CUSTOM INSTALLATION HOW-TO

Digital music used to be something that you downloaded from a service like iTunes and stored on your computer. But those were the old days. With new online solutions on tap from Amazon and Google, the idea now is to ditch local storage and upload those same files — along with all the other tunes you’ve ripped from your CD collection over the past decade or two — to Cloud-based servers and stream them over the Internet for playback.

Despite the obvious hassle of having to upload a potentially massive music collection, and — at least in the case of Amazon Cloud Drive — pay for the privilege to do so (once you pass the 5 GB threshold), there are advantages to this approach. The main one is being able to access all of your music anywhere you want from a mobile device or computer — wherever you can jump online. And then there’s the safety of knowing a backup of that data exists in case your computer or external hard drive kicks it.

Of course, many of us use Amazon and Google on a daily basis. But at the end of the day, do you want to entrust them with your entire digital life? Music, photos, everything? As the recent Sony PSN debacle proves, not even mega-corporations are immune to hackers and shutdowns. It might be a better idea to store that valuable data in your own personal Cloud.