Cloud-Based+Music+Storage

= Cloud-Based Music Storage = toc The advent of the digital music age created ongoing problems for digital music listeners. Early digital music options, such as Apple’s iPod, and its corresponding iTunes music store contained heavy amounts of Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, making it difficult to use anything but the iPod and iTunes to access the music. Other early digital music stores had similar DRM software programs. This DRM software often limited the number of times a song could be burned to CD as well, making the transfer of music purchased through online storefronts cumbersome. Early DRM software was put into place by online storefronts such as Apple to reassure the music industry that efforts were being made to prevent music piracy. Online sharing services such as Napster and Kazaa were popular sites for distributing pirated copies of digitized music and so DRM software was necessary to prevent acts of piracy. Cloud storage has been used for several years to store documents, images and other data, but implementing it for music has been a much slower process. More recently, the populations desire to access the music that has been purchased from anywhere, regardless of the location of the computer on which the music is stored, has given rise to cloud-based storage options.

Amazon's Cloud Drive[[image:cloud.jpg align="right" caption="Photo by branto. Used under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license" link="@http://flic.kr/p/5XvtQ"]]
Released in early 2011, the Amazon Cloud Drive was the first of several major companies to release cloud storage for music. Other companies, such as MP3.com had made attempts to release similar services in the past, with varying levels of success. The Amazon Cloud Drive currently starts with 5GB of free storage and offers various increasing levels of storage for yearly payments, starting at $20 per year for 20 GB of storage. The Amazon Cloud Drive is not simply a music storage system. Unlike other Cloud-Based Music Storage programs, the Amazon Cloud Drive allows users to upload photos, documents and video to the drive. This provides a level of convenience for users, in that all of their information could be stored in a single drive. However, it almost guarantees that users who want to use the Cloud Drive for storage for all of their information will likely have to pay for additional storage, as pictures and documents will use up the same 5GB of storage as the music. Music purchased digitally from Amazon does not count towards the 5GB of storage.

Apple's iCloud and iTunes Match
Apple’s iCloud shares some similarities with the Amazon Cloud Drive. The iCloud service allows users to store documents, photos, email and other documents and syncs these items across devices, so that everything appears the same on all apps. This is useful, in that if a user starts a document using iWork’s Pages software, on their Mac at home, then continues working later on their iPad, the information will be updated on the new device without having to save the information on a jump drive, sync the iPad to the computer, or email the document to oneself. This functionality is native across Apple’s iWork software, and the native Calendar, Contacts, Mail and iTunes; other app developers can include the iCloud syncing ability in their apps as well. With the iCloud, as with the Amazon Cloud Drive, any music, apps or books purchased through iTunes does not count towards the initial 5 GB of free storage. Additional storage can be purchased starting at $20 for 10 additional GB (a total of 15GB of storage 5 free + 10 purchased). Currently, the iCloud only syncs music purchased from iTunes. Users who want to have music purchased from other sources available through the iCloud will need to pay $24.99 per year for the iTunes Match service. The iTunes Match service scans the users computer and provides a copy of any songs currently available in the iTunes catalog. Users cannot upload music directly to the cloud, so any music not available in the iTunes catalog that was not purchased from iTunes will have to be synced manually to be accessed from another device.

Google Music[[image:googlemusic.jpg align="right" caption="Photo by Leandro Riccini Margarucci used under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 license" link="@http://flic.kr/p/aFrkzx"]]
The most recent service to launch, Google Music provides the largest amount of storage for free. Similar to the Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Music requires users to manually upload the user’s entire existing library. This can be time consuming, even with high-speed Internet service. Once the software is on a user’s computer, the user can specify that any new music purchased be automatically synced to the cloud, preventing the manual upload process in the future. Unlike iCloud and the Amazon Cloud Drive only music purchased through the Google Android Market can be downloaded to additional computers. However, all music can be streamed from any device using the website. This makes the Google Music service somewhat less convenient than the iCloud or Amazon Cloud Drive, as users will have to have Internet access in order to use music from a device other than the original computer for music purchased from programs like Amazon music or iTunes.

Controversy and Libraries
When Amazon debuted the Cloud Drive service, many music companies were upset because Amazon failed to negotiate licenses to allow users to store this information in the drive. The streaming service provided was the greatest concern for music companies. Amazon argued that the player was not unlike Windows Media Center, and that since it used music already owned by the users, additional licenses were not required. A recent court ruling involving a case between EMI and the now defunct MP3tunes has since allowed for scan-and-match services, such as iTunes Match without requiring the providers to acquire licenses from the music companies. Libraries that provide free music downloads through services such as Freegal may want to know this information. The limitations on uploading or downloading music to multiple computers may be useful to patrons trying to choose a cloud storage system for music.