Amazon Cloud Player Upgraded with Scan and Match, 256 Kbps Audio

[a.gomez]

Yeah, their would be less arrogant people who think they are superior for using Apple products.

Think with MACs you had lots of arrogant people because people who made things gravitated to it - just like you had very arrogant people who used VENUS drawing pencils back when I was younger.

I agree with you with most iOS users thou - usually untalented and yet still arrogant because of some idiotic toy like an ipad or iphone that they think is cool.

iOS has always represented the dumbing down of Apple - it is the hotdog and fries on the Apple menu - times change, what can you do.

 

[logandzwon]

THIS is a very key difference. Many serious music lovers have more than 25,000 songs, but even the most avid music collectors usually don't have 250,000 songs. So this opens up Amazon's service to a whole segment of potential customers that aren't able to make use of the iTunes Match service.

My dad gave me his CD collection, about 400 CDs to rip for him, added to my own 200 CD collection. Plus I've bought maybe 50 albums digitally. (There is some overlap, but only made 20 albums.) Total I have just under 12,000 music items, that is nearly 100 GBs, and 35.7 DAYS of music.

I can play music for a whole month, 24/7, and never hear the same track twice. I'm not even at half the limit.

Additionally, I believe, (but I'm not sure,) that with Apple the restriction to unmatched tracks. Matched tracks do not count against the limit. (about 200 of my tracks are un matched. Aabout 25% of them are actually in the itunes store, but didnt match for whatever reason.)

 

[JGowan]

Right now, I am hating iTunes Match. I have matched all my music and when I try and download a higher version of some of my favorite tracks, the track appears to all come in but cuts off after 20-30 seconds. It is horrible. I will certainly not use this service until I hear that they have worked out this problem.

 

[slrandall]

Awfully similar ... They even chose a computer that has the same color scheme as a MacBook Pro.

 

[nick_elt]

Yeah and have you seen how long MS supports operating systems with updates? 10 years

How long does Apple do it?

Because some pcs are so cheap and the os is so expensive its not worth the upgrade , how many computers are running xp? **** loads, how many macs are running 10.0, **** all

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Is that a MacBook Pro on the right?

you would think so, but no its some knock off, prob hp by the looks of it

 

[Nozuka]

Are you freaking kidding? Apple PURCHASED lala.com, which developed the "matching" software and featured it as one of the most important parts of their free streaming service, and then Apple shut down lala and charged everyone $25 a year for a less-effective iteration of the same functionality that pulled from Apple's databases instead of lala's.

They didn't "develop" anything. They bought out a competitor and re-packaged their product with a new logo on it and charged a fee.

So with lala you were able to Match your Music and download a higher Quality Version of all your old songs for free and all legal even before iTunes Match? And i'm not talking about streaming, i'm talking about downloading the higher quality song and owning it even after you cancel the service or their server get shut down.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Hopefully we can STOP posting news about AMAZON on the FRONT page...



lame

Speak for yourself.

I buy most of my music from Amazon because iTunes is usually more expensive (in one case an album was $1 on Amazon and $10 on iTunes; it had 1 track on it). Amazon's downloading tool still supports PPC machines, as well.

 

[Icculus]

My .02 on this

Amazon does 1 thing I am jealous of here. 250,000 songs for the same price I pay for iTM. However, bottom line for me is this...MP3 vs AAC. I will NEVER EVER go back to MP3, AAC all the way.

Plus the seamless integration into OSX/iOS is perfect.

 

[golf1410]

Amazon sell cheaper songs than iTunes. Just all you know, what ever songs on iTunes are on sale, Amazon always beat the prices. That is what I notice. Apple is a baby in cloud business. Amazon has been in this business for a while. Wonder, how Amazon get from selling books to cloud business anyway. Amazing how Amazon expands its business to other industry. I believe Amazon is right after Google and it will be stronger than Google because it grows slowly and stable.

 

[AustinIllini]

My .02 on this

Amazon does 1 thing I am jealous of here. 250,000 songs for the same price I pay for iTM. However, bottom line for me is this...MP3 vs AAC. I will NEVER EVER go back to MP3, AAC all the way.

Plus the seamless integration into OSX/iOS is perfect.

It's really just huge for us Mac/Android users. Google has left us wanting an iTunes match competitor that interfaces with Android. I am quite excited.

 

[Icculus]

Amazon sell cheaper songs than iTunes. Just all you know, what ever songs on iTunes are on sale, Amazon always beat the prices. That is what I notice. Apple is a baby in cloud business. Amazon has been in this business for a while. Wonder, how Amazon get from selling books to cloud business anyway. Amazing how Amazon expands its business to other industry. I believe Amazon is right after Google and it will be stronger than Google because it grows slowly and stable.

True but for audiophiles (funny to use that term when talking about digital music, me I prefer Vinyl over everything but anyways) MP3 is not nearly as clean as AAC at the same bitrate. So I will always buy from iTunes, its worth a few extra bucks to get AAC. To each their own though, a LOT of people cannot tell the difference between MP3/AAC and I *WISH* I couldn't because it would save me a LOT of headaches.

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It's really just huge for us Mac/Android users. Google has left us wanting an iTunes match competitor that interfaces with Android. I am quite excited.

Word...I cannot live without iTunes Match. 26k songs and counting and I LOVE having my whole library with me. Cannot wait for LTE iPhone so bandwidth will be faster.

