Amazon Matches iTunes Match With New 'Audio Upgrade' Feature

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Amazon Matches iTunes Match With New 'Audio Upgrade' Feature

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 31, 2012 @09:18PM from the lifetime-supply-of-bitrates dept.

New submitter bostonidealist writes "Just after the July 6th 1-year anniversary of its unlimited music storage promotion (and presumably after early subscribers have all renewed their annual subscriptions), Amazon.com has changed the way its Cloud Player and Cloud Drive services work. Starting today, music uploaded to a Cloud Drive will count against its owner's Cloud Drive quota and will not be accessible through Cloud Player. Further, music files previously uploaded to Cloud Player or Cloud Drive are being automatically converted to 256 Kbps audio whenever Amazon 'has the rights to do so' and new audio files uploaded to Cloud Player will automatically be checked against Amazon's music database in iTunes Match-like fashion. One of the appeals of Amazon's Cloud Player service up to this point has been that users could pay a flat fee and store an unlimited number of their own music files (with their own tags, artwork, and audio data intact). Now, Amazon is automatically replacing users' previously uploaded data with its own, without allowing users to opt in/out."

24 of 157 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Cloud services are for idiots. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-31 21:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

> Now, Amazon is automatically replacing users' previously uploaded data with its own, without allowing users to opt in/out
*Exactly* why cloud services are for retards only. You would have to be a complete moron to trust a third party with your personal data. A complete and utter moron.
1. Re:Cloud services are for idiots. by bjwest · 2012-07-31 21:57 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Actually, I think music one of the few good uses for this so called cloud thing. One easy to connect to location for my desktop, laptop, tablet, cell and automobile to connect to my music library is a good thing. No need to worry about keeping things in sync or forgetting to transfer that new song you like over to the device you have on hand at the moment. But like anything, if you keep your one and only copy in there, you get what you deserve.
  
  --
  
  --- Keep the choice with the user..
2. Re:Cloud services are for idiots. by squiggleslash · 2012-07-31 22:42 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  You would have to be a complete moron to trust a third party with your personal data. A complete and utter moron
  
  Amazon's cloud service stores, for free, about 5Gb of your music. The intention of cloud music services like Amazon's (and Google's, and Apple's, and Ubuntu's...) is to provide a convenient way to access your music from anywhere at any time. Your purchases from the named service get added automatically, you're encouraged to download them too, and you run a program that syncs your main music repository, which you typically continue to use, with the cloud service so everything you add to that gets added to the service. Then, when you want to access a track, playlist, or whatever, you can do so whether you're at home, at work, or in the middle of nowhere with your smartphone.
  I'm not entirely sure how that's "personal", and I'm not sure how you're defining "trust", but it's hard to see how anyone would be a moron for merely using the system. If, tomorrow, the cloud services drop off the face of the planet, you still have your music, and you can continue to use that music just as you did before the cloud service existed.
  The summary seems to invent a person who'd be personally affected by the fact that meta-data and custom encodings (maybe? Not mentioned but I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt) might change once music is uploaded, now, as a result of this policy change, but short of someone idiot enough to delete their music from their PC in the expectation that Amazon will store it for them - and who does that? - I can't see anyone actually being seriously affected by this move.
  Do I use them myself for anything other than music I've bought from them? No, largely because I'm too much of a cheapskate and 5Gb isn't enough to store my music collection. Actually, it probably is if I rescanned everything as HE-AAC, but that's a lot of work, I can't be bothered, and it sounds like Amazon, at least, would no longer make that useful. But at the same time, I just can't see how I'd be more than slightly inconvienenced by this move if I was a big Amazon MP3 user. And I certainly wouldn't describe someone who uses it as a moron.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
3. Re:Cloud services are for idiots. by jenningsthecat · 2012-08-01 00:06 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I'm not entirely sure how that's "personal", and I'm not sure how you're defining "trust", but it's hard to see how anyone would be a moron for merely using the system... I can't see anyone actually being seriously affected by this move.
  It's very much personal. If I've stored files at 320K, then the conversion to 256K represents a loss of quality. If I'm content with 128K and Amazon converts to 256K, then they're effectively halving the number of songs per dollar that I can store. And if they also mess with my custom tags, the files are less useful to me, and it will cost me some work to restore them on Amazon's service. So basically, if someone dicks with my data without my consent, then it's personal, regardless of the extent or nature of the dicking.
  I don't use cloud services - hell, I don't even use players that 'organize' my music for me. But I can see how people will be pissed off at this latest move by Amazon. It's yet another example of the high-handed 'all of your everything are belong to us' attitude that corporations are ramming down our throats.
  
