Are subscription services making Amazon Cloud Player , iTunes Match, and Google Music obsolete?

I recently wrote a review comparing Amazon Cloud Player vs. iTunes Match vs. Google Music. And honestly both Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player have been working fine – the sound quality has been great and I have had no issues listening to my music with either service (I decided to go with Amazon Cloud Player instead of iTune Match so I can’t say much new about iTunes Match). I love music and it’s been great that I have my complete music library with me at all times. I also feel better knowing that my library is backed up to a service.

But I was talking to a friend recently and he thinks I am crazy that I am still buying CDs or even MP3s. He subscribes to a streaming service (Mog) and has all the music he wants, on any device, at anytime all for $10 a month. So for what I spend on an album (maybe an album and a half or even two) he gets unlimited streaming on his laptop and smart phone all month. He can even download music to his device so he can listen to music when he doesn’t have access to wifi or cell service. And using the service he has been able to find new artists he didn’t know about before.

In the US we have Rdio, Spotify, Mog and many other subscription services. They all have their pluses and minuses, but it seems they all could meet your needs. The price plans are also all about the same between the services – $5 a month for streaming just on your PC or Mac and $10 if you want to also stream on your smartphone. So $120 a year for all your music needs? Guess that would save me some money…

Maybe I am just old school, but I still like feeling CDs in my hands or at least “owning” MP3s. I like owning my music. I just don’t think I can give that up and trust a service to meet all my music needs. Am I just missing something?

Links:
https://yourcto.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/amazon-cloud-player-vs-google-music-vs-itunes-match/

Amazon Cloud Player vs. Google Music vs. iTunes Match

Recently I was looking at the cloud based music storage services offered by Google, Apple, and Amazon. They all have cloud based music storage offerings finally. Google’s offering is free, but limited to 20,000 songs. Apple Match is $24.99 a year, but allows you to store 25,000 songs (unlimited songs that are purchased through the iTunes store) and, of course, it works seamlessly with iTunes.  And Amazon’s offer is also $24.99 a year but allows you to store up to an incredible 250,000 songs!

Google Music

• First, it’s free!
• 20,000 songs, which should be plenty for 95% of the people out there
• Google has an app that automatically scans your iTunes and matches what is already on Google Match and then uploads what isn’t already there
• On the Mac and PC you can download music from Google Match to your device
• Google also brings over playlists and ratings
• And of course Google has made it easy to share music via Google +
• Songs purchased in Google Play are automatically uploaded to the cloud
• Google has an app for Android, but there isn’t an app for iOS (iPhone or iPads) devices (but you can access it from Safari and use the “add to home screen” option)

Apple iTunes Match

• $24.99 a year
• 25,000 songs (unlimited songs that are purchased through the iTunes store)
• Allows you to download songs to your device
• Match only uploads the songs that iTunes can’t match to what Apple already has in the cloud.  Much faster then uploading your entire library.
• Seamless with iTunes
• Matched songs are upgraded to 256 kbps AAC DRM free

Amazon Cloud Player

• 250 songs are free, or
• 250,000 songs for $24.99 per year (10x more than the other offers)
• US only right now
• Amazon provides an export app that uploads MP3 songs and albums to the Amazon Cloud Player
• The songs that Amazon can match are upgraded to 256 kbps, even those purchased in the past
• MP3’s bought on Amazon are automatically uploaded to the Amazon Cloud Player and don’t count towards the limit
• And now Amazon offers AutoRip – when you buy CDs with the AutoRip designation from Amazon they immediately give you MP3s automatically in the Amazon Cloud Player for no extra cost. You can start listening right away, you don’t have to wait for the CD to arrive and rip it yourself.
• Amazon Cloud Player works everywhere!  As they say “on the web, Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android devices, Sonos, and Roku”

So I was thinking through how to decide which to go with and a couple of thoughts came to me:

• If you have an Android smart phone and have less then 20,000 songs in your library then it’s a no brainer, go with Google Music! And did I mention it’s free!
• If you have an iPhone and use a Mac (and use iTunes) and have less then 25,000 songs in your library then again, it’s kind of a no brainer to go with iTunes Match.
• But, if you have more then 25,000 songs and live in the US, then you have to look at Amazon Cloud Player

I personally ended up going with Amazon Cloud Player for the capacity. Also, I rarely buy music from iTunes, it’s normally the most expensive. And Google Music isn’t even a thought when I am looking to buy an album.  Amazon has a huge library and runs specials and discounts all the time. The other selling point was I can get to my music from all my devices.

