Amazon's New Cloud Drive Draws Criticism From Music Industry

[engine]

Amazon's New Cloud Drive Draws Criticism From Music Industry [reuters.com]

A new Amazon.com Inc service that lets customers store songs and play them on a variety of phones and computers is facing a backlash from the music industry that could ignite a legal battle.

Amazon's Cloud Drive, announced on Tuesday, allows customers to store about 1,000 songs on the company's Web servers for free instead of their own hard drives and play them over an Internet connection directly from Web browsers and on phones running Google Inc's Android software.

Sony Music, home to artists such as Shakira and Kings of Leon, was upset by Amazon's decision to launch the service without new licenses for music streaming, said spokeswoman Liz Young.

[lawman]

Sounds like a good idea. If only the unilateral decision to delete e-books from Kindle hadn't happened.

[incrediBILL]

Bad idea.

Runs up bandwidth usage and continues to further separate users from their content.

As a backup method to synch my devices, cool.

For real-time playing on a phone? not cool.

Try "streaming" when you're on a plane, plus streaming kills batteries faster, stupid stuff.