![]() Access will become more and more important, ownership will continue to be important, and some people will do both. "There is no indication that access will replace ownership any time soon. "Ownership is always going to be important for a large customer segment, but there are changes: the rise of streaming services is undeniable, and they provide really good services," said Boom. While Amazon's Cloud Player enables customers to stream their music collection to various devices without downloading the files, the company does not yet have a Spotify-style on-demand music service offering unlimited access to songs that they don't already own. Artists like this because it encourages people to buy the whole album." The digital business is very track-focused, and not as much album-focused. "One reason is that AutoRip is adding value back to owning an album. "We wish we could have done this many years ago, but we weren't able to: we couldn't have gotten the rights several years ago, so things have changed," he said. None of these companies have published figures on how many people are paying for their music cloud-lockers, however.Īmazon's Boom said that the music industry has been keen to back AutoRip, recognising the benefits of giving people digital files of the music they've already bought in physical formats, rather than trying to sell it to them all over again. ![]() The Google Play music locker is free, with space for up to 20k songs. Apple's iTunes Match costs £21.99 a year and has space for up to 25k songs, with purchases from its iTunes downloads store not counting against the total. ![]() It competes against similar services from Apple and Google. The Premium version of Cloud Player, which costs £21.99 a year and offers space for 250,000 songs. They like to collect, or they like the album art and liner notes that aren't as good in digital."Ĭloud Player is free to use in its basic form, with space for up to 250 songs, although AutoRip albums and MP3s purchased from Amazon don't count against that total. A lot of people still like having that physical product. People can experience digital music while still in the comfort of their existing purchasing behaviour," said Boom. "AutoRip is a gentle bridge between the two worlds, that's the way we think about it. The singles market, by contrast, was 97.2% digital in 2012. That's why Amazon doesn't charge for AutoRip: the company's strategy is about encouraging people who still buy all their music on physical formats like CD to start using its Cloud Player, to which they can also upload songs stored on their computers.Īccording to music industry body the BPI, 69.6% of albums sold in the UK in 2012 were CDs, vinyl and other physical formats, with 30.4% sold as downloads. "It's a simple, easy-to-understand proposition, and it's also been a great introduction for our customers to the digital services that we have to offer." "In the US, customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, both in terms of direct feedback to us and social media posts," Amazon's vice president for digital music Steve Boom told The Guardian, ahead of the UK launch. The music can be downloaded as 256Kbps MP3 files, or streamed from Amazon's servers to computers, smartphones and tablets, including iOS and Android devices as well as Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets. From today, customers logging on to Amazon's Cloud Player music-locker service will find any album they've bought from Amazon since 1999 in their locker – as long as it's one of the 350k licensed albums.
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