Amazon music has always been a significant alternative in the iTunes culture market.  And the personal cloud, notably cloud file hosting space, has been really picking up in light of Box.net’s recent $48 million funding round and other developments we’ve seen lately.  Amazon evidently realized the enormous momentum this industry has gained, which is one of the reasons behind the launch of its Cloud Drive locker service.

Cloud Drive offers 5GB of storage for free, as well as number of paid plans starting at $20/year for 20GB. The service seems to put a special emphasis on digital music, a field Amazon has been especially competitive in with the Amazon MP3 Store – an already default app on Android, and Cloud Player. The latter is another newly launched offering, which will be used by Cloud Drive users to play and upload music.

WSJ reports:

“Users can save music files in MP3 format as well as the AAC format, which is the standard for Apple’s iTunes service. New music purchased from Amazon and saved directly into the Cloud Drive would not count against the storage limit.”

The launch of the service, which is available for PC and Android users but not iPhone holders, comes shortly after the launch of another major person cloud push by the retail giant: the Amazon App store for Android, which supports purchases from both PCs and mobile devices and makes for the lack of a media store for Google’s platform.

The store features a live demo button allowing users to test drive apps before making a purchase, but all these new products don’t necessarily mean Amazon will be able to compete with the likes of iTunes and Box.net. For starters, securing music rights may prove to be a tricky process now that Sony Music Entertainment already declined Amazon’s plans; and Amazon’s Cloud Drive may not be able to match and outshine other cloud storage competitors such CX Inc., Dropbox, Box.net and others.