Amazon to Provide CD Buyers With Cloud-Based MP3s For Free | Hacker News Reader

Amazon to Provide CD Buyers With Cloud-Based MP3s For Free

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164 pointsderpenxyne113 comments

This is pretty awesome, but I can't help myself see it rather cynically in that I don't expect it to expand to books or movies any time soon. Especially not books.

Ripping a CD is so trivial and such an old practice at this point, and so many MP3s can fit on a portable device, that buying a CD already de facto gave you the MP3s for free (except for the bit where you'd have to pay to get more Cloud Player storage if you want to use Amazon to host them in the cloud for you). So it's a cool freebie that isn't really costing much.

But I can't rip my own books, and the Kindle cloud hosting and syncing to the last position read across devices and everything is so damn useful that there are a lot of books I own physical copies of that I probably will end up buying again digitally. So, for me at least, doing this for books actually would cost the publishers and Amazon lost revenue, unlike for MP3s. I just don't see them deciding that that revenue is less valuable than the customer goodwill it would create.

Bundling a Kindle version and a hardcover version at a discounted price would be a nice halfway step, though personally, I'm increasingly moving towards a "buy on Kindle, find hardcover (sometimes used) if I really like it" strategy.

I wish that they'd do this for books. The biggest thing keeping me from buying more ebooks is that they're usually the same price as the physical book - and, in some cases, more expensive than the physical book.

At that price, I'd just as soon buy the physical copy.

On the other hand, it would be nice to know that, when I buy a physical copy, I also have access to a digital version if needed. In the case of technical books, which I reference only occasionally (but need very immediately when I do reference them), it would be perfect.

More than likely, given the option to buy an ebook for $x or a physical book with the addition of the ebook for 1.5*$x, I would probably spend the extra money for the option.

As would I. The benefit of having a physical copy of a book is tangible (pardon the pun). I can't lend ebooks to friends, but I can physical copies.

In the UK one of the reasons that digital copies don't come with books is that if they did that it would mean that it's now VAT chargeable. Books normally don't have VAT but digital goods do.

I would imagine they would give the digital good away for free, and add it as a separate line-item in checkout, so vat would be 15% of $0.

I simply don't understand applying a value added tax to digital goods. The marginal cost of production for digital goods is near zero. That means that the value added is near zero.

Already own the physical book? Pirate the ebook.

I know where you're coming from and i don't cast any aspersions on the activity - some ebook implementations just suck and you're infinitely better with the pirate version even if you've already paid for the "real" version.

Wanted to mention O'Reilly though - for $5 and a note of the ISBN number off the back of your book you get the ebook in whatever format you desire, can re-download it as many times as you want in whatever formats, and it'll automatically sync to dropbox.

I've been stocking up on them - it does work really well. I get to carry about all my books (well, not quite), with notes and highlights and i only need to keep physical copies of the books i refer to most often. It's been a bit of a revelation for me.

Well, it is here for movies. A lot of them come with a digital copy.

Wait 6 months to a year.

Try to use your digital copy.

It won't work - this is a useless disc.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can have a physical library at home and the exact same digital library on my Kindle wherever I go. I too think the bundle is a major step in the right direction

Also, buying the mp3's essentially gives you a CD for free, albeit at a slightly, yet imperceptible to most, reduced quality. Coupled with the fact that most people buying CD's still only buy them for a handful of songs, I think Amazon is making a bigger deal out of this than it really is.

Sometimes I'll buy the used amazon cds instead of mp3s if it's something that I'm not totally earwormed on. I've had a couple recently that were 1c + shipping, and came within a couple of days.

One quick trip through the ripper and they're done.

"Available to US customers only."[0]

That sucks.

"MP3 versions of tracks from CDs purchased from Amazon since 1998 and that are eligible for AutoRip will be delivered to your Cloud Player library."

That rocks.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=...

