The latest music storage service launched by Amazon is under threat of potential legal action from the music industry. The service, which allows the users to store songs with the company and then listen to them on a range of devices like phones and computers has evidently enraged music production houses who are threatening to take legal recourse. The service called Cloud Drive announced on Tuesday by Amazon lets users store a thousand songs on the servers of the company and then play them on any computer with an internet connection and phones running on Google’s Android operating system.
This upset Sony Music, which is the producer of prominent artists such as Kings of Leon and Shakira, as Amazon has not procured new music streaming licenses before deciding to launch the cloud service, said Liz Young who is the spokeswoman for the company. She said that Sony hoped that Amazon will try to complete a new deal for the licensing; however until then they were keeping all their legal options open. The launch of the “Music Locker” by Amazon beat companies like Google and Apple to be the first of its kind in the market for such a service where the users are in need of a storage solution for their media files without the hassles of storing them separately on their devices.
After the launch, the shares of Amazon registered a growth of 3.1% and closed at $174.62 on Nasdaq. According to a source close to the discussions, the music labels were informed of these advancements only a week ago and it was much later on that Amazon addressed the issue of negotiating for licenses. The music labels said the move was stunning at the least and many claimed that the service could be illegal.
