Rumors had been circulating for a couple of weeks that Amazon would be announcing something soon — I just didn’t expect it to be this soon. 

Amazingly, apparently they’re going ahead with this even though they don’t have the full support of the major labels. So is this technically illegal? I don’t know. But it’s very ballsy.

Next question: will this force Google and/or Apple to speed up their launches of similar services? Google was believed to be trying to unveil something at I/O in May. Apple was perhaps aiming for much later, the fall. Does that change now? The legal issue might decide that — though I’d be sort of surprised if Apple rushed anything. They like to take the “better” over “first” approach.

Speaking of that, my initial reaction of Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player are mixed.

On one hand, the tech is awesome. Built on top of Amazon’s S3, the entire thing is very fast and smooth. I love buying something and putting it right in the locker. It’s a concept that makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand, the drive and player design are pretty awful. Can you imagine managing thousands of songs from here? I can’t imagine manage even hundreds. It looks sort of like something Microsoft would come up with.

Still, the technical execution and convenience may outweigh the bad — especially for Android users. For iOS users, we’re shit out of luck. That sucks, but I can wait. 

If nothing else, this three-way rivalry is going to push things forward quickly. That’s good for all of us.