Last night, Amazon announced and launched their Cloud Music offering, Amazon Cloud Drive, beating Apple and Google to the punch.
It was a well-coordinated launch that included a formal Press Release, a front-page letter from Jeff Bezos, a tutorial video, positioning quotes from Amazon music leader Bill Carr, and a nicely executed Twitter campaign. Hats off to Amazon.
From the Press Release:
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the launch of Amazon Cloud Drive (www.amazon.com/clouddrive), Amazon Cloud Player for Web (www.amazon.com/cloudplayer) and Amazon Cloud Player for Android (www.amazon.com/cloudplayerandroid). Together, these services enable customers to securely store music in the cloud and play it on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac or PC, wherever they are. Customers can easily upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their Amazon Cloud Drive for free.
“We’re excited to take this leap forward in the digital experience,” said Bill Carr, vice president of Movies and Music at Amazon. “The launch of Cloud Drive, Cloud Player for Web and Cloud Player for Android eliminates the need for constant software updates as well as the use of thumb drives and cables to move and manage music.”
After spending some time with the product this morning, here are my initial thoughts:
The Good:
- Getting there first has value. Again, kudos to Amazon. The question is — how much value? (More on this below)
- The launch was tight. The Amazon site, from Homepage to the Music pages were ready. While any Amazon launch lacks Steve Jobs’s touch for dramatics and flare, Amazon hit their messaging marks.
- Amazon’s customer acquisition strategy of rewarding consumers with free cloud storage for Amazon MP3 purchases is shrewd. As is the automatic upgrade to 20gb storage for simply purchasing one Amazon MP3 full album. (I first covered Amazon’s customer acquisition strategy on January 6th)
The Bad:
- Lack of compatibility with iOS (Apple’s operating systems) is tremendously problematic. The vast majority of digital music fans are tethered to the Apple ecosystem.
- The user interface is clunky. I found the Amazon steps to be more complicated than Lala. And I still feel it’s only fair to compare all streaming and cloud offerings to the original Napster in terms of simplicity and immediacy.
- The pricing model is way too expensive for big collections. I have 500 GBs of music…under Amazon’s model that will cost me a few hundred dollars a year in their cloud. That’s nuts.
- More marketing and PR sizzle is needed. Apple wasn’t first in digital music, Steve Jobs just explained and marketed digital music in a way that connected. The cloud is going to be a complex concept for the average music fan, sizzle will help.
The Final Take: Is this it? If today’s announcement is simply Amazon’s first foray into The Cloud, with plenty of tweaks to come, this may turn out to be a very important first salvo. Amazon could grab a lead, and continue to iterate as the Cloud grows, and grab a valuable advantage. Think about how well they have executed with the Kindle.
But, if this is it, at these prices and with these limitations, Amazon may get squashed as Google and Apple inevitably enter. Word has it this morning that certain label personnel are quite upset with Amazon’s announcement. If labels are able to double down with Apple and Google at more favorable terms, you may see artist-based efforts to support The Cloud elsewhere. Remember those old “I Want My MTV” ads? Imagine Lady Gaga “wanting her iTunes cloud”.
For consumers, one thing is clear — today is a good day. Music consumption is just starting to turn “cloudy”, and with the largest technology companies in the world fighting for your attention, rest assured, more options are coming soon. For Amazon, the question is will today be the start of a Kindle like ascension in Digital Music, or simply a bit of kibble thrown at an increasingly picky and well-fed digital music consumer.
