Just when you thought it was safe to avoid Korn
January 10, 2013 8:14 AM   Subscribe

Amazon just announced AutoRip, a service to provide MP3 versions of any song you buy on CD from their store. That's all well and good, but the kicker is that "Amazon is retroactively giving free MP3s to any customer who has purchased an AutoRip compatible CD since its Music Store first opened in 1998". Looks like I'll be knee deep in Blink 182, Cake, and The Spin Doctors again.
posted by mathowie (137 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here's the full press release about it. I am really looking forward to this, hopefully the record companies sign on to it.
posted by mathowie at 8:16 AM on January 10, 2013


Dammit, this little plan can't be right.
posted by box at 8:16 AM on January 10, 2013


And still no Amazon Music in Canada, even though they said it was coming "soon" about 5 years ago.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:18 AM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


Wow Amazon.

now do the same for DVDs and Blu-Rays
posted by 2bucksplus at 8:18 AM on January 10, 2013 [6 favorites]


I just find this amusing. Publishers try to claim that ripping CDs for your own use is piracy, and then Amazon just goes ahead with it. Presumably with publishers' permission.

Mine only has a few CDs, but those include some I've purchased for other people. And not all the tracks off them, for whatever reason.


now do the same for DVDs and Blu-Rays

And books. And books I bought from other places...
posted by Foosnark at 8:20 AM on January 10, 2013 [5 favorites]


All Day I Dream About Syncing
posted by tripping daisy at 8:23 AM on January 10, 2013 [5 favorites]


It's a good thing none of the CDs I've purchased from Amazon were gifts for other people.

Oh wait.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:23 AM on January 10, 2013 [23 favorites]


And still no Amazon Music in Canada, even though they said it was coming "soon" about 5 years ago.

You have to understand that amazon.ca primarily exists so that Canadians do not take advantage of amazon.com. Once you understand that, it all makes sense. We just got Amazon Prime a couple weeks ago, and because .ca offers so much less than .com does it is not even remotely worth it.
posted by mightygodking at 8:24 AM on January 10, 2013 [8 favorites]


Oh man, I bought a bunch of CDs for gifts a few years ago and remember thinking "this purchase is totally going to screw up my amazon recommendations.", which it did, and now I'm going to have those same albums embedded forever into my amazon account? radical!
posted by boo_radley at 8:24 AM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


Nas - It Was Written (July 2, 1996)

Can anyone do better?
posted by 2bucksplus at 8:25 AM on January 10, 2013


Yeah, I'm thinking there's still some kinks to be worked out or licensing is really weird in some cases. My Anthony Stewart Head album only has 8 out of the 16 tracks present.

But anyway, it's a pretty great free bonus, so can't complain.
posted by kmz at 8:26 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


The Justin Timberlake CD my wife bought years ago just appeared in my Amazon Cloud listing.

I may be scarred for life.

And I've got a Kevn Kinney CD with only 2 tracks that are available in the Cloud Player.
posted by COD at 8:27 AM on January 10, 2013


This post reminds me of this one .

My apologies, I know some people are still recovering.
posted by cottoncandybeard at 8:27 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Whoa, I didn't know the feature was already released until someone mentioned it here. I just loaded up my Amazon Cloud player (it only had 1 album from last summer in it) and I saw a status message saying "adding albums from AutoRip" and 30 seconds later I now have more Dave Matthews Band MP3s than any sane human should own.

I don't even remember buying those CDs. Ugh.
posted by mathowie at 8:28 AM on January 10, 2013 [7 favorites]


Pretty much every CD I've purchased from Amazon during that time frame was a gift for my parents. Oh well, now I've got backups for when they break those, as they seem to do with everything else digital that they touch. Unlikely, you say? Then you haven't met my parents.
posted by .kobayashi. at 8:28 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Oh man, I bought a bunch of CDs for gifts a few years ago and remember thinking "this purchase is totally going to screw up my amazon recommendations.", which it did, and now I'm going to have those same albums embedded forever into my amazon account? radical!

