School me on cloud storage

i wouldnt consider myself too much of a tech guy, hell i just got a smartphone about a year ago (and i still dont use it to its full potential, just text and youtube.) my nt geeks, how exactly does a cloud storage work? my laptop ( which is pretty damn old, windows 7 baby) is about to take a dive pretty soon, and i have a bunch of music i need to store somewhere. dont want to buy an external hd if i can use a cloud system for free (i think?). my question is, whats the best cloud storage out there? any of em free? would i be able to transfer mp3s from the cloud to my phone? any help would be appreciated, sorry to sound like an old fart.

P4L coz I'm interested to know too... from what I've seen though you can only store your purchased music, not your personal collection that you've burned from CDs or downloaded from Soundcloud etc. But Like I said, I'm not sure so don't quote me, wanna see what the experts say.

What I would say though, is backing up your stuff to an external HD is ESSENTIAL!

Do it now, regardless of the cost. Trust me, from experience as someone who lost around 3000+ full albums, it is one of the most heart breaking experiences there is. Might cost you $100-200 bucks now, but it'll be worth it in the long run.

Also, don't apologize for still using Windows 7... if you do get a new laptop, do NOT upgrade to W8 or 8.1... it's literally the worst OS ever. Only suitable for tablets and even then it's utter crap.

Either get a Mac or search around for an older version of Windows.

Oh and whilst I'm on a roll of advice... NEVER buy a Windows Phone! 

In fact, it's probably best to stay away from any Microsoft product completely.

Onedrive. Available on App Store, Android Market, and Windows phones.

Download it on your PC, upload music. I upload bootleg movies and watch em on my phone when i'm bored.

15gb storage free. $1.99 a month for 100gb. There's bigger deals, such as a TB, but i can't remember the price.

Dropbox is good too, but I've only used it for documents, not sure if it works with movies and music as well.

I just started looking into this a few weeks ago.

I plan to get this http://m.bestbuy.com/m/e/product/detail.jsp?skuId=1766059&pid=1219063237222

It's like a server in your house. You can access files from anywhere.