Amazon faces backlash over ‘music locker’ service

A new Amazon.com service that lets customers store songs and play them on a variety of phones and computers is facing a backlash from the music industry that could ignite a legal battle.

Amazon's Cloud Drive, announced on Tuesday, allows customers to store about 1,000 songs on the company's web servers for free instead of their own hard drives and play them over an internet connection directly from web browsers and on phones running Google's Android software.

Amazon beat rivals Google and Apple into the market for such "music locker" services, which are meant to appeal to consumers frustrated by the complexities of storing their favourite songs at work, home and on their smartphones. Apple and Google were expected to launch their services at the end of last year.