Earlier today Amazon announced their new storage service in two parts – Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. At first glance one may wonder how Cloud Storage differs from Amazon’s already-existing S3 storage. The answer lies in the Cloud Player part of the announcement. While S3 is just storage the new combo is much more media friendly. You can not see and download your files from the new storage via any computer anywhere, but you can also stream the files without downloading them – that’s the Cloud Player part of this.
Amazon is offering 5 GB of storage free, but for more there is a pricing structure that are more than reasonable. The paid plans are as follows – 20 GB for $20 per year, 50 GB for $50 per year, 100 GB for $100 per year, 200 GB for $200 per year, 500 GB for $500 per year, and 1000 GB for $1000 per year. Want a discount on the 20 GB plan? You may be in luck because, according to Google, “If you purchase an album from the Amazon MP3 Store, you may be eligible for a free upgrade to 20 GB of Cloud Drive space for one year (this promotion is open to U.S. customers only). New Amazon MP3 purchases delivered to Cloud Drive do not count against a customer’s storage space.”
Cloud Drive allows users to upload music, photos, videos, documents, and other file types. Once again, new MP3 purchases from Amazon that are stored in Cloud Drive do not count against used storage space. You will need to elect to store the purchases on Cloud Drive at the time of purchase to take advantage of this.
There are currently 28 countries supported by the new Amazon service. Security is purportedly the same as S3 which means your files are safe. If uptime is as reliable as S3, and there’s no reason to think it won’t be, then you should be able have access to your files without any worries.