Amazon Launches 'AutoRip', Offering Free Digital Versions of Purchased CDs

[drewyboy]

they said autorip, i said ooo! they said you buy and get BOTH, i said oooooooo! then they said... mp3, i said oh?...

Nice feature and all, but mp3 kind of makes the whole thing pointless if you have to burn your own version for higher quality.

[Koodauw]

I really wish they would do this for physical books, get the audio book for free.

[fiddlestyx]

Cool concept. I can't remember the last time a I bought a physical CD though.

[technopimp]

Originally Posted by sgibson

How long until one of the labels sues Amazon because one of the tracks they gave to a customer is one of a CD that was bought as a gift and the purchaser no longer owns?

I was wondering why I had albums in my cloud player I would never have bought-they're all CDs I've bought as gifts.

Originally Posted by Koodauw

I really wish they would do this for physical books, get the audio book for free.

Or the eBook.

[D.T.]

Originally Posted by fiddlestyx

Cool concept. I can't remember the last time a I bought a physical CD though.

Now, if the price is the same (assuming buying through Amazon), you might as well buy the CD version. You get the same instant gratification and delivery of your digital content, plus a free CD

[balamw]

Originally Posted by D.T.

I got most of mine too, just checked. Heck, I don't even remember a couple of those CDs

Indies and soundtracks is most of what I didn't get.

B

[newagemac]

Wow amazon is still using the old and somewhat outdated MP3 format. Get with the times, Amazon. MP4 based AAC has been available for a long time now. If Apple can do it, so can you.

[fr33 loader]

Originally Posted by DaveN

People still by CDs?

People whine for the sake of whining.

This is a nice free surprise from Amazon post Christmas.

[D.T.]

Originally Posted by balamw

Indies and soundtracks is most of what I didn't get.

B

Yeah, I'll have to look back at my purchase history of CDs and compare that to the free rips. I see in my AutoRips I did get some indie type stuff: SCOTS, Red House Painters, Air, The Promise Ring.

Pretty neat. I also have a ton of CDs that are packed deep in a closet, I would've eventually pulled them out since I've been ripping our collection a bit at a time (in the mid/upper-100s of discs), so it looks like I'll get a few stored ones sooner than later

[nrose101]

NICE AMAZON >> We've added 36 songs from AutoRip CD purchases for free

[Carouser]

To all the dimwits who keep posting "how hard is it to just rip the CD lol":

You get the digital files right away.
You get free cloud access to those files.
You presumably get a reasonable rip of those files that's error-free and standardized (as opposed to 96kbps rips you still have from '99, glitchy tracks, etc.).

I usually hate the 'hope competition makes Apple do better' meme (hurr) but I've always wanted the option to convert my ripped CDs to iTunes versions permanently, so I can access them in perpetuity, instead of paying an iTunes Match fee every year. Say 50 to 75 cents a track for those I already ripped from my CDs, basically free money for Apple and the labels.

Yes, I know people will say that people will just torrent music to pay the reduced fee; I suspect it would not be significant in the long run and would at least generate some revenue away from piracy.

Also, it didn't take long for the MP3 quality whiners to show up; sorry a huge corporation isn't clouding a 30GB .wav track of 'Mambo No. 5' for you (I lied, I'm not sorry at all).

[Risco]

Originally Posted by DaveN

People still by CDs?

Was there a cloud player in 1998? Next time instead of posting comments like that, engage your brain and pause for thought before you post.

Additionally, customers who have purchased AutoRip CDs at any time since Amazon first opened its Music Store in 1998 will find MP3 versions of those albums in their Cloud Player libraries

[nrose101]

Also I kind of have forgot the CDs I bought in the 90s ...so I am now taking a trip down memory lane!

Originally Posted by Carouser

To all the dimwits who keep posting "how hard is it to just rip the CD lol":

You get the digital files right away.
You get free cloud access to those files.
You presumably get a reasonable rip of those files that's error-free and standardized (as opposed to 96kbps rips you still have from '99, glitchy tracks, etc.).

I usually hate the 'hope competition makes Apple do better' meme (hurr) but I've always wanted the option to convert my ripped CDs to iTunes versions permanently, so I can access them in perpetuity, instead of paying an iTunes Match fee every year. Say 50 to 75 cents a track, basically free money for Apple.

[fiddlestyx]

Originally Posted by D.T.

Now, if the price is the same (assuming buying through Amazon), you might as well buy the CD version. You get the same instant gratification and delivery of your digital content, plus a free CD

So true! I always did like having the actual CD too, but went away from it since I never seemed to use the CD.

[yg17]

Originally Posted by jazzbo

I'm wondering how many people are ending up with free mp3 copies of CDs they bought for others. If they were specifically marked as a gift, you apparently don't get a copy, but if you just bought the CDs and had them delivered to you so you could wrap yourself-- say as Christmas gifts, Amazon wouldn't know and presumably will give you copies for eligible CDs.