The page goes on to say that the first time you log in to your Cloud Player account they will "scan" your purchases and provide the MP3's for any eligible albums.

It turns out the only album that I purchased on CD that was eligible was an album I bought as a gag gift for a friend.

Here I was expecting some awesome free* MP3's but instead I got Barry Manilow.

What other music did you buy? I just logged in and many discs I've bought in the past have shown up. Also were your past purchases that aren't showing up purchased directly from Amazon, or from 3rd parties?

I just logged in to Cloud Player: "We've added 1084 songs from AutoRip CD purchases for free."

That's what you get for thinking Barry Manilow should be a gag gift. Barry is the Man....ilow.

I wonder if Rick Astley's CDs are eligible for this. I'd like to think more than a few people accidentally rick-rolled themselves long after rick-rolling some friends in real life.

FWIW I'm in Canada and logged into my amazon.com[1] account and was pleasantly surprised to see ~100 songs from cds I'd previously purchased.

[1] I have both .ca and .com accounts and use the .com account much more frequently than .ca.

Wow, I now have the MP3 for the CD's I've given away as Christmas presents for the last 10 years. Who the heck is Il Divo?

I just want to point out that the link is an affiliate link. It does no harm (other than Amazon making a bit less), and I don't know what the policy on this is, but IMO if someone makes money from this it should be the site providing the traffic (YC).

An affiliate link for Gizmodo, he must of (unwittingly?) copied it from their newsfeed.

Side note: is there a policy (on Amazon's end) for editing affiliate links? Could pg theoretically swap the tag to ?ref=yc-20 if he wanted to?

Amazon has no such policy.

I know this because we considered doing it at reddit (changing or adding our affiliate link to all Amazon links).

We weren't sure how the community would react, so we we opted not to do it.

Metafilter does it. But my love is for reddit.

A site I go to (OzBargain.com.au) allows users to submit affiliate links, but automatically replaces them with it's own affiliate link for readers who aren't logged in, so I assume there's no policy.

It seems like a reasonable compromise to me, but that's in the context of a website which is based on sharing discounted products.

On clicking through to the eligible CDs many of them seem to cost less to purchase than buying the MP3s to begin with. Isn't that a bit silly? If you just want the MP3s it's sometimes cheaper now to just buy the CD anyway.

Edit: am I right in thinking the difference is that this offer only nets you the tracks in your cloud player account whereas buying the mp3s means you can download them too and do what you like with them? If so it seems silly that you wouldn't also be given DRM free files with this offer as it would just save you the hassle of making them yourself.

A significant majority of the time when I want to purchase MP3s from iTunes it is cheaper for me to purchase the CD from Amazon and have it shipped to me, then iTunes match it. I've got about 80 or so CDs I've done this with.

I don't know if I'm exploiting a loophole or not, but I figure because I have the physical CD at my desk, it's legit. I'm still uncertain if this is shady behavior on my part or not - but I save $2-$3 / CD, so I keep doing it.

I believe that is totally legit. You should check out Murfie.com

They have said that Match is for getting high quality versions of songs that you ripped from CDs, so no reason to feel bad here.

You are making a trade-off in time, since you have to wait for the CD to ship and then you have to go to the trouble to rip it.

Right - the vast majority of these CDs are classic releases from the 70s, 80s - definitely not time sensitive. Amazon just tends to have them for super cheap, whereas iTunes keeps the price high. I figure now I have the best of _three_ worlds. Physical CD, Itunes Match syncs it across all my gear - and now, presumably, it will stay in my Amazon Locker forever.

Your cloud player tracks are free to download. I do it all the time to have them uploaded to my Google Play account which I use for streaming.

I do something similar with Spotify. Works quite well

I just tried buying an AutoRip-eligible CD and it treated the AutoRip mp3s just like a regular mp3 purchase - I was able to download them using the Amazon MP3 Downloader app.

