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

[John.B]

I downloaded the Amazon Cloud Player app to my iPhone a little while ago, and I was surprised that none of the Amazon MP3 store purchases I've made over the years show up. I would've figured that should have been a no-brainer. At least for Prime members or the people who shell out $25 a year for the additional library sizing.

 

[TwinMonkeys]

I downloaded the Amazon Cloud Player app to my iPhone a little while ago, and I was surprised that none of the Amazon MP3 store purchases I've made over the years show up. I would've figured that should have been a no-brainer. At least for Prime members or the people who shell out $25 a year for the additional library sizing.

Amazon is generally a pretty good company about this sort of integration, so that's pretty surprising.

 

[nibus]

I tried Amazon's scan and match out last night and here are some initial thoughts:


1) Amazon does indeed copy it's stored metadata for each song it matches.

This includes cover art, copyright, composer, total tracks, etc. Depending on your viewpoint this could be good or bad. It will over-write your old metadata. I didn't have any metadata mismatches but I only uploaded about a dozen albums. Amazon's mp3 metadata is usually meticulous.

2) Amazon's matching technology is inferior to iTunes Match.

Although I only uploaded about a dozen albums, Amazon only matched about 70%, while iTunes Match only messed up on one album (90+%). The matching process seems to take about the same amount of time for both applications.

3) Amazon's downloads are created with varying bitrates and encoders.

Some songs are CBR (constant) 256kbps, some are VBR (variable) 256kbps, and some are encoded using Lame's V0 preset, which is quality based and can range from very low to very high bitrates (~300kbps) depending on the passage of music. V0 would be the ideal format, but I only had one album match in this format unfortunately.

From what I can see, the VBR and V0 downloads are encoded with the LAME audio codec (the best out there), while the CBR downloads are encoded with Fraunhoffer (inferior to LAME, but still OK).

4) The Amazon applications are far inferior to iTunes.

There is no way to cancel a matching operation without closing the Amazon Importing application, and the only way you can tell preemptively which songs matched and which didn't is by viewing the progress bar and how fast it moves. If it moves very fast for half the album, that's how many songs matched. Not very intuitive.

An importing application as well as a downloading application must be installed separately, in addition to the browser based Amazon cloud where your music is viewable. So that makes 3 (!) separate applications you have to use in this process. What a pain.

5) Finally, mp3 is an inferior codec to AAC

Mp3 has been around since 1993 and is inferior to AAC ("advanced audio coding"). However at high bitrates of ~256kbps you probably won't notice much of a difference, especially with the Lame encoded downloads.

This could also be a plus for some people because some older devices do not support AAC.


For me, really the only plus of Amazon is it's metadata. However, the service is young, and they might iron out these kinks in the near future.

 

[revelated]

I believe this is true...I vaguely recall the same deal, and in fact, have signed into my Amazon Cloud Player for the first time since it originally went live last year, and found that it is still telling me I have unlimited space for music.

I did have unlimited storage - well over 10,000 songs that I uploaded. This was, as I recall, because I was a Prime customer and bought an album in a certain period of time.

See the attached screenshot of my Cloud Player screen for proof. Until today, above these numbers, it said "You have Unlimited Space." Now, of course, that's been removed but I do have indirect proof: how else would I have 12,000 songs in there?

This was a step backward for at least some users.

To Revelated: pause before you insult. You might not know about every use case.

*sigh* people just don't read T&C's.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200704820

Unlimited music space is currently available with any paid Cloud Drive storage plan. If you've previously purchased a subscription to Amazon Cloud Drive or purchased an album and qualified for a 20 GB upgrade, unlimited music space has been added for free for the duration of your existing plan term.

In other words, it's temporary and NOT permanent. You would have lost it anyway regardless of this change.

Now, if you want to get technical, they gave certain people a temporary "unlimited" capacity deal. To me, if it had an expiration date, it wasn't "unlimited". But I guess when you don't read T&C's and just see the word "Unlimited" and jump to conclusions that's what happens. I see nothing changing; you would still be on that Premium tier which allows you so many songs it might as well be unlimited until the end of that promo period, then you'd be asked to pay. Same as before.

So for that, you're right and I was wrong, Amazon gave you "unlimited" which you would have ended up losing no matter what, because it's clear you wouldn't have paid to keep it since you now refuse to pay to get it back (essentially).

 

[John.B]

I downloaded the Amazon Cloud Player app to my iPhone a little while ago, and I was surprised that none of the Amazon MP3 store purchases I've made over the years show up. I would've figured that should have been a no-brainer. At least for Prime members or the people who shell out $25 a year for the additional library sizing.