Need to check with my Dad to see what (if anything) he might have got.

I have the Hairspray soundtrack in my cloud player after buying it as a gift for my mom awhile ago. I'd never listen to that garbage

[decksnap]

So why would you ever just buy the mp3 album again? You get the CD and the mp3 album this way.

Also, I just apparently got free mp3 versions of albums I bought as gifts. Not too shabby. I think I'm going to give more CDs as gifts.

[pjrobertson]

It might be worth pointing out that this is US only at the moment.

“Since [1998], we’ve sold hundreds of millions of CDs to tens of millions of customers – a lot, a lot of music,” Amazon’s Steve Boom tells TechCrunch, adding that the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan are high on Amazon’s priority list to get AutoRip in 2013.

Source

[convergent]

What I'd like to see is "auto rip" books. I've moved on from physical media with music, but would like to still have actual books, but be able to have a Kindle/PDF version as well. They actually charge more for the Kindle version than the physical book in some cases which makes no sense, let alone requiring you to pay full price for both.

[incoherent1]

This is a great feature and thrilled to see it (especially for those CDs I bought in, e.g., 2002, put in my car, and subsequently lost before I could rip them).

My only complaint: when you first login to Cloud Player (at least for me) it took about 3-5 minutes for the cloud player to populate with the "new" music from AutoRip. While this wouldn't be an issue for someone who uses Cloud Player a lot, I hardly ever use it, so I could've logged in and still easily missed it if I didn't know what I was looking for.

That's a small quibble though -- otherwise this is awesome.

[Bear]

Originally Posted by DaveN

People still by CDs?

Yes they do. The last CD i bought from Amazon was because it had 4 or 5 more tracks than the digital download version. Also, there is of course some stuff on CD still that isn't available digitally yet.

Originally Posted by sgibson

How long until one of the labels sues Amazon because one of the tracks they gave to a customer is one of a CD that was bought as a gift and the purchaser no longer owns?

I was t hinking the same thing or the purchaser sold off the CD.

Originally Posted by balamw

Over the years I've bought far more than 14 CDs from Amazon, but that's what I got from AutoRip today.

I also had a small fraction of the CDs I had bought in the past available from the AutoRip. What was even more interesting is that half of them weren't even the full CD To quote Amazon: "Please note that some songs from the above CDs are not eligible for this feature and may not be available in your Cloud Player library.

To add to that the most recent CDs I bought from them didn't make the cut for AutoRip.

I wonder if the tracks on the short CDs are actually similar tracks from other CDs they got the permission to AutoRip.

[msandersen]

Originally Posted by HarryKNN21

Turn a sweet CD into awful MP3 formats? Sorry I will keep using WAV formats in iTunes.

WAV, seriously?!? You must have HD space to burn or not rip many CDs. If you really wanna rip losslessly, why not ALAC? When ripping with other software (eg EAC), I've sometimes ripped to FLAC for backup and aac for iTunes/iPod. XLD is great for batch-converting and automatic iTunes import. I find 160kbps AAC plenty for my purposes, at 256 even audiophiles with quality equipment have a hard time making a distinction from CD. If you sat through a blind test, I doubt you could, either.
As it is, my music library is eating up a sizeable chunk of my HD, I cannot imagine how much it would all take up as WAV files, certainly more than the total capacity of my 500Gb internal drive.

[RMo]

Originally Posted by drewyboy

they said autorip, i said ooo! they said you buy and get BOTH, i said oooooooo! then they said... mp3, i said oh?...

Nice feature and all, but mp3 kind of makes the whole thing pointless if you have to burn your own version for higher quality.

Then go ahead and do that. You know, just like you always could. Now they're just giving you something extra for free that 99% of people will be OK with (256 kpbs or a VBR averaging that isn't anything most people are going to complain about).

[D.T.]

Originally Posted by convergent

What I'd like to see is "auto rip" books. I've moved on from physical media with music, but would like to still have actual books, but be able to have a Kindle/PDF version as well. They actually charge more for the Kindle version than the physical book in some cases which makes no sense, let alone requiring you to pay full price for both.

Yeah, I mentioned way back when the Jobs bio came out, they should've offered the digital version bundled with the hardback, even if it was just a couple of bucks extra, I would've gone that route.

I think because with music, you can so easily create your own digital copy, attempting to double dip makes little sense, but with books, it's not like you can easily create your own EPUB.

[yancey47]

For me, This auto rip is dumb. The whole reason I buy CDs is to have a lossless digital copy.

Although I just found a nice upside: CDs I bought as gifts for other people are listed and I can download them. So that's cool.

[jmcrutch]

Somewhere the founder of MP3.com, which offered this exact same service but was later hit with a court injunction to cease and desist, is feeling the sting that so many pioneers in tech have felt.