Wonder if Amazon will soon lower the prices of MP3 albums which are pricer than the CDs to match the CDs, or if they're somehow prevented from doing so.

It's been that way for a while. I've been buying and ripping myself since back when the last independent record store around me closed, and online music was only selling DRM'd 128kbps tracks.

It was really about the DRM and the quality (I'm no golden ear, but even on my dicey consumer equipment I can hear the artifacts at 128). The price difference was just icing on the cake.

It's not like it took a lot of effort or time to put the CD in the tray, hit "go" and get 320 kbps and a FLAC track (for kicks).

It's a little frustrating that only some discs are eligible. I wonder if that's just because they haven't ripped everything or if they have specific license agreements.

I'll pitch my friend's here - Murfie (https://www.murfie.com/) does much the same thing, but also includes a marketplace so you can sell your discs. Because everything's backed by a physical CD in their warehouse, everything can just happen in the cloud and be available for streaming, but there's still a first-sale doctrine that they can point to.

Isn't that physical CD warehouse the same sort of legal argument that failed for MP3.com in the 90s?

That's interesting, but the prospect of having them go bankrupt and not only lose digital files, but also physical disks, is a bit disturbing. Also, no word on whether disks are fungible... if I send you my autographed maroon 5 boxset, will I get the same boxset back? Or just an equivalent product feom the warehouse?

Why would you send your valuable autographed boxset?

It was hypothetical; why would I own a Maroon 5 album to start with? Jokes aside, I mostly mean that if they treat the disks as fungible you don't know what condition you'll get it back in, which might matter for certain albums.

I wonder how many people both buy CD's and care about CloudPlayer? I guess I don't know anyone from either party so there's a chance of there being some overlap. To me this seems like an utter waste of resources.

How about offering a Spotify-like streaming service? How about making CloudPlayer free for the first 20,000 songs like Google Play? How about making a web player that doesn't make me feel like I'm in Target? What about a web store that's really accessible for indie musicians (that means without labels). I really want to like Amazon Music, but at this point it doesn't really feel like a competitor in my demographic (college, computer-savvy).

Edit: Those who think that buying CD's is supporting artists should know that if you buy an MP3 from them instead they generally get a lot more profit.

This sounds like a win-win for me. Currently am using iTunes Match, which I switched to after using Spotify Premium for a year.

I still like buying discs from artists I like and collecting them on the shelf, and having this auto-import music is nice. If you don't like the disc version, then buy just the mp3 version for a few bucks less and you will still have it show up in your cloud drive. This auto-import is just a nice bonus now.

Also the CloudPlayer free tier gives you 250 songs free to import. Pay $25/year and you get 250,000 available to import.

I'm probably in the minority, but I like to buy CDs because I like having the physical product to add to my collection. The artwork, liner notes, case, etc. It's just the thing I like to collect I guess.

I've recently started buying a lot more digital media, especially since Google Play an Amazon will often do sales of albums for <$5 which is hard to beat. But maybe now I'll start just buying the physical CD from Amazon and get both (which I can then stream easily from my Google Play account).

Does any one know if buying CDs "used" from Amazon will get you the AutoRip? (maybe I missed where it said which are eligible)

EDIT: Only CDs sold by Amazon.com, not other sellers.

To me, CloudPlayer means, "I can download MP3s." That's all I use it for. I just got the RATM XX box set MP3s a few minutes ago, and that saves me putting the CDs in a computer and ripping them myself.

You're missing the fact that you can get any songs from supported CDs that you bought after 1998. Even if you don't buy CDs anymore, if you've bought any from Amazon in the past, this is a great way to get access to them in the cloud.

The point of this move is to get more people to care about CloudPlayer and Amazon MP3 purchases in general. They've just exploded the number of people who have used the service by a huge margin. Once more people are familiar with the system it will probably drive increasing adoption.

There are little downsides to CloudPlayer. You buy music, Amazon keeps track of it, you can listen to it or re-download it in DRM-free MP3 form whenever you want. Can't really see much wrong with that.

