My Music is in the Clouds

Amazon this week became the first big internet company to offer something called "cloud music." To the unfamiliar, that term may seem off-putting, like a new soft-rock genre that leans heavily on harp solos. But it's possible many of us will be using cloud music systems in the not-far-off future. Cloud music is simply a term for storing and your music on devices on the Internet and allowing you to access that music from any computer or music device that you have access to. Today, most digital music options, like Apple's iTunes system, force users to store their music on their own hard drives. Some audiophiles amass music collections that take up tens or hundreds of gigabytes of storage space, which slows their computers down. If that drive crashes, the music could be gone. Plus, this music is stuck in one place. You can sync iTunes music, to keep that example going, with Apple's portable devices. But you have to connect your iPhone or iPod to the computer in order to do so. You can't access that music easily from other computers; and it's difficult to store it on multiple devices. In the future music lovers could put all of their music files in the cloud and then access them from anywhere. Being able to access your music from anywhere on almost any device could be a utopia for music lovers. We will have to see what the music industry does in reaction to Amazon's announcement...