You can mark items as gifts or remove them from consideration for recommendations by going to Your Account > Your Recommendations > Improve Your Recommendations. You can delete AutoRip songs from your CloudPlayer by selecting them and hitting the Delete button.
posted by nave at 8:30 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


To be clear, I also think that it is awesome that gifts I bought for people in 1998 are now giving me MP3s but the "copyright" implications are hilarious. And who knows what it might already do to my eclectic music collection.

It's like finding an old floppy disk full of papers you wrote at the last minute and correspondence you thought important enough to save and realizing how much you like and don't like the person you used to be. But then some of it was also written for somebody else.

(I know who has the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack, but no idea who ended up with the D'angelo album two years later. And you can never have too many versions of the Magnolia soundtrack... though the amount of Whitney Houston is bumming me out...R.I.P.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:31 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


How the world has changed.

It wasn't all that long ago that mp3.com (I think) got taken to the wood shed for daring to make tracks from CDs that you owned available to you. If I remember correctly, you inserted your CD into the computer, it hashed it to verify the disc and then off you went. The record companies argued it was a violation in part because they weren't serving you files created from your very own disc.
posted by drewbage1847 at 8:31 AM on January 10, 2013 [11 favorites]


I never used Cloud Player, so I went to check. Yup, it's all Gretchen Wilson and Toby Keith, gifts that I bought for my sister-in-law many Christmases ago.
posted by xingcat at 8:33 AM on January 10, 2013


I have bought many, many, many CDs from Amazon in that time period but none of them are appearing in my Cloud Player. Well...three, but trust me when I say that with my volume, three might as well be zero. Apparently AutoRip is a limited service and doesn't cover much jazz or classical.
posted by cribcage at 8:34 AM on January 10, 2013


In the words of Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"

I'll bet all our new digital files are encoded with some sort of personally identifying code tying it back to your Amazon account. So the record companies will know who to sue when a file is found on a torrent server.
posted by COD at 8:35 AM on January 10, 2013 [14 favorites]


I must have weird tastes in music, because none of the stuff that I have bought on Amazon (and it wasn't a ton of CD's mind you) has given me no extra music. (But I love me some Amazon MP3 store).
posted by deezil at 8:36 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh hey! Deva Permal! I haven't heard that since BSG went off the air.
posted by shothotbot at 8:36 AM on January 10, 2013


To be clear, I also think that it is awesome that gifts I bought for people in 1998 are now giving me MP3s but the "copyright" implications are hilarious.

Yeah...

Also, since I just last week bought an MP3 copy of a CD I bought someone for Christmas, I wish I had known this was going to happen! Would've saved me 10 bucks.
posted by Jahaza at 8:38 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's a good thing none of the CDs I've purchased from Amazon were gifts for other people.

SHHHHHHH.
posted by Artw at 8:38 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


I remember when mp3.com had a service like this. Really sad actually it has taken this long for the music industry to allow such a service to exist.
posted by humanfont at 8:38 AM on January 10, 2013


Pretty much every CD I've purchased from Amazon during that time frame was a gift for my parents

Yeah, really glad I bought my mom a copy of Rod Stewart's "It Had to Be You" right now.

I guess the good bonus is the three Sleater-Kinney records I bought for my secret santa one time.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:39 AM on January 10, 2013


Although, strangely, last Christmas I bought a ton of early Bill Cosby albums on CD from Amazon to be given as gifts, and none of those are showing up on this service. Hey Amazon! I.... would like to TALK to yoooouuuuuuuuuu....... ABOUT! Some of the things! that you've done! to your cloud player!
posted by .kobayashi. at 8:39 AM on January 10, 2013 [17 favorites]


I'm not regretting my decision eight years ago, when I became a real adult, to close my Amazon account and open a new one.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 8:40 AM on January 10, 2013


I guess my music tastes haven't changed much since '99, nothing in the 30 albums that they ripped that I don't listen to fairly regularly.
posted by octothorpe at 8:41 AM on January 10, 2013


"High-quality audio: AutoRip music is provided in high-quality 256 Kbps MP3 audio."

