[TemptingReviews] Amazon MP3 Cloud Player (Android)

Android has had the Amazon MP3 app for some time now. It’s a slim, trim application that allows you to purchase unlocked high quality MP3 files directly from Amazon MP3 and auto bill it to a card on record. This integrates with other music programs such as Pandora and SoundHound where you can identify a song you like on the radio, then purchase it immediately.

Amazon has recently improved the application to allow cloud storage. By default you get 5GB to store whatever DRM-free MP3 or WMA files you want. You can upload your own files to the cloud and then access them from mobile devices, PC, or Mac. Or, as in my case, you can use it to archive Amazon MP3 purchases automatically AND download them to your device, so it’s available in two places. You can also use the player for your existing on-device files, or stream music directly from the cloud.

Amazon is also offering a special where they will bump your cloud storage to 20GB if you buy a full priced album from them, which is a nice offering.

The only two negatives for this service: 1, you can’t upload files from the mobile device. I would really liked to have the ability to do this as I do have music that I’ve bought from Amazon MP3 before that’s on my phone that I would love to have archived up to the cloud without needing my computer (I could select a bunch of files and just queue them up to upload). 2, it doesn’t seem to be consistent with the album art when streaming from the cloud. Not a big deal, just something noticed.

Overall it’s a solid service. Amazon MP3 – the app – has always been my favorite over Rhapsody or iTunes, but the one issue I had was that you could never re-download songs you already purchased without buying them again. Cloud Player alleviates this problem by providing a way to re-download any song in your cloud storage at any time. I know a lot of people freeze or remove the Amazon MP3 app because they use Rhapsody, and to those I would encourage you to give the Amazon MP3 app a really close look. It really is the best music service there is today.