Update:

I got a chance to logon to the Amazon Cloud Player from my home Mac and -- after accepting the terms of usage -- it prompts you to import your past MP3 purchases to Cloud Player and upgrade your music to 256 Kbps audio (for previously bought MP3s and songs already in your Cloud Player).

When I checked the iOS Cloud Player app on my iPhone, after refreshing (Settings... Refresh Cloud library) the imported songs showed up there as well.

So TwinMonkeys was right, Amazon usually does get this kind of detail right, maybe it was just a matter of keeping the lawyers happy.

That said, not all the songs I've bought from the Amazon MP3 show up. I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason to this; for some artists, some albums that show up while other albums don't; other artists (Pink Floyd) don't show up at all, some of the missing albums are still available while other's aren't. Most music I've bought over the years in the Holiday/Christmas genre is AWOL.

But that's just the previous purchases that automatically get imported. I'll really see if this big deal this weekend when I try to match my iTunes library against Amazon Cloud Player.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

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.

... A quarter-million songs. Assuming the average song length is 4 minutes, that's a million minutes worth of music. That's just shy of 700 days of continuous music... it's just shy of 23 months long.

...

Do you realize how insane that amount is?

 

[Hawkeye411]

Can you share files with Cloud Drive? I've been receiving and sending large 3D environment files recently at work. It would be great if I could share them easily with this service. Anyone know if you can?

 

[milo]

... A quarter-million songs. Assuming the average song length is 4 minutes, that's a million minutes worth of music. That's just shy of 700 days of continuous music... it's just shy of 23 months long.

...

Do you realize how insane that amount is?

It seems he does. Maybe you should read his post again, seems like you're agreeing with him (and you should, his post makes perfect sense).

 

[iMacFarlane]

Couldn't get it to work. On a fresh, clean Mountain Lion install on my new 2012 13" MBP, the uploader app repeatedly crashes with some "Adobe Air" malfunction. Adobe Air is installed, as is the uploader program. Whatevs.

 

[blybug]

*sigh* people just don't read T&C's.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200704820



In other words, it's temporary and NOT permanent. You would have lost it anyway regardless of this change.

Yeah, got that. Perfectly aware of the expiration date in mid-Sept. After my initial lousy experience with Amazon's upload-everything model last year haven't touched it and had no intention of using it or renewing it when the unlimited expired. Might consider it again now with the scan-and-match for $25/year for essentially "unlimited" at 250K tracks.

----------

Couldn't get it to work. On a fresh, clean Mountain Lion install on my new 2012 13" MBP, the uploader app repeatedly crashes with some "Adobe Air" malfunction. Adobe Air is installed, as is the uploader program. Whatevs.

Had all kinds of problems yesterday. Today it works. Go figure.

 

[scbrain]

Fair Enough, but it's NOT an improvement

As you note, Amazon says this in the T&C:

"Unlimited music space is currently available with any paid Cloud Drive storage plan. If you've previously purchased a subscription to Amazon Cloud Drive or purchased an album and qualified for a 20 GB upgrade, unlimited music space has been added for free for the duration of your existing plan term."

You interpret it this way:

"Now, if you want to get technical, they gave certain people a temporary "unlimited" capacity deal. To me, if it had an expiration date, it wasn't "unlimited"."

I wouldn't say that means much of anything by itself - or more accurately, it's a vague promise that can be interpreted in more than one way. An equally plausible interpretation of this clause would be that if the customer ever discontinues Amazon Prime, then the free storage will go away. It's certainly not clear-cut, and that is for people who actually read T&Cs for escape clauses. (Are they really that meaningful, given that they can be changed at any time?)

It would have been more honest to use the word "temporary" if that was the intent - and there was no mention of that word or any expiration date in the T&C.

In truth, I am not /that/ upset about this. It was a free offer, and although it's unpleasant the way they did this (I am reminded of Netflix), free doesn't come with many protections. But A) I spent a lot of time uploading my files, and B) I am going to hope that they didn't intend all along for people to upload their songs and then at a later date, charge money to gain access to that material on the cloud.

At any rate, I am not going to sue for breach of contract. I am merely saying that they shouldn't call it an "improvement" of the existing service, when it's not, so far as I can tell, for some of their users.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

But seriously, as someone living in both the Mac OS and the Windows world, I do not think one can compare the two pricing concepts.
Microsoft makes Money by selling the OS. Apple on the other Hand makes the OS primarily to be able to sell Hardware with a greater margin than competitors...so comparing the two is pretty close to comparing apples and oranges ;-)

Well with that rationalization Microsoft peripherals and other hardware accessories should be free too.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

It seems he does. Maybe you should read his post again, seems like you're agreeing with him (and you should, his post makes perfect sense).