If only the publishers would let them do this with books!

If Hollywood falls next with video, book publishers won't be far behind.

That's a big if.

There's Ultraviolet now for video.

I'm sure they will in 5-10 years. The ebook/ereader market is rather 'new' compared to the digital audio market, at this point everyone has likely already purchased a digital version of their music or pirated it so there won't be any lost sales (same idea for iTunes match and other matching/cloud services).

It's interesting to see the music industry keep moving forward and allowing this type of stuff to happen (and the itunes match/etc services). The other two big industries are so far behind.

>It's interesting to see the music industry keep moving forward and allowing this type of stuff to happen (and the itunes match/etc services). The other two big industries are so far behind.

The reason seems to be exactly what you pointed out - the music industry's got a 10 year head start on this because technology arrived sooner that grew the market and pretty much forced the labels' hands. Broadband, Napster, iPods, and the industry's ridiculous DRM responses to piracy (and the pain & suffering that came with it) led the labels to realize a common sense approach was the only thing that would save them.

The movie studios certainly still haven't learned this yet - I feel like we're at the point with movies that we were with music in the mid-2000s. Those were the dark days when there were a dozen different competing DRM standards for downloads, and the record labels were releasing CDs that were deliberately damaged so as to not be rippable (or worse, that covertly introduced rootkits that interfered with access to the CDROM drive).

> It's interesting to see the music industry keep moving forward and allowing this type of stuff to happen (and the itunes match/etc services). The other two big industries are so far behind.

There is also a big difference in how easy/legal it is for a home user to convert the physical good to a digital good. Ripping CDs is trivial and legal. Ripping DVDs is illegal due to the DMCA, and ripping books is physically challenging. The larger the barrier to ripping, the more publishers can charge people to own both formats.

I've always thought that there should be a startup that both sells used books and "rips" books for you. You buy the used version for a couple of bucks, pay a couple of bucks for them to "scan" it, and you get a PDF and they destroy the book. I would think that destroying a hard copy for every PDF distributed would offer some sort of legal protection, but I doubt that would stop the publishers from suing the company into bankruptcy.

I've used this to great success, it does just what you're talking about, including OCR if you'd like: http://1dollarscan.com

The digital output, is that a decent book or just a plain scan with (a lot of) faults?

I currently buy two copies of books that I really really like -- both the Kindle and the hardback, both from Amazon. Maybe there are enough crazy people like me that the publishers shouldn't offer this 2:1 deal?

Have to confess I do the same for my favourite authors' hardbacks. I'd happily do this more often and with paperbacks if they priced it right - I like having and seeing books on shelves. However at the moment I mostly feel resentful and gouged by the publisher when I want a book in both formats and they get a double dip from me for exactly the same set of words.

This is great, but how did Amazon manage to pull this off? Are we effectively buying three products when we buy an AutoRip CD? (1) The physical CD, (2) The streaming rights for Amazon cloud player, (3) The MP3s which you can download from the cloud player. Is this a legal way to purchase a CD and gift it to a friend or resell it and still maintain the streaming/MP3 rights? Or does the RIAA have a problem with that?

Shrink-wrapped CDs I have gifted friends and family years ago are now showing up in my cloud player. I have to admit that feels a little weird. How is that different than if I opened the CD and burned it before gifting it?

Yeah, basically Amazon is paying the man for both the CD and MP3 when you buy a CD. I'm a little surprised this isn't Prime-only.

I wonder how few CDs sell these days.

It still dwarfs all other formats and revenue streams for recorded music.

Source? I thought MP3 surpassed CD over a year ago...

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/01/digital-music-...

I don't know how they pulled it off, but I like that they did. Things like this make the music industry more flexible over time, and is only better for us consumers.

I agree though - I had the same thing happen to me when I logged in today (some music that I bought for others on CD is now "mine" in my cloud library). I also got a bunch more stuff that I had bought for myself though, so overall, I'm happy with it.

