By: Aseem Gaurav on June 22, 2011
Given that Amazon, Google and Apple have legitimized music lockers in the cloud, US retail giant Best Buy has joined the bandwagon with a cloud service of their own, called Music Cloud and powered by Catch Media Inc’s Play Anywhere platform.
Best Buy’s new service lets users stream their music to multiple devices including computers, phones, and tablets. It allows users to save songs locally to devices for offline play. Unlike Apple’s iCloud, however, users will have to upload their music.
The noticeable thing the Best Buy’s offering excludes is the scan-and-match feature that Apple’s iCloud will offer for $25.
The company also offers a desktop program which copies all of the playlists you’ve set up on your computer, so you don’t have to re-create them manually. The service works with iOS, BlackBerry and Android.
Best Buy Music Cloud comes in two versions: “lite” and “pro”. You can store only 30 seconds of songs in the lite version, which is free. And if you’re okay with the teaser then you can upgrade it to pro. This may prove to be a sticky point for the company as the other cloud services, like Amazon’s Cloud Drive comes free with 5 GB of storage, and Google’s Music Beta allows you to store up to 20,000 songs without charge.
In addition, there is one limitation that the utility only allows for transfer of your iTunes music, and you cannot pick individual files residing in folders on your computer outside the iTunes music library.
The paid Premium account will costs users $3.99 per month and still no information is available about the latter’s features and storage plans. Best Buy hasn’t yet formally announced the launch of its service in the United States.
Do send us your comments if you're considering one of these services and also tell us which cloud-based music service you like the most.
Given that Amazon, Google and Apple have legitimized music lockers in the cloud, US retail giant Best Buy has joined the bandwagon with a cloud service of their own, called Music Cloud and powered by Catch Media Inc’s Play Anywhere platform.
Best Buy’s new service lets users stream their music to multiple devices including computers, phones, and tablets. It allows users to save songs locally to devices for offline play. Unlike Apple’s iCloud, however, users will have to upload their music.
The noticeable thing the Best Buy’s offering excludes is the scan-and-match feature that Apple’s iCloud will offer for $25.
The company also offers a desktop program which copies all of the playlists you’ve set up on your computer, so you don’t have to re-create them manually. The service works with iOS, BlackBerry and Android.
Best Buy Music Cloud comes in two versions: “lite” and “pro”. You can store only 30 seconds of songs in the lite version, which is free. And if you’re okay with the teaser then you can upgrade it to pro. This may prove to be a sticky point for the company as the other cloud services, like Amazon’s Cloud Drive comes free with 5 GB of storage, and Google’s Music Beta allows you to store up to 20,000 songs without charge.
In addition, there is one limitation that the utility only allows for transfer of your iTunes music, and you cannot pick individual files residing in folders on your computer outside the iTunes music library.
The paid Premium account will costs users $3.99 per month and still no information is available about the latter’s features and storage plans. Best Buy hasn’t yet formally announced the launch of its service in the United States.
Do send us your comments if you're considering one of these services and also tell us which cloud-based music service you like the most.
