According to the trend trackers over at Compete, we’re in the “year of the cloud,” as Amazon, Google and Apple all rush to push their consumers cloudward. Compete sees Amazon attracting far higher numbers of unique visitors than Google for now, and it has no data for Apple’s as-yet-unlaunched iCloud offering. I’ve wondered in the past whether the visibility of these three might begin to reshape public perception of the cloud: what it is and what it’s for. Only time will tell, but it’s intriguing that the Compete piece ends by suggesting that Europe’s Spotify may give all three a run for their money. It says little about the cloud in its marketing collateral, but Spotify is as reliant on the cloud for scaling and delivery as any of the music delivery services called cloud. So a successful Spotify might do more than just change the way consumers pay for and “own” music; it might save the current understanding that the cloud is something bigger than a fancy iPod in the sky.