News - Amazon AutoRip music service comes to Europe

[HEXUS]

France, Germany and Italy got the facility earlier this week, the UK joins them today.

Read more.

[Saracen]

"What would you say if you bought CDs, vinyl or even cassettes from a company 14 years ago, and then 14 years later that company licensed the rights from the record companies to give you the MP3 versions of those albums... and then to top it off, did that for you automatically and for free?" said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO.

Well, to be honest, I'd say if I bought an album 14 years ago and wanted an MP3, I'd have had one for about 13 years, 11 months, 364 days and some hours.

I can do it myself perfectly well, to a standard I can control producing a quality I want, and I can do it in a few minutes.

So, Mr Bezos, frankly, I'd say "Yawn. Ho-hum."

[Smudger]

I've got nothing, but it does say 'We're adding songs from your previous Autorip album purchases"...


...and the songs are there now.

I've just noticed a HUGE flaw. The Michael Bublé album I bought my wife is now in MY collection. Ugh, get it out.

Oh FFS. Olly Murs now as well.

[crossy]

I've just noticed a HUGE flaw. The Michael Bublé album I bought my wife is now in MY collection. Ugh, get it out.Oh FFS. Olly Murs now as well.

You think YOU'VE got problems? I'm dreading my kid's copy of One Direction album popping up between Paulo Nutini and Ozzy Osbourne in my music library.

Maybe we need to log a feature request with Amazon so you can either mark purchases as gifts or mark them as to be excluded from your AR library.

The music files can be downloaded as “high-quality 256 Kbps MP3s” for offline playing. As well as being a kind of “back up” for your CDs it also lets you purchase your physical media and while you wait for it to be delivered in the post you have full access to the AutoRip files immediately.

If those are 256Kps VBR's then this is a great idea. Sure it won't appeal to the folks that want something higher quality (like FLAC) or different (OGG's). The "instant fulfillment" aspect for purchasers of CD's is also a big draw - although if you've also got Amazon Prime then that'd be less important.

Might dive in and buy those Chickenfoot albums now that I was planning to get a copy of "sometime" just to see how well it works. I only buy MP3 albums for those collections that I'm just trying, and I never buy single tracks.

[Jonj1611]

Surely there has to be some type of licensing issue here, I wonder how many people from up to 14 years ago still actually have those CD's they bought and haven't sold them on or whatever.

[jimbouk]

Another issue, they want your credit card details before you can use the cloud player...

[Smudger]

Another issue, they want your credit card details before you can use the cloud player...

Really? I just got straight in on my Amazon account...

[cjs150]

I buy an album I rip it to disk straight away. Takes 5 mins and that is on a computer that is so old it is steam powered

[Phage]

I've got nothing, but it does say 'We're adding songs from your previous Autorip album purchases"...


...and the songs are there now.

I've just noticed a HUGE flaw. The Michael Bublé album I bought my wife is now in MY collection. Ugh, get it out.

Oh FFS. Olly Murs now as well.

Think yourself lucky - I now have the complete High School Musical collection...

[jimbouk]

Really? I just got straight in on my Amazon account...

I guess that means you have a current payment method linked with your Amazon account. I remove mine after every payment (because they don't give me the option not to save it).

So for music I've already bought, should I really need a current payment method registered? It's not like it's going to match the details used 14 years ago when I bought the CD so there justification on rights management is well off. Just another method to get you to one-click buy, accidentally or otherwise.

[Saracen]

I guess that means you have a current payment method linked with your Amazon account. I remove mine after every payment (because they don't give me the option not to save it).

....

As do I, or at least, I did before I instructed Amazon to close my account. And I still do so with others, like Paypal. I last used Paypal about 2 years ago, and usage is sporadic at best. I can't think of a single good reason for leaving credit card details on there, and several good reasons for not doing so.

Personally, I'm not interested in cloud services or storage anyway. I'm not interested in "free" services, and no way, no how, am I leaving credit card details to allow access to one. If I want to authorise credit card payment to any company, even one I use regularly, I will give them card details at the time, and they do NOT have my agreement to store it, and "saving" card details with AMazon et. al.? Hell will freeze over first.

[circuitmonkey]

Well that's the last time that I buy CD's for the Mrs on my Amazon account!

[Smudger]

Well that's the last time that I buy CD's for the Mrs on my Amazon account!

Exactly!

I got this back from Amazon when I enquired about gifting the MP3...

I understand that you want to gift the mp3 versions.

Usually CD purchases in orders including one or more items marked as gifts at checkout are not eligible for AutoRip.

As you have not marked them as gifts at check out our system failed to recognise that the Cd's are gifts.

As a result you have received them on to your cloud player. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Currently we don't have this option to gift these mp3 versions directly to their gift recipients cloud player.

However, there aren't any file restrictions on our MP3 files.

The MP3 files you purchase from Amazon.co.uk contain no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, are provided in an industry standard MP3 format, and should be compatible with most systems capable of reading MP3 audio files.

So if you want you can gift these mp3 versions to them.

I think they're missing the point, that I don't want them showing on my cloud account! She's already ripped the CDs to the PC...

[donkiddik]

I've got nothing, but it does say 'We're adding songs from your previous Autorip album purchases"...


...and the songs are there now.

I've just noticed a HUGE flaw. The Michael Bublé album I bought my wife is now in MY collection. Ugh, get it out.

Oh FFS. Olly Murs now as well.

Think yourself lucky - I now have the complete High School Musical collection...

You think that's bad, its just downloaded The music of James Last : 100 Classic Favourites I bought for a family member !!!!!

[circuitmonkey]

As do I, or at least, I did before I instructed Amazon to close my account. And I still do so with others, like Paypal. I last used Paypal about 2 years ago, and usage is sporadic at best. I can't think of a single good reason for leaving credit card details on there, and several good reasons for not doing so.

Personally, I'm not interested in cloud services or storage anyway. I'm not interested in "free" services, and no way, no how, am I leaving credit card details to allow access to one. If I want to authorise credit card payment to any company, even one I use regularly, I will give them card details at the time, and they do NOT have my agreement to store it, and "saving" card details with AMazon et. al.? Hell will freeze over first.

Thought I'd share my technology fail last night;

I have Amazon MP3 on my phone set to auto-download music from my cloud account... well I think you can see where this is going, it downloaded all the Tracy Chapman albums that I bought for my Mrs to my phone, which is annoying.
The utter fail came from the fact that I had my phone playing music on shuffle on the gyms Hi-Fi last night and got some very strange looks when 'Fast Car' came on!

[crossy]

You think that's bad, its just downloaded The music of James Last : 100 Classic Favourites I bought for a family member !!!!!

Hmm, maybe this'd be a suitable subject for a Hexus QOTW ...

What is the most embarrassing/awful album music that might appear on your Amazon Player because of AutoRip?

Apart from the One Direction/JLS stuff I bought for the kids I'm actually pretty well off - checked last night and the most "out there" one I'd got was The Collected Works of Flanders And Swann (or I think that's what it was called) and that's one I bought for myself, (The Hippopotamus Song and The Gasman Cometh being quite amusing).