Amazon Cloud Drive Service Could Face Stiff Opposition From Music Industry

Online retail giant Amazon could face stiff opposition from the music industry over the launch of its new data locker service, which some are calling illegal.

The launch of the service comes after yesterday’s announcement that Amazon will be launching their new, Clod Drive service, that gives users 5GB of storage, which will give them both access to their files, as well as the ability to remotely stream their music and other copyright protected content, through both web and android browsers.

Liz Young, a spokesperson for Sony Music, said "We hope that they'll reach a new license deal, but we're keeping all of our legal options open."

The irony of it all is that Amazon, through their retailing operations, have been one of the champions of paying for music downloads, and has done much to deter those who would have otherwise downloaded music illegally to use their service instead. And if Amazon decide that the new licensing terms offered by the music industry, it will be interesting to see what the might of the music industry will do in trying to take legal action against the undisputed king of e-tail.

Looking beneath the surface of all this, it’s very easy to see that this is yet another incident involving the out-dated, money-grabbing, on-its-way-out music industry, at trying to extort an obscene amount of money out of those who do much to help promote them and their artists. As we saw earlier this week, with the ridiculous $75 Trillion dollar lawsuit they tried to sting Limewire with, the music industry are most certainly the “evil” party in all this, and let’s be frank, if they had a fraction of the foresight to fully embrace digital, as Amazon, and other companies offering related services have, then perhaps they may have been able to profit from these activities directly, instead of sitting on the side lines kicking and screaming. But in an industry run by dinosaurs, embracing anything new is always going to be beyond them, and personally, I hope the music industry continues to evolve to the point that record labels no longer play a part, well, fingers crossed at least.