Amazon introduces Autorip CDs

I would have liked to kill the prerecorded cassette back in the day. But really, isn't that just audio elitism? If the people want MP3s, give them MP3s.

Seriously, I buy Audio Fidelity and MoFi discs (I have Close To The Edge on preorder right now), but maybe 30% of what I listen to is MP3. It's not pollution. It's lower resolution. It has it's uses.

 

I buy far more CDs from amazon through secondary sellers than I do from amazon itself, and therefore a lot of stuff is ineligible. Nevertheless, when I logged on to my account my Cloud Player had 28 songs in it, and then the number suddenly jumped to almost 400 songs. A lot of it was CDs that me or my wife bought as gifts. Plus some box sets that I've bought.

As others have said, though, it's hit-and-miss with the box sets. I bought the 6CD U2 Achtung Baby box set, but only the original 12 Achtung Baby tracks are in the cloud player. I also bought an amazon-exclusive box that had the 2CD editions of Boy, October, and War. The original ten tracks from War are in the cloud player, but not those for Boy or October, and nothing from the bonus discs.

Still, it's kind of fun to get a random sampling of stuff that I've bought over the past few years...

 

I could see and agree with this.
As it is, I rip everything I buy into ogg vorbis for listening on the go. But for serious listening, it's FLAC/CD with Audio Technica over-the-ear headphones

 

I get it, but are more people really going to buy CDs because they get free MP3s? Is this going to drive CD sales?

 

I'm not seeing anything. As an example, I bought the No Jacket Required gold CD from Amazon. The product page says so at the top. It is listed as an AutoRip CD. The MP3 files are not in my cloud account. I see no way to add them manually.

 

Free stuff is attractive. I feel a bit encouraged to buy from Amazon now, knowing that I'll get free digital files, even though I routinely rip any CD's I buy to FLAC. Doesn't mean I'm going to go on a buying spree since I can't afford to, but it is a very nice bonus.

 

I can see this being cool in that you order a cd, and then can listen to it immediately if so desired. Some of the independent bands I listen to are now offering that through Bandcamp. This might really be fun at midnight on release day. I would think that if you pre-order an album, it would be sitting in your cloud at 12 a.m on release day. So if you're really dying to hear it, there it is. Other than that, it's not earth-shaking for most of us here, but I can see who Amazon is trying to appeal to with this. The average consumer might not care one way or the other about cd vs. mp3, so the deciding factor might be the ability to listen to it NOW. So if they can get that and also end up with the physical product, they might go with the cd, which in many cases costs a little more.

 

To the question of what mastering is being used, I just played "Speed King" from Deep Purple in Rock in my Cloud Player, and it's an edit I don't think I've ever heard before. The qualifying purchase was the AF CD, which has the "woffle" intro, which consists of a section of explosive noise from the band which resolves into an organ phrase, which leads into the song. The UK version of the track includes the entire "woffle", and the US version completely eliminates it, starting with the riff before Gillan's vocal. The version on my Cloud Player starts with the organ part - the "noisy" part is not there, but the organ intro is there. Very curious!

 

Here we are in 2013, and none of the download stores that have the most content even offer CD quality downloads!

 

It looks like they split the cloud drive from the cloud player. I see the stuff I uploaded myself on the could drive. I see
stuff I bought (51 albums, over 1000 tracks) on the cloud player but not the stuff I uploaded.

Some of the albums on the cloud player seem to be missing tracks.

 

I like the idea of having the music available on the Amazon Cloud, especially if it's retroactive and covers some previous purchases. Don't know why it took so long to come up with the idea. Once I get the disc I'll have a higher-quality rip on my iPod and probably FLAC on the hard drive, but it's nice to have it available instantly.

 

And how do they know that you haven't sold your CDs and therefore lost the right to play that music?
Strange how people who download illegally get megafines but corporations that ignore copyrights get away with it without any problems whatsoever.

 

I haven't, but I am assuming that Amazon and the rights holders have considered that possibility and are OK with it.

 

I don't think it will make me buy any more CDs then I would have bought anyway, but it will almost guarantee that any CDs I buy in the future will be from Amazon.

 

The 1 CD I bought from Amazon.com, in 2008, is in my cloud player indeed (I buy more from Amazon UK + market place sellers).
Santana - Swing Of Delight, at least 7 of the 9 tracks show up, VBR mp3, and with the original msatering, while my CD is a secret remaster, louder and harsher.

 

The Clash - Live: From Here to Eternity is a $9.99 MP3 download. The CD with AutoRip is $4.99.

In situations like this, it's definitely a good deal. Get to listen to the album immediately, then can rip your own FLACs when it arrives in the mail.

 

When I open my cloudplayer, nothing appears. No artists. Must I do something to make my autorip albums appear?

 

Or is it intended as a small incentive to buy a new copy directly from Amazon, rather than buying from a Marketplace seller?

 

I have tons and tons of "auto-rip" downloads available now as well, some, I think, for CDs I no longer own. Many people here on the forum take the stance that they need physical media in order to make sure they always have a copy of their music, because, oh my God, what if the hard drive crashes? But with iTunes allowing unlimited free re-downloads of past purchases, and now with Amazon giving me free mp3 downloads of CDs I may have bought years ago and no longer own, in the download era, it's increasingly becoming more and more difficult to get rid of music that you've bought. People here debate "purging the collection," but if you've bought music from iTunes or Amazon, it's now almost impossible to really get rid of it.

 

Yeah, I just happened to order a Bob Dylan CD from Amazon yesterday, and now I have the option to download it today and listen to it now, before my actual CD shows up. Plus, I don't have to bother fiddling with the physical CD to rip it into iTunes so I can listen to it on my phone. Hard to complain about the convenience that Amazon is offering here.

 

I don't think they're not done yet. My Vangelis Blade Runner 3 CD (which I sold years ago) is short about 12 tracks.

 

My Exile on Main St turned up as the Deluxe version.

 

I assume that (to use an example) the AF Cheap Thrills AutoRip tracks will be "catalog version" 256k Lame VBR rips from the 1999 remaster. It works the same way with iTunes Match (and I believe Google Play).

 

Only ones you upload. They added 3419 to my library, and they don't count against the limit.

 

I've bought tons of stuff from Amazon over the years. I am not seeing a single track from any associated album in my library at this point. I have a few albums that I got from Amazon for free over the past couple of years...but not a single track from anything else...A lot of these show up as Autorip eligible, so I am guessing that not everything is yet pushed out...