Analysts Pan Amazon Cloud Player

Amazon may have beaten Google and Apple to the music storage cloud, but analysts aren’t giving it any trophies.

Amazon’s Cloud Player, which allows Amazon users to upload music and stream it other computers and Android-based phones, is the first of many upcoming music locker solutions. Amazon is offering 5 GB of storage free to its users, and 20 GB if they opt to purchase music through Amazon MP3.

But some analysts aren't convinced that it will be as big a seller as Amazon hopes. “Let’s not get carried away. As logical a next step in the digital music market as locker services might be, they’re not an innovation in the music product,” said Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan.

Mulligan is skeptical because the service doesn’t actually distribute music. Instead, users are just granted access to music they already own, which they can stream to multiple devices and computers. That, he says, isn’t enough to save the music industry.

Mulligan, however, does admit that locker storage is something that consumers will soon come to expect. While Amazon’s Cloud Player doesn’t introduce anything new to the music business, it does underscore consumers’ developing desire for a universal music service. “Like it or loathe it, seamless multidevice access has just become table stakes, not the next great leap forward, he said.

That great leap forwad may come soon, however, as Google and iTunes make their way into the cloud-based music storage space. Both companies are widely believed to be working on their own storage options, which will compete with streaming services like Spotify, which will debut in the U.S. later this year.