I believe I have just witness the beginning of the death of iTunes. As much as I’ve tried and tried to like iTunes, I can’t express how happy I am to see a true and valid competitor emerge to thwart them. And, I think this will DESTROY them.
Amazon, you rule.
Now you can buy Mp3’s from Amazon.com and – here’s the sell – store your tunes to the cloud, not on your own hardware. I’ve been begging (in my head) for this for YEARS. The cost and hassle of trying to constantly figure out where to store my songs and shows that I’ve downloaded from iTunes has been one endless headache. This has as much to do with the fact that I’M MAKING A GENUINE EFFORT NOT TO STEAL THEN (in all honesty, this is my big mistake). Being legit, I’m constantly plagued with copyright protections on iTunes products that makes storing and moving MY copies of digital media almost impossible.
The obvious solution (one that still supports the artists and their decadent renunciation of most human moral codes) is to simply quit making me store the songs in the first place. Just stream them from some central server that I never even deal with. Amazon Cloud Player (actually real, actually available, actually currently playing 1 of 100 of the top trance tunes of 2011 that I just bought as a collection for…9 bucks) does just that. Finally.
One example: I had a tiny netbook, with virtually zero hard drive space. So I tried to store all my tunes (and shows) on an external hard drive. Then I switched computers, and wanted to move that data. Tough. Sounds easy, but it ain’t. To Apple, it looks like I’m stealing them, or selling them in some virtual dark alley, furtively looking over my shoulder and waiting to hear Hugo Weaving bellow, “Mr. ANDERSON!” If I’d just legitimately STOLEN the damn songs in the first place, I could play them wherever I wanted, moving them like so many Word files.
Another example: If ruining ipods (usually by jogging in the rain) was a God-like attribute, I’d be warming up a U-haul for my move to Mt. Olympus. I just sorta never believe water is actually bad for anything. It’s a swimmer thing. Anyway, my iTunes can only be played on 5 players unless I “de-authorize” a player. This sounds find, but how do I de-authorize a player that has suddenly transformed into really unique thin mint? I can’t even turn it on long enough to de-authorize the glorified aluminum can. Same for my original computer that held the results of my first foray into iTunes psychosis. It suffered a massive “heart” attack at some point. That’s 1 authorized player I’ll never get back.
Now it doesn’t matter. My tunes are floating out there, in the beloved cloud. Free from the confines of my cheap, inefficient hard drives that never seem to have enough space. With Cloudplayer, the tunes stream, so presumably, copying them illegally is much harder. So, I would hope that Amazon will be HELPFUL when I try to use one device or another, or when I mistakenly put my Mac Mini in the microwave, expecting a nice melty pizza in 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Plus, it’s Seattle busts Cupertino. Kurt Cobain vs. The Grateful Dead. The Sound vs. The Bay.
Die. Die Tunes. You had your chance, Appletini.
Related Articles
- Bye Bye iTunes, Hello Amazon Cloud Drive (web2.sys-con.com)
- Amazon Cloud Player: First Impressions (mashable.com)
- iTunes, Amazon and Spotify Controlling Digital Music Revenues in the UK (crenk.com)
- Amazon Music Cloud (kennykellogg.com)
- Stream all Your Music with Amazon Cloud Player (blogher.com)
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