Following in the footsteps of already established cloud music storage services and players, Best Buy is looking to roll out their own version of a cloud music solution, dubbed “Cloud Music.” Looking at www.bestbuymusiccloud.com, it seems to be a run of the mill music uploader and streamer, very much in the vein of Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive. You simply sign up for the service, download the upload software, and you can have access to your uploaded music from a variety of smartphone devices. You can also get local access to your tracks locally. As of now, the service only works with music in your iTunes library, and there’s no word yet if that’s a bug or a “feature.”
As there’s absolutely nothing new about this service, one must wonder what Best Buy’s angle is here. They aren’t advertising integration with Best Buy music purchases, and it only works with iTunes for now. At first, it seems like they give you smartphone access for free, but while trying to add a phone, they display their premium plan, at $3.99/month, that you need to use for smartphone access. It all seems kind of mediocre.
The service is powered by a new startup called Play Anywhere. It looks like they’re trying to make a proprietary music cloud platform that companies can purchase instead having to develop in-house. As Google and Amazon already have plenty of infrastructure and server space to handle a cloud music platform, Play Anywhere is geared towards companies that want similar capabilities but don’t want the infrastructure overhead.