The Bandwagon Aftermath: You want to store HOW MUCH?!
When Bandwagon launched, I was very skeptical of a new service nobody has ever heard of offering to hold all my music – with no limits – for $69 a year (introductory price).
We fired off an email to Bandwagons CEO to get the scoop on their privacy practices and to find out how unlimited “unlimited” was.
Privacy is a major concern for Bandwagon’s CEO Terence Pua. He responded that they “have put all our energies and hard earned money into Bandwagon. We wouldn’t do anything to risk your data.” The company also has a bill of rights, promising never to sell email address or redistribute your music. In the beginning Pua thought about using “Bandwagon as a possible data business, selling market data in aggregate but opted out of it. It’s a can of worms.”
As far as unlimited goes it seems that Pua underestimated how much music people have on their computer: “we made an honest mistake here. Based on our prior user survey and market research, 30 to 60 GB of data for itunes was average. However, based on Bandwagon demand, we underestimated this. As a result, we will be making changes to the pricing/storage in the coming week. In the meantime, we won’t be signing up new users until pricing has been more solidified. The website reflects this change.
We will of course be refunding all monies to current customers (I have made them aware of this probable pricing/storage change) once we announce the new pricing plans AND will be giving them free one-year accounts (of whatever plan we come up with) for their troubles.”
Although the service is a good idea, it again shows that there is no such thing as unlimited. I can’t wait until Broadband providers start shutting off users for uploading multi gigabytes to Bandwagon.
UPDATE: We learned that Bandwagon is rolling out a DIY version of the program that you can backup to your own Amazon S3, or FTP account.