Links:
music.google.com
www.amazon.com/cloudplayer
www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

Bring your own cloud to work

Back in March I wrote about BYOD (iPhones, Android phones, iPads, etc) in the Enterprise, but another worry IT management needs to address is BYOC – as in, bring your own cloud (storage).

Yesterday I covered seven popular cloud storage solutions. Between those seven solutions I have almost 100GB of storage. If I was an employee on your network what could I walk out with on 100GB of storage? I just did a quick unscientific scan of my documents folder and I had many MS Word docs of 100KB or less with very few Word doc files over 1MB. So assuming worse case and use 1MB as the average Word doc file size, that means I can walk out with over 100,000 documents! Talk about a wikileaks waiting to happen! Do you have digital rights management on your sensitive documents? Are you monitoring your network traffic for uploads to these cloud storage solutions?

But it doesn’t have to be malicious. With BYOD and the popularity of telecommuting the risk of sensitive data ending up on a consumer grade cloud solution is pretty high. Do your Executives have iPads? Is it possible your CFO could be working on his quarterly report on his iPad while traveling? And does he have sync’ing to iCloud turned on? Do you have a Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) issue to deal with now? Depending on your industry, you could have other regulations to deal with, such as HIPAA or PCI, FFIEC, GLB, etc.

So, just like with BYOD, if you don’t have policies and procedures in place already you are behind… BYOC is in your enterprise already.

Links:
https://yourcto.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/byod-in-the-enterprise/
https://yourcto.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/what-cloud-storage-is-best-for-you/

What cloud storage is best for you?

What cloud storage is best for you? I have accounts on Dropbox, SugarSync, Box, Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, and Amazon Cloud Drive. That gives me almost a 100GB of cloud storage. And there are even more out there (livedrive, justcloud, spideroak, etc.)! I know most people aren’t going to sign up for seven cloud storage solutions, so… which is the best for you?

They all have pluses and minuses, but I use Dropbox for most of my day to day cloud storage needs. Years ago I started with Dropbox because it worked with my password vault, and then with apps on my Droid X. And, now on my iPhone, again Dropbox just works with my apps. Dropbox also makes it real easy to sync from the Dropbox folder on my MacBook Pro. Just drag a file to the Dropbox folder and up it syncs. How easy can you get? But, you only get 2GB free storage to start. The good news is there are some simple ways to increase your Dropbox storage pretty quickly to 4 or 5GB (even more if you work at it).

That’s why I have accounts on SugarSync and Box. Their free offers gave me 5GB each. And of the two, SugarSync has a nice sync manager that comes with the free version. With Box, you have to step up to the business version (a paid version) to get desktop sync’ing. So, again, when I have files I want to access from my laptop and from my tablet, and my smart phone (and if I am not using Dropbox) I almost always use SugarSync.

But Box does have a nice clean web interface. And it integrates with LinkedIn. So I find I end up using Box for sharing documents and other files with other people. It has become my public sharing cloud storage. And back in March Box ran a promotion that bumped my storage up to 50GB, so it might soon become my de facto solution just because I have the room to actually store stuff there without having to clean it out all the time. I just wish the consumer free version had more features. Box has some great features for businesses and enterprises; things like integration with Salesforce.com and Google Apps, AD groups and version control, and of course desktop sync.If a SMB was looking for a good cheap cloud storage solution, Box is what I would suggest (if they didn’t also need email, then I’d suggest looking at Google Apps for Business also). But, you don’t get any of those features in the personal free version.

Honestly I ended up with my Microsoft SkyDrive by default. I’ve had a Hotmail account since before Microsoft bought Hotmail (remember HoTMaIL? yes, I am old). A while ago I wanted to check out the Word Web App and Excel Web App to compare the functionality to Google Docs, so I uploaded a few documents. But that turned out to be lucky because Microsoft is giving out free upgrades to 25GB from their (generous) free 7GB. See my post on how to get the upgrade. Microsoft also has an app you can install so you have a drive right on your computer that syncs (I am using the Mac App that’s in beta). If I was still a PC person I could see using SkyDrive more. The integration with the Word Web App and Excel Web App is pretty slick. Microsoft has made it very easy.

