How has your 2011 treated you thus far? Was this year everything you'd hoped it'd be? I certainly hope so, because we're almost halfway through the year and already 2011 is shaping up to be the beginning of a new decade of trends and pop culture phrases ("Winning!"). Besides having a big time movie star going insane on live television, this year has brought us a maturing form of the already popular phrase, "to the cloud".
Up until now, consumers had a few options to store their data files onto other people's servers using services like Dropbox.com or Apple's lackluster MobileMe service. The files could simply be uploaded and downloaded but nothing in between. So if you wanted to play a song that was stored on Dropbox.com or the 17th installment of the Saw movies, you were flat out of luck unless you had enough storage to fit the file onto from your cloud drive. Enter 2009, when we first got a taste of not cloud storage, but something that utilized files in a different way. Oh no. 2008 is when we got Netflix movie streaming on our computers. That streaming service got everyone thinking: "What if we could stream anything, anywhere, on any device?"
Well welcome to 2011, where one Netflix account can stream hit films via a computer, a phone, a gaming system, and directly onto a fancy flat screen TV. Gone are the days where consumers have to worry about hard drive space and syncing files to each and every machine they wish to use their files on. Granted you technically don't "own" any of the movies on Netflix, you are permitted access to a wide range of films. Recently Amazon.com took that train of thought to the new level and introduced their Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, allowing users to store and play their music via Amazon's data servers.
Personally I've switched over to the Amazon's MP3 Store a little over 2 years ago and have never looked back. All the songs do a great throwback to the golden age of digital downloads by pricing them at $.99 (that's SO 2003!) and when you let me collect albums I've missed for roughly $3.99 and call them "daily deals", you've won my business. I've always wondered why Amazon's MP3 Store hasn't caught on more in the last few years. After all, all the songs on the MP3 store can be stored and played on iTunes, and isn't that the most important thing of all? Well.....not really. Back in the last decade sure, iTunes was basically the most popular music software used by millions of people to store and play their music. In this decade, however, Amazon wants to challenge Apple by not creating a product to go against the iPod (they'll never win that way), but by creating a service on numerous products that screams simplicity.
In the good old days I would have to buy a 20 GB iPod and hope I don't fill that baby up too fast (FYI: I totally did). But in 2011, I have a smartphone, aka a Droid X, that's capable of running Amazon's Cloud Player application. So any song I download on Amazon's MP3 store on the computer, will be stored for free on my personal cloud drive. And if I'm running late and have just enough time to download the song but not sync it to my device, well that's not a problem. Within seconds my song is available to stream from my cloud drive onto my Amazon cloud player from my Droid X. I should know how much hard drive space I have on my phone, but with this set up, who cares? Amazon was so nice that they included an extra 20 GB of storage space for songs that have not been purchased from their store as long as I buy an album.
By now I'm sure you're asking the most important question: You didn't get an iPhone?! What's wrong with you? Well I have wanted an iPhone for a long time, but the iPhone is limited in its content and usage compared to open source technologies like Android. Which brings me to what I think will happen with two major companies this decade: Amazon will square off with Apple to try and dominate each other in the digital music wars. The winner will be based on content, pricing, and availability of content purchased (cause we're getting sick of having to buy hard drives to store copies of Weird Al songs). Oh, and data plans. We're all going to need unlimited data plans or worldwide WiFi for this cloud storage to work. But once it does work, what becomes of physical media? Is the CD finally going to be put down by another new form of technology? More than likely........but I shall have part 2 of my article to examine this assumption.
Up until now, consumers had a few options to store their data files onto other people's servers using services like Dropbox.com or Apple's lackluster MobileMe service. The files could simply be uploaded and downloaded but nothing in between. So if you wanted to play a song that was stored on Dropbox.com or the 17th installment of the Saw movies, you were flat out of luck unless you had enough storage to fit the file onto from your cloud drive. Enter 2009, when we first got a taste of not cloud storage, but something that utilized files in a different way. Oh no. 2008 is when we got Netflix movie streaming on our computers. That streaming service got everyone thinking: "What if we could stream anything, anywhere, on any device?"
Well welcome to 2011, where one Netflix account can stream hit films via a computer, a phone, a gaming system, and directly onto a fancy flat screen TV. Gone are the days where consumers have to worry about hard drive space and syncing files to each and every machine they wish to use their files on. Granted you technically don't "own" any of the movies on Netflix, you are permitted access to a wide range of films. Recently Amazon.com took that train of thought to the new level and introduced their Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, allowing users to store and play their music via Amazon's data servers.
Personally I've switched over to the Amazon's MP3 Store a little over 2 years ago and have never looked back. All the songs do a great throwback to the golden age of digital downloads by pricing them at $.99 (that's SO 2003!) and when you let me collect albums I've missed for roughly $3.99 and call them "daily deals", you've won my business. I've always wondered why Amazon's MP3 Store hasn't caught on more in the last few years. After all, all the songs on the MP3 store can be stored and played on iTunes, and isn't that the most important thing of all? Well.....not really. Back in the last decade sure, iTunes was basically the most popular music software used by millions of people to store and play their music. In this decade, however, Amazon wants to challenge Apple by not creating a product to go against the iPod (they'll never win that way), but by creating a service on numerous products that screams simplicity.
In the good old days I would have to buy a 20 GB iPod and hope I don't fill that baby up too fast (FYI: I totally did). But in 2011, I have a smartphone, aka a Droid X, that's capable of running Amazon's Cloud Player application. So any song I download on Amazon's MP3 store on the computer, will be stored for free on my personal cloud drive. And if I'm running late and have just enough time to download the song but not sync it to my device, well that's not a problem. Within seconds my song is available to stream from my cloud drive onto my Amazon cloud player from my Droid X. I should know how much hard drive space I have on my phone, but with this set up, who cares? Amazon was so nice that they included an extra 20 GB of storage space for songs that have not been purchased from their store as long as I buy an album.
By now I'm sure you're asking the most important question: You didn't get an iPhone?! What's wrong with you? Well I have wanted an iPhone for a long time, but the iPhone is limited in its content and usage compared to open source technologies like Android. Which brings me to what I think will happen with two major companies this decade: Amazon will square off with Apple to try and dominate each other in the digital music wars. The winner will be based on content, pricing, and availability of content purchased (cause we're getting sick of having to buy hard drives to store copies of Weird Al songs). Oh, and data plans. We're all going to need unlimited data plans or worldwide WiFi for this cloud storage to work. But once it does work, what becomes of physical media? Is the CD finally going to be put down by another new form of technology? More than likely........but I shall have part 2 of my article to examine this assumption.
