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What’s My Best Option for Storing Music in the Cloud?

Al Griffin  |  Mar 26, 2015

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Q I am trying to figure out if I can use Dropbox to store both my Rdio Favorites collection and iTunes library. I have a huge iTunes library—around 600 GB. I would like to give a few friends and relatives access to the music. Is this possible?  —Jim Gold

A No, not with Rdio. Streaming services such as Rdio and Spotify let you cache tracks to your computer or mobile device for offline playback when you’re away from an Internet connection, but you can’t move those tracks off your device to a separate hard drive or to a cloud storage service like Dropbox. What both services will do is “match” tracks in iTunes: any music residing in your iTunes library will show up in your Favorites (Rdio) or Your Music (Spotify) collection—provided the service has those tracks available.

While I prefer Rdio, in this case I think Spotify may better meet your needs. Both services are similar, but Spotify has a feature called Local Files that lets you add tracks residing on your computer’s hard drive to the Your Music library. This is useful for situations where you want your library to incorporate music that’s not offered up for streaming—The Beatles’ catalog, for example.

What should be of particular interest to you, though, is that Spotify lets you select a Dropbox folder as a Local Files destination. Basically, this means that any music you have stored in Dropbox can be accessed via Spotify from any location. As for giving your friends and relatives access, you can pay for a Spotify Family account that will provide up to four users with access. (The Dropbox Terms of Service discourages users from sharing content in a manner that violates Intellectual Property laws, but I don’t think you have to worry.)

While researching options, you may want to also check out Google Play Music All Access. This service provides a sizeable streaming library, iTunes matching, and cloud storage. Unfortunately, there’s a cap to the number of tracks you can upload, and the Google Play app is only available for Android, so there will be limitations if you use only iOS devices.

COMMENTS
applebyter's picture
Submitted by applebyter on March 26, 2015 - 7:44pm

The key phrase at the end "give a few friends and relatives access" is probably not legal according to the license you have for the music and the area in which you live. Check on legalities before broadcasting your intent to the world.

Perrin1710's picture
Submitted by Perrin1710 on March 28, 2015 - 8:36am

Another option is to buy yourself a decent NAS and allow your friends access to your music via (for example) Plex. Most NAS suppliers allow private cloud possibilities (I use a QNAP, which works like a charm). You can set the rights etc yourself. As mentioned by applebyter, you have to consider the licencing bit though.

Robert J. Phillips's picture
Submitted by Robert J. Phillips on January 28, 2016 - 7:50am

We are facing constant growing of data amount in both the Web and personal computers. And the more information we need to proceed the more time it takes. That is why I think that data rooms are perfect for this today.

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