cloud player

Amazon Cloud Player arrives on Roku, Samsung Smart TVs

It's been months since Roku announced that the Amazon Cloud Player was "coming soon," but today the company finally made good on that promise.

Amazon's cloud music service is now available on Roku and Samsung Smart TVs, offering the ability to stream your own digital music tracks without needing to keep a separate computer running. For Roku, it's a solid response to Apple's iTunes Match service, which offers cloud storage and streaming for $25 per year.

While Amazon Cloud Player started off as a largely free service, it now requires a similar fee as … Read more

iTunes Match vs. Amazon Cloud Player: What's the better option?

With Amazon's recently updated Cloud Player service, music fans now have one more way to store and stream their tunes from the cloud. It bears many similarities to Apple's iTunes Match, but after playing around with both services I can attest to some clear differences, as well. If you're looking for some guidance on which service is a better fit for your music collection, you've come to the right place.

iTunes Match Cloud Player Free option n/a 250 songs, scan & match, purchases do not count against total Paid option $24.99/yr, scan & … Read more

Get started with Amazon's scan-and-match Cloud Player feature

Amazon just announced a pretty big update to its Cloud Player service. The enhancements include scan and match, increased storage, and the free upgrading of lesser audio tracks to 256 Kbps.

With the new service, gone are the days of 5GB of free storage. You can now store all of your Amazon purchased music, along with 250 songs purchased elsewhere for free. Or, you can pay the $25 fee for 250,000 songs worth of storage per year.

The scan-and-match service will scan your computer's hard drive for music, and then match your music catalog with Amazon's catalog. … Read more

Amazon Cloud Player for iOS gives you more options for music

Amazon Cloud Player (free) for iOS gives you an option of getting all your music from the iTunes App Store, and its simple interface is easy to pick up and use immediately.

Whether you have music already from Amazon or not, you can quickly log in with your Amazon account and listen to tracks already on your iPhone. If you have downloaded music through Amazon, with the app you'll be able to listen to both Amazon- and iTunes-bought music.

Once you have music uploaded to Amazon's Cloud drive, the interface is dead simple. Two tabs let you switch … Read more

Verizon's new data plan burns singles

Today we're rocking out in the cloud to take our minds off our mobile bills:

Verizon has completely restructured nearly all of its phone plans with something called a Share Everything Plan. The plans will give you unlimited text and unlimited voice. As for data, you have to pay for how much data you want a month. Then you have to pay another fee for each device that will use that pool of data.

Verizon is encouraging you to have multiple devices that can all share from the same plan, but it can make your bill more expensive if you're an individual. … Read more

Amazon's Cloud Player enters the App Store

Amazon.com's free Cloud Player app is now available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices via Apple's App Store.

The app lets you stream or download music stored in your Amazon cloud to your Apple devices. You can also play music already saved on your device and create your own playlists.

Filling up your Amazon cloud with music requires you to first download Amazon's browser-based Cloud Player and the MP3 uploader. After those are installed, you can view your cloud space and upload music directly from your computer. You can also store any music that you … Read more

Hands-on: Amazon Cloud Player's new iPad Web app

I thought I could refuse Amazon's Cloud Player. I guess I was wrong.

Amazon unveiled official browser support on the iPad for Cloud Player. For me, and for many others, that's huge news. Previously, iOS devices hadn't been working too smoothly with Amazon's Cloud Player music-storage service. The newly updated Safari Web app isn't surprising, but it does work as advertised. iPad owners, you can officially rejoice.

Albums, playlists, and songs load up just like they would on a normal computer browser. Even better, the song list can be scrolled through with a single finger swipe. Songs play smoothly, and track-skipping and other controls work as expected. The best part, though, is that the Web app works well outside the browser in multitasking, too. … Read more

Music wars: Google vs. Amazon vs. Apple

Apple has finally entered the music-in-the-cloud arena with the introduction of iTunes on iCloud, making it a competitor to Google's Music Beta and Amazon.com's Cloud Player. Here, we compare all three services. We'll update and amend the chart below as we get more information.

… Read more

Cloudy, with a chance of video

With Apple's iCloud coming next week, hot on the heels of Amazon and Google's cloud services for music, it seems like the years-old dream of cloud media streaming is coming to greater fruition than ever before. That's promising news to me, a person who cut the cord on his cable TV over a year and a half ago. I live off the Internet and my various devices--my laptop, game consoles, iPhone, and iPad--to get my media, be it TV shows, movies, music or books.

So far, it looks like 2011 will be more the year of Cloud Music than that of Cloud Video. And that's a shame, because I'm getting fed up with my half-baked digital-video life.

I've spent the last week with a product called Pogoplug Video, which attempts to do what no one's currently offering yet: the ability to stream multiformat video files easily across multiple platforms, be they gaming console, computer, or phone/tablet, even across the Internet or 3G.

I held high hopes for the Pogoplug Video. The $199 device is much like the Pogoplug Pro we reviewed last year, equipped with a more powerful processor. And, it does what it promises, to a point: video files stored on hard drives or USB sticks plugged into the Pogoplug do indeed technically play back on iPhones, iPads, laptops, or even via DLNA on an Xbox 360 or PS3.… Read more