WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra dual-bay NAS box (unpopulated) Read our review. Apple’s system is arguably driven by its App Store, and Google’s by its ubiquity. Use your personal music collection with Alexa, even after Amazon Music Storage shuts down. The payoffs seem clear enough the more people are locked into Amazon’s cloud, the more likely they’ll be to buy Amazon’s digital video and music offerings, or even a Kindle Fire tablet.
While most of Amazon’s customers are businesses with large, complex infrastructural needs, the company is able to leverage its massive scale to drive down consumer-facing pricing. That’s roughly three times more than Microsoft, its closest competitor. No one else comes particularly close according to a recent study from Synergy Research Group last, the company has a remarkable 27 percent market share in the space. Amazon’s in a unique position, in that it’s the dominant cloud services provider. It also seems unlikely that Amazon’s competition will be able to match the pricing, or even come close. It’s hard to stress just how much these new offerings-particularly the Unlimited Everything plan-disrupt the current state of the cloud storage pricing structure.
( Update: Amazon has confirmed to WIRED that Amazon Prime members will continue to receive unlimited photo sharing and 5GB for free, while non-Prime members will need to choose one of the two new paid plans). We’ve reached out to Amazon for clarification.
#My amazon cloud music storage for free
Amazon had previously offered a 5GB per month plan for free it’s not clear whether those customers will be transitioned over to the paid photo-friendly plan, or will be upgraded to Unlimited Photos.
#My amazon cloud music storage trial
Throw in Amazon’s three-month free trial offer-and consider that truly unlimited plans aren’t even an option for individual users on most rival services-and the unprecedented value of Amazon’s Unlimited Everything Plan comes more into focus.įor those who don’t need an all-you-can-store solution, Amazon has also introduced an Unlimited Photos Plan, which for $12 per year lands you, well, unlimited photo storage, as well as 5GB of space for other file types. That’s compared to the $100 per year that individual Dropbox users pay for a plan capped at 1TB (there’s also a $15 per month unlimited plan for business accounts), $120 per year for 1TB on Google Drive, and $240 for the same amount on iCloud. In some cases, much, much more.Īmazon’s Unlimited Everything plan means that you now can stash all of your digital stuff in your own private Amazon cloud locker for $60 per year. Rather than being merely competitive with leaders like Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud, Amazon has decided to undercut their pricing by more than half. The steady march towards cheaper cloud storage has just turned into a sprint.