Close but no cigar
posted by chillmost at 8:41 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Huh, empty. Although the only CDs I can recall purchasing in the last howevermany years are a Tom Lehrer compilation and the brand X Aeon Flux soundtrack.
posted by griphus at 8:41 AM on January 10, 2013


Well that's actually pretty cool! Do you have to have purchased the CD via amazon?
posted by Mister_A at 8:43 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


MCMikeNamara: "It's like finding an old floppy disk full of papers you wrote at the last minute and correspondence you thought important enough to save and realizing how much you like and don't like the person you used to be. But then some of it was also written for somebody else."

It's like finding that 9th grade notebook in a box your parents were going to throw out and you remember that notebook being so important and it's full of robot drawings and cuss words and you just get a little embarrassed, and then your mom comes in and says "oh, your sister and I looked through that and laughed and laughed all night."
posted by boo_radley at 8:45 AM on January 10, 2013 [7 favorites]


Do you have to have purchased the CD via amazon?

Yeah, it's only for your past purchases at Amazon (and the companies/labels that agreed). I just got an email from Amazon saying 7 of my old CD purchases are now on my cloud player. That's just 7 out of maybe 50 I purchased from 1998 until 2007 or so (from 2008 on, I only bought MP3s from them).
posted by mathowie at 8:45 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh Amazon, if you think you're so smart ... what was I drinking when I impulse-bought each of these albums?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:46 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


66 Hits from Dean Martin? The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 And Beyond? Oh my god. I'm dying over here.
posted by boo_radley at 8:46 AM on January 10, 2013


We just got Amazon Prime a couple weeks ago...

Wait, wtf, we got prime now???
posted by Bovine Love at 8:49 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'll bet all our new digital files are encoded with some sort of personally identifying code tying it back to your Amazon account. So the record companies will know who to sue when a file is found on a torrent server.

I'm pretty sure that all songs from digital services have this, whether it's iTunes or Google Music or Amazon.
posted by kmz at 8:49 AM on January 10, 2013


Not Bleep!

Anyone remember Bleep?
posted by griphus at 8:50 AM on January 10, 2013


The next step of course will be to bill you for and send you physical CDs of all the albums you snaffled off the torrentz.
posted by chavenet at 8:50 AM on January 10, 2013 [5 favorites]


I bet it's to reduce the number of binary identical rips floating around in the world. (My guess is, everybody who's been ripping their own CDs has a slightly different copy of the MP3.) If everyone has the same bits, then you only have to store one copy of them.

So...um...who makes money by selling storage to people?

Also, if you just stream it out of Amazon's storage, they know when you listened to it and roughly where you were when you did it. And that's just my off-the-cuff tin-foil-hat data mining.
posted by spacewrench at 8:51 AM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


In the words of Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"

I'll bet all our new digital files are encoded with some sort of personally identifying code tying it back to your Amazon account. So the record companies will know who to sue when a file is found on a torrent server.


Yeah, I was going to say, what's the catch? Just a few days ago, I was reading about how MP3s purchased from Amazon are now digitally watermarked. It's my understanding, though, that its MP3s aren't personally digitally watermarked—that is, they're not watermarked with personally identifying information, but rather just information identifying that they originated on Amazon. I wonder if that will change, though.

In the meantime, apparently they're also retroactively adding to Cloud Player any MP3s you bought before they started automatically adding all MP3 purchases to it a little while back. So that's convenient!
posted by limeonaire at 8:53 AM on January 10, 2013


...and I have 1 song...
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:53 AM on January 10, 2013


Wait, wtf, we got prime now???