I love music and occasionally use Amazon to buy MP3s, so when Amazon Cloud Drive launch of course I had to check it out. You get 5GB of storage free, but… and this is pretty nice… any music you buy from Amazon MP3 doesn’t count towards your 5GB limit. I use the cloud player to listen to music only occasionally (I always have my iPhone), but it’s nice to know it’s there and I have access to it from the web. I have a few documents on Amazon Cloud Drive, but like I said, I mainly just use it for music. It will be interesting to see how Amazon leverages the Kindle Fire Tablet (which is now accounting for over 50% of US Android tablets – Forbes) to encourage Cloud Drive usage.

iCloud is Apple’s solution to sync your email, calendar, contacts, photos, music, etc. across all your Apple devices. When you sign up you get 5GB free. But that 5GB goes pretty far because your photo steam, music, movies, and apps don’t count against your limit. What can I say – it just works. No matter what iOS device I am using I never have to worry about sync’ing files, iCloud takes care of all of it for me. I also use Keynote, Numbers, and Pages on my MacBook Pro and on my iPad and iCloud works great keeping everything sync’ed up. I know I am an Apple fan boy, but when something works that well you have to give them credit. But, with that said, I still use Dropbox for most of my file cloud storage. For me iCloud is just for all the magic Apple does in the back ground that makes using the iPhone and a iPad such a great experience.

And now Google Drive has finally launched (why did that take 5+ years?) with their 5GB of free storage. And Google doc file formats don’t count towards your limit. My first thought was, “how is this different from Google Docs?” Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Google Docs. In my limited use since Google Drive launched I haven’t seen that I lost any Google Docs functionality. And then I found Google Drive has an app that installs a local drive on your computer that syncs automatically; seems to work well. Which lead to my second thought of “it’s actually a lot like Dropbox.” Android has a Google Drive App, but right now you have to use your browser to access your files from iOS devices. So maybe not as good as Dropbox… I’ve used Google Docs quite a bit in the past, so I have a bunch of files uploaded to Google Drive. And now all those files are sync’ed down to my MacBook Pro.

It will be interesting to see what Google, Microsoft, Apple (and Amazon somewhat) are going to do in the cloud storage space in the near future. Box focused on the enterprise early, so I think they have a shot. At least get bought by one of the big players or someone wanting to get into the cloud storage game in a serious way (Salesforce? HP?). And Dropbox has been the Tech Geek favorite for quite a while, but I’d like to see their strategic plan of how they are going to compete with the big boys going forward. Very interesting times.

So, what cloud storage solution is best for you? Do you need a couple of them? All seven?

Links:
How to upgrade your SkyDrive to 25GB https://yourcto.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/microsoft-skydrive-cloud-storage-free-25gb-upgrade/
How to upgrade your Box account to 50GB http://blog.box.com/2012/02/android-users-get-50gb-free-get-your-box50gb-and-enter-the-box-mobile-giveaway/
A great comparison chart by ars technica http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/04/cloud-storage-a-pricing-and-feature-guide-for-consumers.ars
Link to get your own free SugarSync account
Link to get your own free Dropbox account

Microsoft Skydrive (cloud storage) free 25GB upgrade

I wrote about the free Box cloud storage upgrade last month (their promotion is over now). They bumped your storage from 5GB to 50GB! All you needed to do was to install their new Android app.

Well, now, Microsoft is giving you a chance to increase your MS SkyDrive storage from 7GB (which is still more than anyone else offers) to up to 25GB free. As long as you already have an account, and had a file upload before April 22nd, all you have to do is:

• log into skydrive.live.com (or click on the skydrive link in the header from your hotmail page)
• click on the “Manage storage” link on the bottom left (see the attached screen grab)
• then click on the Free upgrade option (if you don’t see this option then the offer is over or it isn’t available to you)

And you are done. You now have 25GB of free storage space! Nice!

Even if you don’t have a SkyDrive account, but you do have a hotmail account, it’s worth a couple of minutes to see if you can update your MS SkyDrive also. Just follow the instruction above. Good luck!

More info from Microsoft can be found here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx (external link)