone who purchases an MP3 album from the Amazon store.

Purchases of MP3 content from the Amazon store can be placed in the Cloud Drive locker, 对空闲或购买的存储空间没有存储影响. It will be interesting to see if Amazon is actually required to put an actual copy of purchased MP3 files in each user's Cloud Drive, 出于会计目的, or if a pointer from a user's Cloud Drive to a single MP3 file that thousands of users can access will suffice.

The team player issue mentioned above has constantly been a thorn in Apple's side, as its initial negotiations with record labels and studios not only were unbalanced, 听制片厂这么说, but also took a huge chunk of physical world sales as customers moved to online music and—to a lesser extent—purchased movies online. 不足为奇的是, one of the reasons noted for Apple's data center launch delay is the company's ongoing negotiations to allow streaming of music content.

在自己的游戏中打败苹果?

Which brings us to the second area where Amazon is pre-empting Apple: streaming music from the Cloud Drive.

Amazon announced the Cloud Player for web and Android devices, but not iOS devices.

This isn't to say that an AAC file stored in the Cloud Drive can't be played to an iOS device, 但它绝对缺少易用性:iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch user would need to access the web-based version of the Cloud Drive page—sans app—和n select a single song to play, which will then be progressively downloaded to the QuickTime player built into iOS. Listening to a second song would require a repeat of accessing the web page, progressively downloading 和n listening in the QuickTime player—an arduous process.

Of course, with Lala, Apple already owns a company that streams music from the web. 在苹果收购该公司之前, Lala had settled on a stream-as-you-go service that allowed its listeners to use credits to listen to songs for as little as $.每首歌10美元. 的学分, 批量购买以限制交易成本, 也可以应用于以$.89 /首.

One of the key features of Lala was its ability to combine the cloud-based storage locker model with streaming delivery, the exact same model that Amazon is now espousing with Cloud Drive.

Apple, 然而, 2010年年中关闭了Lala, perhaps to roll the service into a new version of iOS or iTunes or the upcoming Macintosh operating system, OS X Lion (10.7).

在拉拉的黄金时期, any song that had been uploaded from the user's hard drive to Lala was available for unlimited playback. Today the only options available to iOS devices these days come from non-Apple sources. 简而言之, 在这一点上，亚马逊比苹果抢先一步, 同时也带来了谷歌的安卓操作系统.