Well, without the stuff it does for Kindle (letting you borrow books) and without access to all of Amazon.com's wider variety of stuff for sale, and without Amazon.com's far superior prices. But yes, you can now pay $75 a year for Amazon Prime shipping, instead of simply just buying $40 worth of stuff and getting the free super-saver shipping instead. I am not sure why you would WANT this, but there you go.

(Remember: costco.ca gives you free shipping on EVERYTHING and has better selection and prices than amazon.ca.)
posted by mightygodking at 8:54 AM on January 10, 2013


I'm pretty sure that all songs from digital services have this, whether it's iTunes or Google Music or Amazon.

Well, as I noted, it was my understanding that Amazon had watermarking, but it didn't include personally identifying info. iTunes definitely does, though—when I learned that recently, it only served to further cement my commitment to avoiding the iTunes Store.
posted by limeonaire at 8:55 AM on January 10, 2013


2 CDs, one being a gift to my then-boyfriend, now-husband. And only 4 songs out of 7.

This is kind of cool, because I left the non-gift album in my car here in Texas and it got all burned up before I could rip it.
posted by muddgirl at 8:55 AM on January 10, 2013


Oh well, now I've got backups for when they break those, as they seem to do with everything else digital that they touch. Unlikely, you say? Then you haven't met my parents.

Unlikely, you say? Then you haven't met my parents.


Or my girlfriend.
posted by freakazoid at 8:59 AM on January 10, 2013


Apparently the only CD I've ever bought from Amazon is The Avalanches "Since I Left You"...which I ripped myself years ago & which is already on my phone. (For quite a while the intro to Frontier Psychiatrist was my phone's ringtone.)
posted by epersonae at 8:59 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh interesting—apparently some Amazon songs have something called Record Company Required Metadata embedded somehow—this page says it's just in the metadata, thus affirming my decision a while back to stripe out that little code Amazon had been putting in the Comments field of each song's metadata. But I wonder if there's also a digital watermark that includes this data in those songs. This page says you can look at the product info of anything you're going to purchase to learn whether this information is required to be embedded in it...
posted by limeonaire at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2013


Mightygodking: True, I looked at it and it is pretty lame. I'd want at least the kindle bonus. I normally do the free standard shipping, so won't be ponying up the $75.

OTOH,

Remember: costco.ca gives you free shipping on EVERYTHING and has better selection and prices than amazon.ca

I kind of disagree with this. I've actually bought quite a bit from costco.ca, but it would be more accurate to say their prices include shipping; things are sometimes more expensive then in the store, and the prices are sometimes slightly higher then other venues (but not after shipping is taken into account). Of course, all "free" shipping really means included, but I think it is more true of costco then most. But it is still one of the first places I look.
posted by Bovine Love at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2013


Hey, this is really cool. Hopefully it'll be available in the UK soon - we tend to lag behind the US Amazon...
posted by badmoonrising at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2013


I'd also serious debate the better selection. I've brought a fair raft of relatively exotic things on Amazon.ca lately, including most recently a 5m strip of LEDs.
posted by Bovine Love at 9:01 AM on January 10, 2013


Anyone remember Bleep?

Bleep! I think it's the only place to pre-order the forthcoming Autechre record(s), so I <3 them right now.

Also: MATHOOBASTANK
posted by mintcake! at 9:02 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


What the what. I know that I have some regrettable music purchases in my past, but I am damned positive that I never purchased the score of Twilight.
posted by schmod at 9:04 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ahh, and here we go: Here's an example of what it looks like in the Product Details when an album has Record Company Required Metadata.

The relevant line: "Record Company Required Metadata: Music file metadata contains unique purchase identifier. Learn more."
posted by limeonaire at 9:05 AM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


You've Come A Long Way, Baby, and the soundtrack to Run Lola Run.

I could've done worse.

