My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Music Cloud Streaming set to rise in 2014 - Still no home-grown Jamaican or Caribbean Free Cloud Storage Services as we Ride Along on Foreign Cloud Services

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Music Cloud Streaming set to rise in 2014 - Still no home-grown Jamaican or Caribbean Free Cloud Storage Services as we Ride Along on Foreign Cloud Services

Streaming is now the Buzz word on Americans and now Jamaicans lips now that 3G, 4G LTE and the every present Free Wi-Fi Connection is available, especially IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) Streaming as per my blog article entitled “Cable TV subscriptions Declines as the Connected Home boost IPTV Streaming”.

Now the trend is set to catch on with Radio too with the increasing popularity of Music Streaming Services such as Spotify and Google Music as described in “Spotify, Rdio, Beats Music, and more: How to get started with subscription music services”, published January 27, 2014 12:30 PM PST by Matthew Moskovciak, CNET Reviews

This is much to the chagrin of the Music Industry as noted in “The Music Industry Moves Kicking and Screaming Into A Streaming World”, published 1/10/2014 @ 6:00AM by Bobby Owsinski, Forbes.

If you’ve been reading the Geezam Blog, my home away from home, you’d have realized that Google Play movies has expanded to included Jamaica and some other Caribbean nations as noted in Kelroy’s blog article entitled “Google Play Movies expands to Jamaica, Trinidad and 10+ more Countries”.

But still no local Free Music Streaming from Google Play, as Google Music is still restricted to the US of A since they launched back in November 2011 as stated in Kelroy’s blog article entitled “Google Music goes live but only for the United States”.

Bummer dude! Google, why?

I admit, this is great news, as we can now Stream Movie titles, albeit like Netflix’s effort, it’s riddled with older, outdated content as per Romano’s article “Is Netflix a Netjoke?” Still, the region is stepping forward.

Even FLOW Jamaica is catching onto the Streaming bandwagon. This after having inked deals with e-Media Interactive to carry their content as their Cable and Internet Broadband Network as BYOD (Bring your Own Device) Tablet and smartphone growth in Corporate Jamaica expands as predicted in my Geezam blog article entitled “Columbus Communications expects BYOD boost for Cloud Computing”.

Free Music Streaming – Best DIY Options are still foreign Storage Lockers

So are there any Local Free Music Streaming options for Jamaicans and the wider Caribbean as opined in my Geezam blog article entitled “The Music Industry and the Cloud – Streaming Radio Nirvana”. Short answer no, as even Streaming in Jamaica is powered by Cloud Services located abroad for the local Radio Stations listed on the Top 5 Website.

My favourites Local Streaming Websites of course are shown below, mainly because they all have Apps that you can download from the Apple iTunes and Google Play App Stores for your smartphones:

1.      Hitz 92 FM
2.      Kool 97 FM
3.      RJR 94 FM
4.      ZIP 103 FM
5.      Mello Radio 88.1 FM

Right now, Amazon Cloud Drive is the closest and best thing to Free Music Streaming that can work on any device with 5 GB worth of Free Storage Locker for Music as per my blog article entitled “Amazon Cloud Drive and the Music Industry - Apples, Lions, Tigers and Bears”.

Even better for lazy bums like myself is Dropbox, which if you’ve read my Geezam blog article entitled “Why Amazon Cloud Drive, the DropBox Clone, is Legal” is what I used to use while I was a student at UWI (University of the West Indies) from 2005 to 2009 to basically synchronize and get universal access to listen to my music as well as act as a convenient 2GB Storage locker for my files.

Dropbox is now owned by Yahoo thanks to CEO Marissa Mayer; great deal as it means that Gigabyte sized File sharing is now integrated into Yahoo as stated in my blog article entitled “Dropbox partners with Yahoo! Mail for Gigabyte File Sharing as CEO Marissa Mayer Google’s Yahoo”. As per usual, you can increase you Storage limit by soliciting friends to get the Dropbox Cloud Drive. This is how I’ve managed to grow my Dropbox Cloud Storage to from 2GB to 5GB!

Google Drive is even better for storing music and playing it wherever now with 15 GB of Cloud Storage as noted in my blog article entitled “How to use Dropbox, Google Drive and Sound File Sharing Websites to Share and Promote your Content online - Sharing is Caring”; just point you Music player to the shared Cloud Drive Folder that appears on your Desktop once you install the Google Drive or Dropbox folder. 

Finally, you can supersize you Google Drive and Dropbox with a 100 GB Cloud Storage managed as one Contiguous Virtual Drive using JoliCloud as described in my blog article entitledHow to create and manage a 100GB Virtual Cloud Drive including Google Drive and Dropbox - My 100GB+ Cloud Drive Dream as the popularity of my blogs is Hunger Games Catching Fire”.

I’m still waiting to see local home-grown Cloud Storage and Streaming Services in Jamaica, possibly powered by Digicel Cloud Storage Service as I’d hoped in my Geezam blog article entitledDigicel’s Cloud Backup Services – A deep Analysis”.

Just get Dropbox and Google Drive for your smartphone from the Apple iTunes and Google Play App Stores and you can enjoy Cloud Streaming anywhere anytime for free.

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