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Review: The Cloud Player

Posted on 04. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Reviews

I came across this cool application while I was taking a look at Jolicloud. It’s called The Cloud Player,  and it’s definitely something that could be really useful for for netbooks and smartbooks in the future. Built with Google’s App Engine, the app looks almost like iTunes in your browser window. In fact, I’m pretty sure emulating iTunes was the goal here. You can search for tracks in the upper right hand corner, and on the left hand side there are some icons that separate music by genre.

The most popular track of the day can be found listed at the top of the window, which is useful. I found a couple of cool tracks this way when I was playing around with it. Playlists and other customizations can be saved in The Cloud Player, as you are able to sign in with you Google account. You can even share as well as collaborate on playlists if you want to. The coolest thing about The Cloud Player is that it is ready to play music whenever you are – simply go to the website and it’s ready to play some music. I thought that they sound quality was quite good, with very little time needed to buffer and better sounding than competitors like Pandora or Jango.

The downside? The music is all from independent artists. I know for some that is not a dealbreaker, but I had never heard of any of the artists on The Cloud Player. I also notice that the tracks that were available tended to lean heavily towards the electronica genre, which isn’t a problem for me but may be an issue for some.

Regardless, with slick interface and some cool collaborative features, The Cloud Player is worth checking out. It may end up being big for all we know.

Tags: Chrome OS, Google, Google App Engine, iTunes, Jango, Jolicloud, Pandora, The Cloud Player