It seems to me their limit is beyond what anyone could possibly have. They may as well just call it unlimited.

 

[John.B]

It seems to me their limit is beyond what anyone could possibly have. They may as well just call it unlimited.

The minute they call it unlimited, some guy who downloaded every song ever uploaded to Napster will want to store his entire library.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

The minute they call it unlimited, some guy who downloaded every song ever uploaded to Napster will want to store his entire library.

#1 - You think there's some guy with that many songs?
#2 - You think Amazon can't handle however many songs he does have, if they're willing to have people upload .25 M?

Edit: I just checked, the iTunes Store has 28 M+ songs on it.

 

[kingtj]

<shrug> ... For some reason, I'm sort of ok with this

I'm not saying iTunes Match couldn't have been a little less buggy than it was upon its release.... But at the same time? If I paid their $25 to use it for a whole year, I'd feel like I got my money's worth out of it, easily, if it simply offered me better bit-rate versions of the music tracks I owned! The ability to cloud stream the audio and all that would just be a "bonus" to me at that point.

I mean, yes, Apple tends to release bundles of features in new product releases that you wish you had in whatever previous one you purchased. That's called "a good business model". I think at any point in time, before you buy something, you have to take a good look at what it does and doesn't do and then decide if its asking price is worth it for what it does.

Time and time again, millions of people vote with their pocketbooks that Apple's products are worth buying -- regardless of some of the bugs or missing features. If you buy software, these days, under the assumption (even if they promise!) it will get free updates, you're a fool. Not to sound like a jerk, but it's just the truth when companies are bought and sold, or go out of business left and right, and good software developers come and go constantly.

Well, that's the point. Apple CHARGES for iTunes Match. And what do we get? A buggy piece of software that makes a mess out of having to download files to my phone (getting them off is a PITA). But of course, when they come out with iTunes Match 2, they'll tout "new features", they could have implemented throughout the year. But that's Apple's thing, make you pay, give you just enough to make it functional, and never hear from them again until a year later when they want to sell you the next version. But wait! iOS 6 will make it so that you can stream the music instead of downloading! Oh, really? You need to wait until iOS 6 to do that? LOLZ.

 

[Razeus]

I'm not saying iTunes Match couldn't have been a little less buggy than it was upon its release.... But at the same time? If I paid their $25 to use it for a whole year, I'd feel like I got my money's worth out of it, easily, if it simply offered me better bit-rate versions of the music tracks I owned! The ability to cloud stream the audio and all that would just be a "bonus" to me at that point.

I mean, yes, Apple tends to release bundles of features in new product releases that you wish you had in whatever previous one you purchased. That's called "a good business model". I think at any point in time, before you buy something, you have to take a good look at what it does and doesn't do and then decide if its asking price is worth it for what it does.

Time and time again, millions of people vote with their pocketbooks that Apple's products are worth buying -- regardless of some of the bugs or missing features. If you buy software, these days, under the assumption (even if they promise!) it will get free updates, you're a fool. Not to sound like a jerk, but it's just the truth when companies are bought and sold, or go out of business left and right, and good software developers come and go constantly.

To be honest, I was more than happy to pay $25 JUST for the upgrade files alone, due to the fact that my purchases were 128kpbs DRM ridden and from questionable sources from 96-192kbps. I admit, getting clean 256k-AAC files was worth the price of admission alone. But the 'streaming' (downloading) to any device needs lots of work, as well as the matching capabilities.

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

That said, not all the songs I've bought from the Amazon MP3 show up. I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason to this; for some artists, some albums that show up while other albums don't; other artists (Pink Floyd) don't show up at all, some of the missing albums are still available while other's aren't. Most music I've bought over the years in the Holiday/Christmas genre is AWOL.

Can't explain the Christmas, but the other things are most likely due to lawyers and rights issues. Often times even albums from the same artist will be from different record companies or have different licensing deals. It's why there is gaps in Spotify's catalog too. It's why I hate this kind of thing and wish that it would all go away. It might work for the lawyers, but the patchwork quilt of rights is crazy for a consumer to navigate. TV shows have this issue too. Which is why some seasons of shows are (legally) on the net and others aren't. So annoying.

 

[milo]

It seems to me their limit is beyond what anyone could possibly have. They may as well just call it unlimited.

Which is exactly what he said. You still seem to be agreeing with him.

As he said, "even the most avid music collectors usually don't have 250,000 songs".

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Which is exactly what he said. You still seem to be agreeing with him.

As he said, "even the most avid music collectors usually don't have 250,000 songs".