  --
  'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
4. Re:Cloud services are for idiots. by reub2000 · 2012-08-01 00:37 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The intention of cloud music services like Amazon's (and Google's, and Apple's, and Ubuntu's...) is to provide a convenient way to access your music from anywhere at any time.
  No the purpose of cloud players is to keep track of what users listen to.
5. Re:Cloud services are for idiots. by squiggleslash · 2012-08-01 00:38 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  It's very much personal. If I've stored files at 320K, then the conversion to 256K represents a loss of quality. If I'm content with 128K and Amazon converts to 256K, then they're effectively halving the number of songs per dollar that I can store. And if they also mess with my custom tags, the files are less useful to me, and it will cost me some work to restore them on Amazon's service. So basically, if someone dicks with my data without my consent, then it's personal, regardless of the extent or nature of the dicking.
  
  Honestly, I think you're using a different definition of the word "personal" to everyone else. It doesn't normally mean "technical attributes of files stored on a PC not being propagated across a buffered network".
  
  It's yet another example of the high-handed 'all of your everything are belong to us' attitude that corporations are ramming down our throats.
  
  Not really. It's Amazon making technical choices about a service they run. They're not even particularly radical, all things considered. In fact, I'd argue they're necessary to deliver the service as expected.
  Amazon MP3 is not a file mirroring system, it's not a remote drive. It's a way to play and sync music "from anywhere". I'd expect, given it's not a file mirroring system, them to make technical choices like this. In fact, if Amazon wants it to be more useful, I'd expect them to actually go beyond what they're doing. 256kbps is a horrible rate to standardize on if you're expecting people to stream from the service at work, or download music over 3G (or worse, EDGE) against some data quota. If Amazon makes the decision - and they should - to deliver the music, rather than the raw source files, then this is something they can fix.
  The more I think about it, the more I'd say Amazon is making the right decision here. Who's negatively affected by it? No-one. No-one is using Amazon to "store" their pristine original MP3s. So nobody is losing anything as a result of this change. Insofar as it's a problem, it's that it reduces flexibility to add more music by encoding at a lower bitrate. That's it. Metadata? You still have it. It's still stored in the originals. You can still copy those originals over to your MP3 player, just as you always have. And if you really need to transfer the originals using "the cloud", there are plenty of cloud services that are actually designed to do that. I believe Amazon even runs one...
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
6. Re:Cloud services are for idiots. by gnasher719 · 2012-08-01 02:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I can no longer push "play all" because it tries to play music that may not be on the device, if I'm on a wifi is just starts playing music that I might not want on my device at all or worse, burn up cell data with a switch buried far into the settings menu that makes it a pain to enable and disable freely.
  Have you tried a smart playlist that filters by "download status"?
Store this! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2012-07-31 21:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

The point of forcibly replacing your music with a good-quality one is so they can massively reduce storage. Now they just need one copy of each song.
Which makes it doubly bizarre they're now counting it against your cloud storage -- it's not even stored in your "piece" -- all that's stored are a few bytes of an ID pointing into their song database.

--
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
music laundry by aliquis · 2012-07-31 21:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

upload pirated music get clean copies .. ;D
upload, upgrade, download? by kenorland · 2012-07-31 21:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

So, can I upload my music, have it upgraded and tagged by Amazon, then download the improved MP3s and quit the service?
Re:Cloud services are NOT for idiots. by justforgetme · 2012-07-31 21:41 · Score: 5, Interesting

See what I did to the titel there? Yep, I added a "NOT" negating it.
Amazon being unfair does not mean that cloud technology is unfair just that there is no "unlimited storage for free" solution.
Every service you obtain from someone comes with it's cost. My personal opinion is that - given you are capable of handling
the complexity - you just do it yourself and incur the, usually decent pricetag in favor of privacy/certainty.
Using a cloud infrastructure provider (like aws) you can cloudify all your assets without a problem. Of course certainty (and
often paranoia) dictates that you at least manage to have secured backups of your static data, like, images, video, music and
db dumps on the ground.
Of course all the above takes for granted that you are not an idiot and actually can live with your own custom cloud.

--
-- no sig today
Bloody idiots... by gnasher719 · 2012-07-31 21:41 · Score: 4, Funny

According to the article: "Like iTunes Match, Amazonâ(TM)s Cloud Player keeps copies of songs at 256 kilobytes per second, even if the original version was lower-fidelity."

Who would want 256 kilobyte per second, which turns a normal CD into more than a Gigabyte?
Paranoid slashdotters 1: rest of the world: 0 by marcello_dl · 2012-07-31 21:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Welcome to the cloud! Where your data is our data.
As "the cloud" is getting more traction, expect worse things to happen. We are still in the acceptance phase.

