Getting your music in the cloud
Amazon Cloud DriveWhen you first join the Cloud Drive service on Amazon, in the Cloud Player you will be asked to download an Adobe Air app to select and upload your files. We had continued trouble with this app and when it did work, it was painfully slow. We soon discovered that the Cloud Drive site also had another option that used an explorer window to select and upload files. This option worked out better, but if you have a large music library, the uploading process is still going to take a significant amount of time, most likely days. When using the explorer window option, which was faster, we also found that using this method means none of the vital metadata from your songs and albums gets pulled in. This can leave you with countless songs by "Unknown" and no one wants that.
Google Music Beta
Google's approach here is very similar to Amazon's, but seems to have fewer problems. Users must download a small piece of Music Manager software to begin the process of uploading their libraries onto Music Beta. The software worked smoothly when we tested it, but users have no control over what songs get uploaded other than choosing between the iTunes folder or ‘Other Folders.' Refining that control will be something that Google will want to fix in the near future. Also much like Amazon, the upload process is terribly slow. For a music library of thousands of songs, expect it to take several days, if not a whole week, to upload your entire library.
Apple iCloud
Apple has a clear advantage here from what we've first heard about the service. While you will have to be on an iOS device or have iTunes running on a PC, which means no streaming through an Internet browser, iCloud won't require any slow uploading process like the competitors. The service will simply scan your iTunes for songs you bought through the iTunes store, or use iTunes Match ($25/year) to find songs that you acquired elsewhere. There will be an option to manually upload songs if you don't want to fork over the money for iTunes Match, but overall the process here seems like it will be much faster for users.
