Amazon Optimizes MP3 Store for Mobile Safari to Attract iOS Device Users

[Mr. Retrofire]

Originally Posted by notjustjay

US only No help to the rest of us in other parts of the world.

Only U.S. iDevice users buy MP3. All others buy AAC- or ALAC/FLAC-files. ;-)

[Elbon]

Originally Posted by illian

I believe the iTunes app is not completely native as well

Right. But iTunes embeds a web browser within a native app. It doens't try to emulate a native app within a web browser. The latter is what I don't like.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by TechZeke

Love Amazon MP3. Cheaper prices and best of all they are in MP3 format and not that M4a crap.

That m4a "crap" is actually a standard used by more than just Apple, but don't let that stop your rant.

FWIW, I've had issues with many of Amazon's VBR MP3 files, mostly that sometimes they have a lag between hitting play and the music starting (verified with many players and OSes). Sucks for content that should be gapless.

[Elbon]

Originally Posted by Rodimus Prime

well that is the problem with Apple 100% BS block on requiring everyone to go through them and give apple a 30% cut for being a payment processor. They have to do stupid workarounds.

Good point - I forgot about that. 30% is completely ridiculous. Take a cut of the app sale, sure - but the content? That's crap.

[KdParker]

Originally Posted by STiNG Operation

It takes a lot to get people to switch from what they like/know. People that have been using itunes since the beginning are used to the way it's done. Take att's exclusive contract with the iPhone, most people just stayed with att even though another carrier might be better.

Easier access to purchases weather you are using an IOS device or windows would be a reason. Especially for people that only have a iPhone or iPad, but still use Windows OS for their home computing.

[J400uk]

Shame there is still no Cloud Player App for the iPad...

[KdParker]

Originally Posted by Jetson

You can't buy music from Amazon through it's cloud player yet.

Apple will not allow such in-app purchases unless Apple get's it's 30% "protection money"

Therefore you have to buy songs from Amazon through the web browser.

That is crazy.

[Wicked1]

can't you just buy it on your Mac or PC and then import it all into iTunes?

I am not even sure if you had an Android phone whether or not you would be able to download it directly to the phone?

[TechZeke]

Originally Posted by John.B

That m4a "crap" is actually a standard used by more than just Apple, but don't let that stop your rant.

FWIW, I've had issues with many of Amazon's VBR MP3 files, mostly that sometimes they have a lag between hitting play and the music starting (verified with many players and OSes). Sucks for content that should be gapless.

I know that m4a is higher sound quality(Never had the issues you describe, but of course you could bedoing that to make a point), but I'm sorry, I've not seen any other use of m4a other than itunes. Start naming those "standard used by more then just apple" and I will gladly eat my words. I probably shouldn't be complaining since I have all-apple devices, but I was always annoyed when I had to always use a converter when I was using older devices.

[D.T.]

Originally Posted by J400uk

Shame there is still no Cloud Player App for the iPad...

The web interface seems to work pretty good (on the iPad), it even plays music in the background.

You could also just download the iPhone version, I mean, it's just a simple media player, so it looks fine scaled up to 2X (especially on retina devices).

[nemaslov]

Originally Posted by J400uk

Shame there is still no Cloud Player App for the iPad...

works on my a iPad if you go to Amazon and open the player. It works great and I have over 7200 songs in my box that I've bought on CD since 98

[doctorossi]

Give me lossless songs, Amazon, and I'll buy from you all day long. Stick with the MP3s and you won't get my first dime.

[Karma*Police]

Originally Posted by Monk Edsel

Ha! At high bit rates it sounds the same to me, but I remember trying to convince people 10 years ago that AAC at 128 Kbps was way cleaner than MP3 at the same bit rate. Now that storage is so cheap, I rip everything at double that now, but to be honest I have a hard time distinguishing between 128 and 256 Kbps when it's encoded in AAC.

True, but I think that speaks to how much better AAC is. MP3 encoded at 128kbps is definitely a step down from CD quality whereas 128 AAC is close enough. And while storage is cheap and plentiful for desktops (I rip everything using lossless), that's not the case for iDevices. Before I discovered iTunes Match, I could fit twice as many songs on my iDevices using 128 AAC vs 256 MP3s.

[GoldenJoe]

I bought music from Amazon once. Then I learned the hard way that they only allow you to download your purchase once. Needless to say, that was the end of my music purchases with them.

[winston1236]

Originally Posted by paul4339

agreed, they have to expand... I'm not sure if it's applicable anymore, but on Amazon forums, there are discussions about US customers travelling (outside of US) and, of course, unable to access their music/video/movies due to international copyrights and distribution rights.

.

They could bypass that via US based VPN.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by John.B

That m4a "crap" is actually a standard used by more than just Apple, but don't let that stop your rant.

FWIW, I've had issues with many of Amazon's VBR MP3 files, mostly that sometimes they have a lag between hitting play and the music starting (verified with many players and OSes). Sucks for content that should be gapless.

VBR files should have a special mp3 sound block inside that contains a directory about where in the file each second of sound is (with CBR, you can just calculate which location is exactly two minutes into the song, with VBR that doesn't work). If that special block isn't there, then many player will read the complete sound file to gather the information. Shouldn't take long on a Mac, but on a tiny MP3 player it could take a while.