(except upon further inspection, the Run Lola Run soundtrack didn't make the availability, and then there's that copy of "Round and Round" by Ratt that I bought a few years back, BUT I AM NOT ASHAMED OF IT.)
posted by Lucinda at 9:05 AM on January 10, 2013


This just shows that I never bought CDs from Amazon. I do have digital downloads in the cloud player, but nothing new added. No matter. Every CD I did buy (back when I bought them) has already been ripped into iTunes.
posted by The Deej at 9:06 AM on January 10, 2013


Yeah, this is just weird. The sea chanteys are pretty cool, but the Indigo Girls and Depeche Mode tracks were all gifts for my wife, and I literally have no clue when or why I apparently bought the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:06 AM on January 10, 2013


Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds, and Jonathan Coulton's Smoking Monkey. I am totally OK with this.
posted by zamboni at 9:10 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh dear. I've tried to load up Cloud Player and it just stutters and freezes and starts counting albums up into the triple digits and eventually just crashes my browser. I may have been...somewhat immoderate with my music purchasing over the last 14 years :(
posted by Merzbau at 9:10 AM on January 10, 2013


You have to understand that amazon.ca primarily exists so that Canadians do not take advantage of amazon.com.

When you live 45 minutes from the US/Canada border and have a US mailing address, this is less of a problem.

There was an interesting segment on CBC Radio One on Tuesday re: the CES in Las Vegas. I discovered that the reason why Canada is usually the very last to get new tech is because of population density. Not enough people to justify getting new stuff sooner than most markets. I hadn't thought of that.
posted by Kitteh at 9:11 AM on January 10, 2013


I wonder how long it will be before Amazon can give you evokes of all the physical books you've bought from them. That would be amazing.

(Ziggy Stardust, a Clancy Brothers Best-Of, and the soundtrack to LittleBigPlanet. I'm pretty happy with that. Of course, I only use Spotify to listen to music anyway.)
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:15 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Faint of Butt: "and I literally have no clue when or why I apparently bought the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack."

Now I have a theory that Amazon is automatically "giving" us all exactly one extra album to make us all question our memories and feel confused about ourselves.
posted by schmod at 9:17 AM on January 10, 2013 [16 favorites]


Sigh. At least the Cloud Player now gives me a convenient place to look through everything I've ever bought from Amazon to make a list of stuff I need to figure out how to hex edit...
posted by limeonaire at 9:19 AM on January 10, 2013


The three albums that popped up for me:

Jorge Vercillo — Livre
Notwist — Neon Golden
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Litton — Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade/ Capriccio Espagnol/ Russian Easter Overture

Look at me! I'm eclectic.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:19 AM on January 10, 2013


(And I'm fairly certain that Vercillo CD was in the bargain bin and I bought it so I could get free shipping for other things.)
posted by ocherdraco at 9:19 AM on January 10, 2013


I can't fully verify, but I think they also have retroactively added all your old Amazon Digital MP3 purchases to the cloud player. About damn time; I actually spent 3+ days uploading to Amazon all the music I'd previously downloaded from Amazon. Which was idiotic but I assume required by some copyright concern.
posted by Nelson at 9:22 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Can't remember who I purchased that Chris Botti album for but Five Finger Death Punch was for my husband and Florence + the Machine was for me.

Pretty interesting playlist when combined together and shuffled.
posted by morganannie at 9:22 AM on January 10, 2013


There was an interesting segment on CBC Radio One on Tuesday re: the CES in Las Vegas. I discovered that the reason why Canada is usually the very last to get new tech is because of population density. Not enough people to justify getting new stuff sooner than most markets. I hadn't thought of that.

Hey now, y'all are the first exclusive market for the new Wii!

No, not that one.
posted by kmz at 9:22 AM on January 10, 2013


96 items, most of which are either free mp3 samples I downloaded or albums I recognize but can't imagine buying and are not in the spreadsheet we made when Mr & I combined our CDs to the home server.

