Store and Stream Music from the Internet with Cloud Based Streaming Services

Mp3 players were a thing of the past for music, now everything is moving to your mobile device. When Apple released the first iPod the tag line was "1,000 songs in your pocket" and we all thought it was amazing, but now storage has become cheap enough that the largest iPod today the classic can hold 40,000 songs. But today there is a new idea called cloud storage which is made possible with mobile phones constantly being connect to the Internet - unless your on At&t. The race for cloud storage streaming music has begun with a few small companies such as Imeem and LaLa which ironically don't exist anymore. Imeem being bought by myspace music and LaLa being bought by Apple because these companies were way ahead of their times when it came to cloud based music.

Today people live off their laptops desktops and mobile phones, so where is their music? The desktop has the most space, so most people have their entire libraries on their desktops and smaller libraries on their laptops mobile phones and maybe even mp3 player. But why carry an mp3 player and a smart phone if your smart phone can also play music? So now we ditch the mp3 player and we have the desktop library of music which is huge that you can not fit on your mobile phone because it does not have as near enough space. And since we all had these amazing iPods before the smart phone boom we have thousands of songs but can not take all of them with us in our pocket anymore since we ditched our iPods for our smart phones to save a little space in our pockets.

Cloud based storage and streaming is the answer to this desktop to mobile device problem we are having today. Instead of "1,000 songs in your pocket" it can now be "unlimited songs in your pocket." With cloud based music streaming you can upload your entire library into the cloud which you can wirelessly stream to your mobile device or any of your computers, and thus you have your entire library in your pocket.

The race for cloud music services is between Apple, Google and a small company called mspot. Currently mspot is beating out the two giants Apple and Google in the race for the best cloud music storage streaming service (well need to think of a better name for this new idea). Apple who bought LaLa has not yet released any cloud based iTunes which is expected, and Google is expected to release Google Music alongside their in the works Android Gingerbread which will be the latest version of Android after Froyo.

Mspot is currently winning the race as its the only one with a working cloud based music streaming service out. Currently mspot allows you to upload 2 gigabytes worth of music for free, but compress it so you can upload more then 2 gigabytes worth of music. Mspot has a companion Android application which allows you to easily sync all your music from your computer to the cloud and back down to your mobile phone carrying your whole music library with you.

One of the only problems with having your library entirely in the cloud is that you need to be connected to your wireless network which can be a problem on an airplane (could be fixed with in flight wifi?). To fix this problem mspot allows you to download certain songs or play list directly to your device so if you do end up in a dead zone you will at least have some tunes until you get out of it.

Currently mspot only offers the free 2 gigabyte storage plan but in the next 2-3 weeks they should selling plans up to 100 gigabytes which can hold up to 80,000 songs, so its not unlimited yet but were getting there. The 100 gigabyte plan on their site is reported as going for $13.99 a month so it isn't exactly cheap.

Now that mspot is ahead of Google And Apple it will be interesting to see how they respond, and will the big giant companies be able to get better pricing plans? If I could make Google Music I would want an unlimited cloud based music plan for $10.00 a month with a companion desktop client and Android app. I would also have scrobbling to last.fm built in, which is something mspot is currently lacking. Also I would have it find all the album art automatically, basically an iTunes in the cloud which is what it seems Apple is working on. What would you want in your dream cloud based music streaming service?