Amazon made huge waves when it unveiled its new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player offerings, which give users 5GB of free storage for their music. One of the companies immediately impacted by this, would be mSpot, which offers a very similar service.
In fact, soon after Amazon’s announcement hit the airwaves, the company also announced that it would be giving users 5GB of free space.
“We are breaking down the barriers to mainstream adoption of cloud music, so that it makes sense for anyone with a music collection to store it in the cloud, where it will be easily accessible on all kinds of connected devices,” mSpot CEO Daren Tsui tells WebProNews.
“Why?” continues Tsui. “Music collections are personal. People have already invested a lot in their existing collections and want to continue to build them – if its easy for them to listen on both mobile and their computers, their music collections will become more valuable and enjoyable.”
The immediate expansion of mSpot storage is nice, but how can mSpot expect to continue to contend with major players in this space, such as Amazon, Google, and Apple? They’re getting that question a lot, no doubt, which is why they’ve prepared a lengthy statement to answer it. Here it is in its entirety:
How does mSpot plan to compete against Amazon Cloud Drive and then Apple and Google?
Firstly, Amazon is offering a music in the cloud storage locker and player – and this is just one component of mSpot. We’ve had this feature out for almost a year, and in this time, we’ve learned a lot about our customers and what they really want. We’re gearing up to roll out our second phase very soon – including a new music discovery that will be completely unique to the market.
We’re in a multi-device world. While Amazon has done a decent job of their Web player – this is obviously the easiest half of the offering. We don’t think they can compete with us on mobile for the following reasons:
- We’re on both iPhone and Android; when people store their collections online, they don’t want to feel they’re locking down their choice of phone as well.
- Leading mobile carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have been offering our mobile entertainment services to millions of their subscribers for years, under ourwhite label.
- Why? Our technology is truly optimized for the mobile, which has different requirements than the Web. We offer music playback that feels local to the handset, (which is very hard to do); faster syncing and streaming; continuous connectivity to your music, even when you don’t have a connection; choice in how much music to store on your phone – all are not just nice to have, they’re essential. We also offer unique features like lyrics, album art and artists bios right on the handset.
- We believe our proven industry experience on the mobile gives us a big edge over Amazon, or even Google or Apple.
On that note: We would welcome an opportunity to challenge Amazon’s service on mobile usability – any time.
We’ve been out for almost a year on Android, and since December for iPhone. We have a significant lead with over 1 million downloads on Android alone. People have already taken the time to upload their collections into our service, and they love it.
mSpot’s position related to Amazon’s pricing model in comparison to our own.
We think we have a better service and in order to remove any price barriers we’re going to offer 5 GB free storage. Going forward, we expect that the market for storage will be very commoditized and price-driven; but unique music services like mSpot will appeal more to music listeners looking for a complete experience on both Web and mobile.
Amazon gives you 5GB for free, then offers yearly plans at a dollar per GB at 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1,000. Google Music is expected very soon.
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