--
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Profit! by AliasMarlowe · 2012-07-31 21:51 · Score: 4, Funny

The point of forcibly replacing your music with a good-quality one is so they can massively reduce storage. Now they just need one copy of each song.
Which makes it doubly bizarre they're now counting it against your cloud storage -- it's not even stored in your "piece" -- all that's stored are a few bytes of an ID pointing into their song database.
This is the cloud equivalent of the "?????" step between the "Charge money for storage space" step and the "Profit" step.

--
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
foreign music listeners beware by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-31 22:01 · Score: 5, Interesting

There may be all sorts of problems down the line with people who like music that isn't officially licensed in their country.
Very much like Amazon in everything by sander · 2012-07-31 22:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

This is very much like Amazon in everything - you have no rights, only the obligation to pay them and have them do pretty much what they want with your data. There is no effective SLA, and if you don't like what they do only recourse is trying to win over a megacorp in court.
So ... You use their crap ? Blame yourself!
Re:What happens if it's already higher than 256? by RivenAleem · 2012-07-31 22:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

The summary seemed quite clear to me, all music is being converted to 256kbps. It didn't say 'upgraded to', though I suspect Amazon may try to spin it like that.
What is likely happening here is that Amazon has a file of "Stairway to Heaven" in 256kbps on their server, and in order to save space everybody who uploads their own personal copy of "Stairway to Heaven" has it substituted with Amazon's version, so instead of 100 copies of various version of the song on their server, you just have 100 people accessing the same file, and guess what! Yes, that file you share with 99 other people, it counts towards your quota.
It's brilliant, they sell the same piece of hard drive space 100's and 100's of times over.
Weird domain by rumith · 2012-07-31 22:21 · Score: 3, Interesting

Excuse me my ignorance, but why is this supposed press release hosted on corporate-ir.net (that doesn't even appear to have a root index file) instead of amazon.com? A quick google search shows that there are plenty of such press releases from lots of different companies hosted on that site; however, I am still not sure if this stuff is legitimate.
1. Re:Weird domain by Cederic · 2012-07-31 23:07 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Try going to amazon.com and clicking on the link marked "Press Releases": http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1720457&highlight=
  Hopefully you (and the people that modded you up) are a little less ignorant now.
Re:Cloud services are NOT for idiots. by Hentes · 2012-07-31 23:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

While a cloud service provider isn't necessarily like Amazon, this is a prime example of why the cloud can't be trusted: you are at the mercy of the service provider, and if they alter the deal you can only pray they don't alter it further.
Re:UPload shit by RivenAleem · 2012-08-01 00:15 · Score: 4, Funny

Another experiment would be to record yourself singing a song and see what Amazon replaces it with.
I tried that, but all it came up with was "The Very Best of Assorted Cat Mating Calls"
Re:What happens if it's already higher than 256? by Hatta · 2012-08-01 00:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

What is likely happening here is that Amazon has a file of "Stairway to Heaven" in 256kbps on their server, and in order to save space everybody who uploads their own personal copy of "Stairway to Heaven" has it substituted with Amazon's version
There hae been at least 7 releases of Stairway to Heaven on CD. If I have the one from 1985, can I be assured that I won't be getting the remaster from 1994, or vice versa?

--
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Audio Upgrade (direct from Amazon Help) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 01:54 · Score: 5, Informative

original copies of your uploaded songs will be available as well, take a look below:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200593970#pastpurchase
Audio Upgrade
For some songs and albums you previously imported to Cloud Player, Amazon may have rights to upgrade your music to high-quality 256 Kbps audio. We'll automatically begin upgrading the audio quality for previously imported files when you log in to Cloud Player; this process will only happen once and may take a few minutes to complete.
A pop-up message will display progress, and you can close this message at any time. Once complete, we'll display the number of songs that have been upgraded.
Music that's been upgraded can be found in the "Upgraded Audio" playlist. The "Upgraded Audio" playlist will only be available if songs are upgraded. Original copies of these Upgraded Audio files will remain accessible in Cloud Drive. Your Cloud Drive "Music" folder is now called "Archived Music."
Imported Music Upgrades
Music you import into Cloud Player in the future will also be automatically upgraded to high-quality 256 Kbps if Amazon has the rights to do so. This upgraded music will only appear in the Imported playlist and will not appear in the "Upgraded Audio" playlist.
How horrifying by Cute+Fuzzy+Bunny · 2012-08-01 03:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

This actually turns out to be a real benefit for me. I ripped hundreds of albums over ten years ago into 96 and 128 bit mp3's, and lately I've been nagging myself to drag them out and re-rip them to a better sounding rate. This just did it all for me and I'm downloading the upgraded files now.
Thanks Amazon! You're the best! Apple wants me to pay for this, you gave it to me for freee.