Perhaps feeling the heat from Music Beta by Google and the forthcoming iTunes Match after being first out of the gate earlier this year, Amazon has reworked their Cloud Player and Cloud Drive initiative to give users with 20GB or more of paid storage a free upgrade to unlimited space -- at least for a while.
BGR is reporting that Amazon is now offering unlimited music storage for Cloud Player and Cloud Drive when you purchase one of the company’s plans. The free service is limited to 5GB of storage, but if you purchase even the lowest $20 per year for 20GB storage plan, you’ll immediately have access to unlimited space for a limited time -- although the company hasn’t said when that might end.
“Customers are already enjoying Cloud Drive and Cloud Player and now for just $20 a year, customers can get unlimited space for music,” said Craig Pape Director of Amazon Music. “Additionally, we are adding free storage for all MP3s purchased from Amazon MP3, and support for the iPad. Our customers love Cloud Drive and Cloud Player and we’re excited to innovate these services on their behalf.”
Perhaps the bigger news for iPad fans is the news that Cloud Player for Web is now iPad friendly, offering customers an optimized experience for streaming playback of their music collection. To access your library, simply head to amazon.com/cloudplayer as usual from Mobile Safari, pick a track and start playing.
Last but not least, all Amazon MP3 purchases -- past, present and future -- can now be stored for free in Cloud Drive, and yes, that even includes purchases made prior to the existence of the service. Unfortunately, you’ll have to upload these files yourself to the Cloud Drive service -- but Amazon promises “unaltered Amazon MP3 files uploaded to the same account for the original purchase will be stored for free.”
If you happened to take advantage of Amazon’s launch offer that upgraded your storage from 5GB to 20GB for the first year with any MP3 purchase -- no matter the price -- you should now have unlimited storage until your plan ends next year, which we’ve confirmed on our own account. Not a bad deal if you’re still on the fence about the competition…
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