Today, Amazon finally launched its Cloud Player service in the UK, France and Germany. Akin to iTunes Match, the core premise of the service is that you can upload your digital music collection into the cloud to access it anywhere via your device of choice. It will match your Amazon MP3 purchases automatically, but for me (as with many others it would seem), that amounts to nothing as I’ve never purchased digital music from them. Unlike iTunes Match, the service will not scan your existing library to populate your cloud music collection. Instead, you must upload all the music to their servers – a process so unappealing and onerous for anyone with more than a couple of hundred tracks that I’m amazed anyone would bother. Correction: Amazon does now provide a scan-and-match facility for your MP3 collection. This brings to mind a question that’s been bothering me for a while now: why are these cloud music services aiming to convert music fans with digital collections, but not those with physical format ones? Both iTunes Match and Amazon Cloud Player accept that the music you upload may not have been obtained legally. However the genius of both is that they will [...]
Today, Amazon finally launched its Cloud Player service in the UK, France and Germany. Akin to iTunes Match, the core premise of the service is that you can upload your digital music collection into the cloud to access it anywhere via your device of choice. It will match your Amazon MP3 purchases automatically, but for me (as with many others it would seem), that amounts to nothing as I’ve never purchased digital music from them. Unlike iTunes Match, the service will not scan your existing library to populate your cloud music collection. Instead, you must upload all the music to their servers – a process so unappealing and onerous for anyone with more than a couple of hundred tracks that I’m amazed anyone would bother. Correction: Amazon does now provide a scan-and-match facility for your MP3 collection. This brings to mind a question that’s been bothering me for a while now: why are these cloud music services aiming to convert music fans with digital collections, but not those with physical format ones? Both iTunes Match and Amazon Cloud Player accept that the music you upload may not have been obtained legally. However the genius of both is that they will [...]