----------

Originally Posted by GoldenJoe

I bought music from Amazon once. Then I learned the hard way that they only allow you to download your purchase once. Needless to say, that was the end of my music purchases with them.

All I say is "Time Machine".
Don't rely on being able to download again for backups.

Originally Posted by TechZeke

I know that m4a is higher sound quality(Never had the issues you describe, but of course you could bedoing that to make a point), but I'm sorry, I've not seen any other use of m4a other than itunes. Start naming those "standard used by more then just apple" and I will gladly eat my words. I probably shouldn't be complaining since I have all-apple devices, but I was always annoyed when I had to always use a converter when I was using older devices.

Every single DVD has its sound in AAC format.

[LagunaSol]

Originally Posted by TechZeke

I know that m4a is higher sound quality

Yet you still call it "crap."

Originally Posted by TechZeke

I've not seen any other use of m4a other than itunes.

Apparently you haven't looked.

Originally Posted by TechZeke

Start naming those "standard used by more then just apple" and I will gladly eat my words.

You could start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

For some reason many people think AAC is an "Apple thing." It's not. It's actually the successor to MP3 and was created by a consortium of companies, as explained by Wikipedia:

AAC was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including AT&T Bell Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, Dolby Laboratories, Sony Corporation and Nokia.

It's not an Apple flaw that some other companies have stuck with the older, inferior MP3 format for their devices.

[samcraig]

Originally Posted by LagunaSol

It's not an Apple flaw that some other companies have stuck with the older, inferior MP3 format for their devices.

True. It's a shame that Apple doesn't feel the way about video quality though.

[c1phers]

This is sweet! I get free mp3 credit from amazon all the time. This makes it useful to buy on the fly (for free) and play on my device.

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

Every single DVD has its sound in AAC format.

You sure about that ? DVD's specification dates back to 1995. AAC, or MPEG-2 audio, was released in 1997.

DVD itself supports 3 compressed audio codecs on top of uncompressed PCM, and those are MP2 (MPEG-1, layer 2, older than MP3), AC-3 audio or DTS audio.

[AndyR]

Now allow people to download from outside the US / UK and we have a good solution. At the minute if you dont live in either of those areas your screwed.

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by AndyR

Now allow people to download from outside the US / UK and we have a good solution. At the minute if you dont live in either of those areas your screwed.

I've been waiting for them to open up in Canada. Here it's either iTunes or local offerings.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by TechZeke

I know that m4a is higher sound quality(Never had the issues you describe, but of course you could bedoing that to make a point),

Not really noticable until you try to back two gapless songs together in a playlist (like on a live album), but once you notice it you'll know it's there for those songs. The only "fix" is to redownload them and hope they've been corrected.

Originally Posted by TechZeke

but I'm sorry, I've not seen any other use of m4a other than itunes. Start naming those "standard used by more then just apple" and I will gladly eat my words. I probably shouldn't be complaining since I have all-apple devices, but I was always annoyed when I had to always use a converter when I was using older devices.

It would have to be an older device. In fact, don't know of any devices made in the past three years that don't support AAC/m4a, maybe some knockoff Chinese brands nobody has ever heard of... I don't know of a single Android phone/tablet that doesn't play AAC/m4a music files.

Originally Posted by nemaslov

works on my a iPad if you go to Amazon and open the player. It works great and I have over 7200 songs in my box that I've bought on CD since 98

See that 1x/2x button in the bottom right hand corner of your iPad display? What you're actually using is a pixel-doubled iPhone app. Looks like hell compared to any well written iPad app or universal (iPhone+iPad) app. Not that Amazon cares about the UX, mind you, as long as they can sell you stuff...

[kgtenacious]

Originally Posted by GoldenJoe

I bought music from Amazon once. Then I learned the hard way that they only allow you to download your purchase once. Needless to say, that was the end of my music purchases with them.

wtf are you talking about? All of your mp3 purchases are on the amazon cloud player, you just check off the ones you want to download and click the "Download" button.

you must be thinking of a time you bought an album off of iTunes and then they no longer carried that album and then iTunes match overwrote your studio version of a song with a live version...

[starbird]

Originally Posted by Jetson

When Amazon released its Auto-Rip feature this week, I was thrilled. Now I have access to much of the music that I purchased, yet cannot play on my iOS devices.

Why can't I play those songs on my iOS devices?

Because Apple has limited the storage size for years now, with 64GBs being the largest you can get on your iPod or iPad. So I had to make choices about what I carry on my iOS device, and that means chopping down severely on the video and music.

I remember the iPod Classic had a 256GB capacity, but those days seem to be long gone. Apple just doesn't seem interested in giving us more storage, instead wanting to encourage iCloud storage it seems. Well I don't always have access to a Wi-Fi signal and certainly don't want to use expensive cellular access for downloading music, so downloading/streaming isn't always practical.

Apple, give us more storage capacity!!!

Honest question here. How does AutoRip help with your described shortcomings of storage on an iOS device, or deal with the storage space constraints you describe? Or the "not always on wifi and don't want to use expensive data plan" issue?