 

[larrylaffer]

I think this is great. I've had some issues with iTunes match, but I love the idea of having all my music synced everywhere. It works almost flawlessly on my macs, but on iPhone its much slower (the Music app itself is incredibly laggy). For $25 / year, its worth it to give Amazon a shot and see how they stack up.

I'm with you on that one. The Music app is absolutely awful with iTunes Match activated. In addition to being incredible slow on an iPhone 4 (inb4 "WHY U NO HAVE 4S HERP DERP"), it's also super buggy. For example, I often select track 1 of an album, and it starts playing track 2 while showing track 1's metadata.

This is completely obnoxious given that it's been this way ever since iTunes Match was made available, and they've had multiple iOS updates since, with no fix in sight.

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I cannot live without iTunes Match. 26k songs and counting and I LOVE having my whole library with me. Cannot wait for LTE iPhone so bandwidth will be faster.

Um, isn't iTunes Match limited to 25k?

 

[whitewater2]

Apple had to fight so much to bring this service because of the record labels. How can amazon achieve the same so freely?

I find it odd that Google and Amazon did not go through the labels like Apple did. The first reports of iTunes Match, Apple paid over $100 million up front to even do this, yet I havent seen reports of approvals of Google/Amazon.

Amazon does a lot of stuff less than cost to them, in hopes you buy other items. They do that with their books.

 

[Icculus]

I'm with you on that one. The Music app is absolutely awful with iTunes Match activated. In addition to being incredible slow on an iPhone 4 (inb4 "WHY U NO HAVE 4S HERP DERP"), it's also super buggy. For example, I often select track 1 of an album, and it starts playing track 2 while showing track 1's metadata.

This is completely obnoxious given that it's been this way ever since iTunes Match was made available, and they've had multiple iOS updates since, with no fix in sight.

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Um, isn't iTunes Match limited to 25k?

Purchased songs don't count towards the limit.

 

[larrylaffer]

Amazon does a lot of stuff less than cost to them, in hopes you buy other items. They do that with their books.

They do? I don't think they're paying very much for wholesale books when they can sell far and away more copies than any other vendor in the US.

 

[Icculus]

I'm with you on that one. The Music app is absolutely awful with iTunes Match activated. In addition to being incredible slow on an iPhone 4 (inb4 "WHY U NO HAVE 4S HERP DERP"), it's also super buggy. For example, I often select track 1 of an album, and it starts playing track 2 while showing track 1's metadata.

This is completely obnoxious given that it's been this way ever since iTunes Match was made available, and they've had multiple iOS updates since, with no fix in sight.

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I had similar issues like you, what I finally ended up doing was moving my entire library out of itunes. Removed songs from itunes, updated itunes match, made sure 0 songs in the cloud. Moved everything back, updated itunes match. Now everything is perfect. I haven't had 1 issue, songs play quick, no lag in itunes match for the most part. Might be worth a shot.

 

[larrylaffer]

I had similar issues like you, what I finally ended up doing was moving my entire library out of itunes. Removed songs from itunes, updated itunes match, made sure 0 songs in the cloud. Moved everything back, updated itunes match. Now everything is perfect. I haven't had 1 issue, songs play quick, no lag in itunes match for the most part. Might be worth a shot.

No kidding? I'll give that a shot! Well, I'll give that a shot when I have a week to re-upload half of my unmatchable library.

 

[leroypants]

> All matched songs - even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs - are instantly made available in Cloud Player

Has anyone ever managed to get iTunes match to match anything other than songs purchased via iTunes? I tried it on a few beatles songs and there was no match. At that point, I figured it was a scam.

I have 5100 or so songs all ripped from CDs, Itunes matches less than 1,000 of the songs. Some of the artists Itunes was not able to match included Aerosmith, Korn, White Zombie, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the Foo Fighters. Itunes match is pathetic and a waste of money.

 

[dotheDVDeed]

441 of 1055 songs upgraded--pretty lame.

Mostly Time-Life compilations of 60's 70's music (nothing that obscure).

I'll probably trim it back to 250 tunes.

I don't think I'll get $25 worth of use out of it.

I might of been interested in middle ground between Free and the $25 Premium version.

Maybe they'll offer a discount version for Prime Members.

 

[abaxworld]

Copycat

 

[cmwade77]

On my account, Amazon is offering me 50GB of Cloud Storage with Cloud Player Premium for $25 per year, between this and the fact that they offer true streaming, even on the iPhone, this is a lot more appealing than iTunes Match.

 

[MuppetGate]

Additionally, I believe, (but I'm not sure,) that with Apple the restriction to unmatched tracks. Matched tracks do not count against the limit. (about 200 of my tracks are un matched. Aabout 25% of them are actually in the itunes store, but didnt match for whatever reason.)

You're quite right. Tracks that are already in the iTunes database(?) do not count against your 25K. This includes tracks you bought in iTunes, at other music sites or ripped from a CD.

I'm not sure how likely it is that your average consumer will have more than 25,000 songs that iTunes doesn't know about.

And I'm not sure how they ever talked the record companies into it.

 

[Nermal]

Isn't this service still US only?

Yes, I just tried to use it and it booted me out without so much as a "sorry".

 

[kurosov]

This is what I want Match to be. Only replicate my library in the cloud and leave my local music alone.

Uh, this IS what match does.

The songs stored on your computer are left as is. You can CHOOSE to delete the local copies and download the matched versions if you prefer but by default your files are left alone.

 

[ladymacintosh]

If you have higher quality files, does iTunes match or Cloud Player replace them with lower quality 256k files?