Feature: Unlicensed: Are Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player illegal?
Amazon.com made waves in March when it announced Cloud Player, a new “cloud music” service that allows users to upload their music collections for personal use. It did so without a license agreement, and the major music labels were not amused.
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon forced this question into the open when Cloud Player went live in March 2011 with no license agreements signed and Android streaming included from day one. The majors pushed back, and Amazon answered in April with a letter to the labels arguing the locker had boosted MP3 sales — turning the legal dispute into an argument about who needs whom.
The legality framing is itself a rerun: Techdirt asked essentially the same question about Google's music ambitions back in December 2005, and Ars Technica's feature now extends it to both Google Music and Cloud Player at once. With no syndicated pickup or public reaction captured around publication, the story's significance rests on the unresolved standoff between the labels and the two biggest digital storefronts.
First-order effects
- The major labels face two of their largest retail partners distributing access to their catalogs via user uploads without negotiated terms — leaving them to choose between legal action and accepting a fait accompli.
- Users of Cloud Player keep uploading and streaming today under the same unlicensed terms, meaning any label lawsuit would target Amazon's service, not individual listeners.
Second-order effects
- Google Music now has a template decision to make: match Amazon's launch-without-licenses approach or hold back until deals are signed — and Amazon's claimed MP3 sales lift weakens the labels' core argument that unlicensed lockers hurt sales.
- If lockers demonstrably drive purchases, licensing negotiations shift from 'pay us for storage' toward bundling locker rights with download sales, changing what the labels can charge for cloud terms.
Third-order effects
- A pattern of launch-first, license-later would invert cloud-music bargaining power: platforms set the market fact first and labels negotiate retroactively rather than gating new distribution formats upfront.
- If the courts or Congress ultimately side with the services, personal-copy cloud storage becomes treated as space-shifting rather than licensed distribution — a precedent that would define every future locker, streaming hybrid, and device-bundled media service.
The trend: Cloud music is moving through the same cycle as earlier digital formats: platforms deploy unlicensed personal-copy services, then force rights holders to negotiate around an established consumer behavior.