Amazon Cloud Player Review

Amazon Cloud Player Review – What Is It And How Does It Work?

In a world of downloadable music and streaming services, it can be difficult to know which one is the best fit for your music listening needs. Among the many options is Amazon Drive, which used to be known as the Amazon Cloud Player. Learn more about how it works for storing and playing music.

 

Music is an integral part of our daily lives and whether you download or stream it, it’s always nice to have it while on the go. Streaming services can be predictable, especially when you’re listening to a radio station and have little control over the content.

Downloads are often more user-friendly and tailored to the listener, but it can take up valuable storage space on our devices. The Amazon Cloud Player is a great option for people who want to listen to downloaded music on their devices without sacrificing storage.

The Amazon Cloud Player is now part of your music library on Amazon, but we will explain what features of the Amazon Cloud Player exist in Drive, how it works, and what others have to say about the service.

What Is A Cloud Player?

Cloud Player

There’s a good chance that you’ve heard of a cloud player, but maybe you don’t know how it differs from a streaming service.

A cloud player, much like the one that Amazon first offered nearly ten years ago, is an Internet-based service that allows users to pay a monthly fee to store their own music that they’ve purchased or downloaded to a device and access it from a music browser.

While streaming services like Pandora or Spotify work similarly, you pay to play music from a browser, you don’t own the music and cannot download it. Depending on the plan you pay for, in streaming services, you may have limited control over the music you hear.

Even though many of today’s devices keep improving and storage options keep expanding, we all know how frustrating it can be once we get dangerously close to maxing out on storage space.

Our devices run slower, and we’re faced with the tough decision to ditch some of our favorite pics and videos or skip purchasing and downloading that new song we can’t get enough of. There are benefits and fun things about cloud players and streaming services, but it all comes down to what’s most beneficial to you. For some people, they opt for both for different reasons.

Listening To Music With Your Amazon Account

Amazon music

If you search for the Cloud Player by Amazon in your favorite browser, you’ll be taken to a page on Amazon that says it no longer exists. You will be prompted to go to the Amazon homepage and once you sign in to your account, you have a few options.

If you go right to Amazon Drive, it’s a great storage place for photos, videos, and documents, but is not the storage place your music collection. To buy, download, and listen to your music, you need to head to your Amazon Music Library. For a first time user, this might be a little confusing and may take some digging to find what you’re looking for.

As you browse through the Amazon Music feature, you will have the opportunity to click on “Your Music.” This will bring up albums that you’ve purchased on Amazon in the form of a download, CD, or even as vinyl. You have the option to listen to the album or download individual tracks.

You also have the option to use Amazon-Unlimited which is a streaming service for $7.99 a month for Prime members and $9.99 for non-Prime members (after a free 30-day trial). You have the option to listen to unlimited tracks, no ads, and the option to skip a song while offline.

Amazon Music has become a music store with downloadable options and a streaming service combined; as you browse Amazon Music, there is no mention of the Cloud Player or a storage option.

What Happened To Amazon Cloud Player?

Amazon Cloud Player

While there are plenty of inexpensive and convenient music options on Amazon, there’s no trace of the Cloud Player. After doing a little more searching on the site, we found the following information about the Cloud Player.

Here is a statement on Amazon:

“The Amazon Music Storage subscription plans (free and paid) are being retired, and new subscriptions are no longer accepted.”

As of April 30, 2023, storage subscriptions were not renewed, and subscription members (who had paid) could upload and store up to 250,000 imported songs while the subscription is active.

Here’s what consists of the 250,000 song storage plan (paid):

  • Paid users can play or download previously uploaded songs after the subscription expires
  • This can only be done if you select “Keep my songs” before the subscription expires
  • Subscriptions cannot be restarted and no additional songs can be uploaded
  • Music purchases from Amazon are stored free of charge

The same rules apply to the 250,000 and 250 Song Storage Paid Plans.

What Others Are Saying About Amazon Cloud Player and Its Changes

Amazon Cloud Player

Unless you were a paid subscriber of the Amazon music storage or follow tech and music news closely, you may have not even known about the changes that Amazon made in regards to music storage.

Media journalists and paid subscribers alike, were disappointed with the decision to ditch the storage option and were trying to find ways to retrieve thousands of paid downloads before they would lose access to those as well.

As we browsed what others had to say about the Cloud Player, most of the reviews were written when the service first came out, and there were a lot of promising and exciting things to say about the storage option.

Curious to know what other Amazon users felt about the change, we browsed the Amazon Music Forum. Many users were happy with the storage options and the monthly fees. While some users were clearly surprised to get a notice from Amazon about the changes (back in Spring of 2023), others knew it was only a matter of time before a change was coming.

Many of the posts on the forum reflect disappointment while others are scrambling to help one another out before they lose all the music they have.

Our Thoughts On The Changes

While we understand the disappointment of losing such a valuable service, we think that the only people who really feel affected by the change from the Cloud Player to the streaming and purchasing option are those who used the player for a long time.

We agree that it’s nice to free up space on your device and have a portable and convenient storage space just for your music, but with all the tech changes and improvements, separate storage options seem like they will slowly become a thing of the past.

What You Can Expect From Amazon Music

Amazon Music

If you’re already familiar with online music stores like iTunes and streaming sites like Spotify, Amazon Music should be easy to figure out. Not sure if you want to pay for another service that’s similar to the others? The 30-day trial is a nice feature (but other sites offer the same trial period).

You have the opportunity to create your own playlists, browse pre-made playlists such as “Office Pop” or the “50 Great Songs From The Last 10 Years.” You can follow other Prime playlists, browse by artist, album, and genre.As we mentioned earlier, if you’ve purchased music from Amazon before (in a different format such as CD or vinyl), you have the option to enough a digital copy of the album, and it stays in your profile.The pricing for Amazon Music Unlimited is comparable to other services and if you’re already a Prime member you receive a $2 discount per month (regular price is $9.99). Amazon Music users can use the service on up to 10 devices, but only one account can be authorized to a device at a time.While the multiple device option is nice, it can be frustrating for a household of people who want to use the same account but listen to different music at one time.If you use Amazon Prime on a regular basis for watching movies and other features, the Unlimited Music may be a more cost-effective idea (especially if you have a streaming service you already pay for). Even though the price is comparable, you can keep all your media in one place (which may be a selling point for some).

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