Listening to Music in 2012 – Use Cloud Music

Cloud music services promise to give us unprecedented access to music. With user-friendly interfaces, cloud music services allow users to access music across a wide variety of devices, including computers, MP3 players, smartphones, set-top boxes and video games consoles. The greatest advantage for users is that they can create an enormous music library and enjoy it anywhere in the world.

 Other advantages of using a cloud-based music service are:

•  Access data from anywhere – as I mentioned before, this is most prominent advantage for users. User love to have their music anywhere they go, and they prefer having it locked down to a local storage device.
• Disaster recovery – your music library is guarded against disasters, such as flooding, theft, viruses, etc.
• Share music – storing music online makes it possible to legally share it via playlists. Many social music networking sites now provide tools to share media on popular social network such as Facebook.

Still, cloud music services do have disadvantages, the main issues users encounter are:

• Internet connections – users need an Internet connection in order to access their storage. If the connection is slow or unreliable, then users may not be able to use these services all the time.
• Security – the access to the files being controlled through security credentials could make the media file insecure if this area is weak. It is recommended to always use strong security passwords when using cloud services.
• Less control – this is a common issue when talking about cloud services. The user is never completely aware of where their data is stored.

The major providers who offer cloud music services are: Apple, Amazon and Google. In addition, there are many smaller providers like mSpot and streaming services such as Pandora and Slacker Radio. But this is a different topic, which I will reference in a future article.

So, what are your thoughts regarding music cloud services?

Photo source: https://www.sxc.hu/photo/1390187