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Amazon Launches Its Own Music Service
Thursday 20th September 2012 | Osh
To coincide with the approaching release of the Fire and Fire HD tablets, Amazon has launched a music service to ensure collections are fully backed up and available everywhere.
Amazon has recently been concerned with the way in which music is managed by the individual. As Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos explains, music can be bought from your phone but there is no clear way to transfer these to your computer, where much of your collection might be held. There is also a risk that if your disk drive crashes, your music could be lost.
In order to solve these problems, Amazon has launched Cloud Player, a take-off from the recent Cloud Drive. Amazon Cloud Player automatically saves any MP3 files for free as well as enabling a further 250 songs from iTunes or elsewhere to be imported.
Bezos explains to Internet Business Times, that the new service is similar to iTunes Match: “We'll match the songs on your computer to Amazon.co.uk's catalogue of over 20 million songs. All songs we match are instantly made available in Cloud Player and upgraded to high-quality 256 kbps audio. Music we can't match will be uploaded to Cloud Player, so your entire digital music collection will be available.”
Although there is the initial restriction on the amount of music uploaded for free, it is possible to upload more from another source than Amazon. This will cost you £21.99 per year and allows storage for 250,000. Any of this music can be streamed to smartphones and tablets as long as Amazon recognises it from its own catalogue.
The new Fire and Fire HD tablets come with Cloud Player already pre-installed though it is also available through web browsers on any PC or laptop. There is also an app for Android, iPhone and iPod Touch to allow you to listen to your music wherever you are.
This has seen another move from Amazon to stay in the technological competition and is a great alternative to iTunes Match.
By Amy Pitman
