Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Amazon Matches iTunes Match With New 'Audio Upgrade' Feature

Posted by Soulskill on 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."

9 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Cloud services are for idiots. by Anonymous Coward · · 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 squiggleslash · · 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.
  2. Store this! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · 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.
  3. music laundry by aliquis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    upload pirated music get clean copies .. ;D

  4. Re:Cloud services are NOT for idiots. by justforgetme · · 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
  5. foreign music listeners beware by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  6. Re:What happens if it's already higher than 256? by RivenAleem · · 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.

  7. Re:Cloud services are NOT for idiots. by Hentes · · 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.

  8. Audio Upgrade (direct from Amazon Help) by Anonymous Coward · · 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.