Nice. But I wish Amazon would start a trade-in program (similar to Apple). I have CDs from way back when and I'd like to able to get MP3 versions of those CDs. I'm happy to send the CDs to Amazon and have then replace them with MP3s on my cloud player. How about that for a business idea?!

edit: Apple doesn't have this but they do convert MP3s you upload to legal versions. Unsure if Amazon provides this as well. Also, while I realize it is easy to rip and upload, I just don't have the time to do this. I don't think it is worth paying someone to do this either. I'd rather Amazon take this up.

Amazon now has Cloud Player Premium[1], which is very similar to iTunes Match.

"Import your music collection - even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs. All imported songs we match are instantly made available in Cloud Player and upgraded to high-quality 256 Kbps audio."

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2658409011

exactly. which means i need to rip everything. i dont. amazon should just take my cds and give me mp3s.

There is a startup that does this! www.murfie.com

Disclosure: I work for murfie

Looks like a great service. However, my reason to not using you however is that I'm tied in to the Amazon ecosystem. I buy all my new music on Amazon. I buy my movies, tv shows there too. Using you means I'm tied to another service for a specific need. Do you guys have tie-in with Amazon in any way? Amazon should really buy you guys (unless you want to stand alone)

My immediate reaction to stuff like this is skeptical. The whole concept of "owning" a "cd" seems so artificial now.

Amazon is selling MP3s. Anyone interested in "owning" the album should simply make their own backups of the MP3s in question, which have no DRM on them. I do. Their cloud service is nice and all, but MP3s can still be removed from it. If Amazon can remove it from my personal hard drives and backups, I've already lost anyhow.

Amazon's doing it right, here; if you want convenience, OK. If you want to manage the MP3s yourself, OK. In contrast to their ebooks or video.

You could always download it from their service, too. I routinely download tracks on my phone so I have something to listen to when I have poor mobile service.

Once I accidentally managed to quickly download mp3's for free when my billing info was out of date.

A lot of comments about how no one owns a CD, its a waste of resources yada yada yada

For me, I own a car from 2001 so CDs are great. I buy CDs at concerts/shows, as I've long surpassed the appropriate number of t-shirts to own. I like supporting the artist, particularly if the artist is doing a signing. My girlfriend buys CDs, from Amazon, just because she likes having a physical things. She has been griping that it is a pain to her that she has to rip/burn it herself!

Maybe you should try buying MP3's directly from the artists via http://bandcamp.com/ or their websites. Artists make way more cash that way (oftentimes tremendously more) than they do when you buy a CD, especially if they're independent. You could probably install an auxiliary adapter to hook up an mp3 player in your car for around $100 and you'd be saving the planet too. In my old car I have a $10 tape adapter that works great with my iPhone.

For me personally, having less "stuff" is the biggest bonus of the digital age. I can't really argue with your girlfriend who "likes having physical things" except by saying that the stuff those physical things are made of is really terrible for the Earth. Buying CD's just seems socially irresponsible if you have an alternative.

Edit: Here's a little support for my carbon footprint case http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/the-carbon-case-fo.... The additional thing to note is that when you buy a CD, that carbon cost is spent upfront. With an streaming mp3, the cost is distributed over time with technologies that are continuously improving in efficiency.

When you buy a CD from bandcamp, they send you the physical CD but in the meantime give you an immediate link to download high-bitrate digital audio files. I much prefer possessing the audio files to streaming audio from a cloud service, which is subject to the usual legal and contractual foolishness and can be turned off at any time.

Just checked and it looks like I can download the tracks to my PC or device for the songs that were added just like anything else in my Cloud Player.

If so, that's very good news for this service.

When this is available in Germany (or basically outside the US), they got me. This is how to make things easy.

iTunes Match [0] does the same thing and is already available in dozens of countries, including Germany [1].