Is there anything wrong with agreeing? I never said I was arguing...

 

[milo]

Is there anything wrong with agreeing? I never said I was arguing...

Sorry, it was hard to tell from your post. With things like "Do you realize how insane that amount is?" when it's obvious that he does realize how insane that number is. I guess that was just a rhetorical question...

 

[ScottYelich]

The world through my eyes ... is not just black or white.

Because for better or for worse, iTunes Match is "all or nothing." Either you paid for it and it scanned your entire Library, or you didn't. There isn't really a way to "try it out" on a few selected songs (wish there was). Maybe it's just lack of clarity in the way you made the statement.

100% of my Beatles songs from the full 9/9/09 remastered CD collection Matched. Anthology songs were hit or miss for some reason, and of course a bunch of Beatles bootlegs didn't Match and were Uploaded.

Oh, look, I don't want to be mean/rude on the internet -- there's enough of that. I would like to just give you maybe one thing to think about: Who says I have to scan my *entire* library? To put it another way, just because you think one must scan an entire library, that doesn't necessarily mean that's the way it is, ya know?

So ro re-iterate: I described my less than anticipated experience using iTunes match. You said I was a lie because of an incorrect assumption. I will again recap: I paid for Itunes match, I tested it on less than my entire library (after reading how slow it was), it matched nothing. I continue to read about people's experience with it and it seems experience is mixed, but the matching is far from what I would consider "good." Now amazon has a competing product out there and I'm investigating people's experience with the matching provided there.

My goal is a better music management system than iTunes.

Scott

 

[pmz]

Maybe to you it is not, good for you. Last I checked, other people, with other experience & criteria inhabit this planet along with you.
To me mp3 from Amazon is often better, two reasons which matter to me:
1. mp3 plays on everything I own, AAC does not(my 4 TiVos, & some of my kid's game devices for example).
2. Many tracks & albums cost less on Amazon than on iTunes. Amazon has excellent album sales from time to time.
Those are not a "delusions", just simple facts.
If those facts are not important to you, then yep, maybe mp3 is "not better" for you.

Those are not facts at all, they are distortions of reality. Of course an mp3 might be a few cents cheaper...it should be, it's garbage by comparison to an Apple -encoded AAC file. I don't spend money on garbage.
And your "incompatibility" statement is false, and very 2003-ish.

Speaking of 2003, TIVO? LMAO.

----------

Oh, look, I don't want to be mean/rude on the internet -- there's enough of that. I would like to just give you maybe one thing to think about: Who says I have to scan my *entire* library? To put it another way, just because you think one must scan an entire library, that doesn't necessarily mean that's the way it is, ya know?

So ro re-iterate: I described my less than anticipated experience using iTunes match. You said I was a lie because of an incorrect assumption. I will again recap: I paid for Itunes match, I tested it on less than my entire library (after reading how slow it was), it matched nothing. I continue to read about people's experience with it and it seems experience is mixed, but the matching is far from what I would consider "good." Now amazon has a competing product out there and I'm investigating people's experience with the matching provided there.

My goal is a better music management system than iTunes.

Scott

The failure is yours. I have 15,000 in my library, tested iTunes Match from beginning of beta, through release, to today. Today it matches over 12,000 tracks (a.k.a. Everything possible). The other 3,000 tracks in my library are custom edits, original recordings, and fan made concert tapes. None of those are match able because they're original content.

iTunes Match is perfect for me, and near perfect for many others. As has been pointed out, the quality of your library and tagging has a lot to do with it....if all your music came from napster and limewire, then you should stop blaming Apple. If you copied all of your music from someone's hard drive, you should stop blaming apple. If your library is a travesty of wrong titles, artist names, and albums, again...stop blaming Apple.

 

[imthenachoman]

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

Image

Really? Is it that big a deal that their ad is similar? I could care less what they look like. I'm more interested in what they can do.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Really? Is it that big a deal that their ad is similar? I could care less what they look like. I'm more interested in what they can do.

Personally, I couldn't care less.

I've been using the cloud player this weekend and it works well. I am not pleased that Amazon suddenly changed their plans so much so that even music bought on their site is no longer "freely" stored. I didn't pay for my 20 gb storage; there was a deal that I got into I think. However, if I were on the free plan and was suddenly told that I was capped at 250 songs no matter how they got there, I'd be pretty annoyed.

That said, I buy much of my music from Amazon and their cloud player supports FLAC. I am no audiophile but I had some FLAC albums. Only issue is that if the FLAC album doesn't match their system somehow then it won't be seen on the cloud. It will upload, and take hours doing it, but I can't see the files to even delete them. That's pretty silly.