Update: Amazon has now launched the service described below, under the name Amazon Cloud Drive.
Amazon is preparing a music locker service, a website where you’ll be able to listen to music you’ve uploaded from your local collection (or otherwise proven you’ve bought) now streaming from any computer with a web browser. That according to a number of media reports, most recently by Ethan Smith at the Wall St. Journal, who reports that the service may be announced as early as tomorrow.
Is a music locker service still desirable in what may become the age of streaming music services? I’m not interested in a music locker, I’m a happy Rdio subscriber, but many other people I’ve spoken to have expressed interest in such a service.
There are big questions about licensing of music – when you say you “bought music” that really just means you’ve bought a license to listen to it as a file on your own computer. There’s little evidence that Amazon has worked out the licensing agreements it would need to pay the ultimate source of all that is good and musical in the world, the music labels, for their trouble when songs are streamed.
“We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music,” a Sony spokeswoman told the Journal for tonight’s report.
I feel like a music locker is a look towards the past, more than it is a part of the future.
Smith points out that songs may not be accessible through mobile devices or be subject to other limitations that limit the service’s appeal to consumers.
It doesn’t appeal to me just because I don’t buy music anymore. I used to think that the type of arrangement that said “you can access it forever…as long as you keep paying our monthly fee” were creepy, but now that I’ve spent a few months paying for one, I’m quite comfortable with it. Maybe I need more obscure taste in music. I feel like I can stream almost anything from somewhere on the web. I feel like a music locker is a look towards the past, more than it is a part of the future.
What about you? Do you want a music locker?