It works for all kinds of music, not just tracks you bought from Apple. Ripped CDs, Amazon MP3s, other sources -- and if the quality of your tracks is less than a 256Kbps AAC file, the service downloads better versions from iTunes.

[0] http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5085

No, it does not do the same thing, Apple doesn't sell CDs.

It doesn't need to. iTunes Match doesn't care about where you purchased your CDs. If you want to continue buying CDs at Amazon, that's fine. Rip them in iTunes, and iTunes Match will keep them in the cloud.

It is fair to point out that with iTunes match you will not have the pressed CD shipped to you. In addition to the hassle of burning your own, burned CD's can degrade over time. The nice thing about both services is that you can always burn another!

If iTunes Match requires ripping, and this just uses purchase history, it's pretty fundamentally different.

I recommend you read the post I responded to. For someone who bought CDs in Germany through Amazon, their new service is of no help. However, if you bought music at Amazon's site in Germany, iTunes Match will serve you as well as Amazon's site does in the US.

What stops me from buying it, getting the MP3s, then selling the wrapped CD on Ebay?

Apparently nothing, since they've just added a load of albums I bought to give away as Christmas presents to my Cloud Player account...

Why can't they just offer FLAC and eliminate CDs altogether?

Because most people don't want FLAC. It's huge and incompatible with the most popular players for no noticeable benefit to the vast majority of listeners.

AIFF or WAV would be much better candidates if we were going down the lossless digital music route because they are more widely compatible (though a 320 kbps mp3 is the most I'll ever need).

> It's huge ... no noticeable benefit

> WAV would be much better

I'm just saying that if we're choosing a lossless audio codec I'd like one supported by Apple. I'll sacrifice storage capacity for being able to listen with iTunes/iPhones. That said... I always choose mp3's for everything that's not a "master copy".

They could offer FLAC and MP3 instead of CDs and MP3...

Agreed, though I'm entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, so I'd prefer ALAC from iTunes. Since I prefer to rip my CD's in ALAC, I would have no need to buy the actual CD. Of course, I suspect that's why the labels have been holding true hi-bitrate files back from the likes of Apple & Amazon.

Ripping to FLAC is the only reason I still purchase CDs.

That said, I do transcode to MP3 for portable players, so a cloud player that linked to MP3s from my phone would be useful.

This is pretty awesome. I often buy the CD because it's cheaper than MP3s, only to rip it and throw it away. At least this will save me a lot of the work.

When do we get Kindle copies of the books we bought?

I'd happily send Amazon my physical books in exchange for the Kindle versions.

I wonder how often the shipping cost works out to be more expensive than just buying the kindle version.

I speculate they're just trying to de-dup content.

An interesting point. If you buy the CD, rip it, and upload the MP3 to Amazon, then it costs Amazon to store that. With matching Amazon has to pay the label for another license for that song, but they can just symlink it into your locker instead of storing another copy. Which is cheaper? Amazon has probably done the math.

and if they're REALLY smart they have a deal worked out where they don't have to buy the license until you play a track for the first time.

Great, no linux support for the amazon cloud player. Wtf? It's a web app so what does it matter what platform I'm on?

I've bought tons of CDs from Amazon, at least a hundred. Exactly two show up in the cloud player. Oh well.

Contact customer service - Amazon has consistent the best CS in the industry. It may be a genuine bug.

About bloody time!

"Cloud based" implies that some processing is going on remotely, which it clearly isn't. It's just a download hosted on a CDN.

Are we allowed to just slap the term on anything Internet based now?

Isn't the idea that the mp3s will be available using the amazon cloud player?

A perpetual download. Big difference.

What's the difference between the processing required for this and the processing required for "cloud storage" which I've seen frequently used on HN for some time now.

Whether you like it or not, "a download hosted on a CDN" was renamed to "cloud storage" a while back. Also, you can play music from Amazon's site without "downloading" anything.

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