This is just weird.
posted by crush-onastick at 9:25 AM on January 10, 2013


Update: This is actually turning out to the be the opposite of the last time Metafilter went through the 90s greatest hits in that rather than annoying earworms, I'm reminded of treasure. Though there is a lot of funny stuff in my history, after listening to it again for the first time in years, I haven't purchased too many better albums than the Magnolia soundtrack before or since. I suddenly remember why this was the ONLY CD in the car for about a year.

(though I did admit to owning the cassingle for Richard Marx's "Hazard" yesterday, so giving my musical opinions may be pretty much wasted around here for a while)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:27 AM on January 10, 2013


I looked it up and then realized that of course I’d already ripped them to itunes when I bought them. And surely everyone else who wanted to did. And it’s not really that hard. It’s probably much faster for me to rip the CD than to find it in my Amazon account. So I gotta wonder what exactly the point is.

Amazon is taking care of Amazon, not me.
posted by bongo_x at 9:34 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


I had five bucks in Amazon MP3 credit that I used on the highest track-to-price-ratio albums I could find. Now my Cloud Player has like twenty meditation tracks, one Saw Doctors album (yay!), plus the two hundred tracks of the "Beethoven -- 100 Supreme Classical masters" and "Mozart - 100 Supreme Classical Masterpieces" albums.

Now, with web access, I can turn almost any device into an endless stream of soothing sounds!!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:38 AM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


Look at me! I'm eclectic.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:19 PM

Booogie-woogie-woogie.

(Come on, you KNOW it's on someone's list around here.)
posted by wenestvedt at 9:40 AM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


Agggh. Out of 43 albums I've bought on Amazon in the last couple of years, fully 25 of them have Record Company Required Metadata embedded. This sucks.

But in other news, this just reaffirms my massive love of Guided by Voices and Yuck, who are among those who didn't allow their stuff to be peppered with this crap.
posted by limeonaire at 9:42 AM on January 10, 2013


Too bad they don't give you downloadable FLAC, otherwise I could just have them mail the CDs to a library or charity or something instead of making me do a lossless rip myself.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:44 AM on January 10, 2013


posted by burnmp3s

ha
posted by M Edward at 9:50 AM on January 10, 2013


I've used my Prime membership a lot on Mom's behalf for the last few years.

I now have a LOT of Etta James and Koko Taylor in my Cloud Player. Could be a lot worse.
posted by DigDoug at 10:03 AM on January 10, 2013


You have to understand that amazon.ca primarily exists so that Canadians do not take advantage of amazon.com.

How does that work in practice? I can order French books from amazon.fr with free delivery in Europe, but the same books aren't available on the co.uk site (I checked both as in France it appears there's still a net pricing agreement, and I thought the UK site would have knocked off a bigger discount). I can't order from Amazon.com - when DVDs were new to the UK in the late 90s an ex's dad ordered from the US site all the time, but I *think* that was before they arrived here - but they seem happy enough with me ordering from their European sites if I want to.

Though I s'pose with foreign-language books being fairly expensive to buy over here they aren't really losing out too much if I decided to order Mega Bisous Points de Croix or the rest of Cinquante Nuances de Gris for my friend's birthday...
posted by mippy at 10:03 AM on January 10, 2013


Also, if they did this for print books purchased and e-books, you have NO IDEA how much easier it would be for me to move in a couple of months.
posted by mippy at 10:04 AM on January 10, 2013 [5 favorites]


Who knows any Spin Doctors song besides "Two Princes", and the Bill Nye the Science Guy parody of the same?
posted by Apocryphon at 10:11 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


"Little Miss Can't Be Wrong."

(But if you had included that, you'd be right.)
posted by cribcage at 10:14 AM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


After this influx of "new" music, my cloud player says I have space for 250 more songs. What happens if I keep buying music that's automatically added to the cloud player?

For what it's worth, I've never used Amazon's cloud player, instead opting to download everything to a hard disk and importing it to iTunes. I'm assuming future purchases will still allow download even if there's no more room in the cloud?
posted by CancerMan at 10:23 AM on January 10, 2013


Hah. Wow, a Ralph Covert kids' music CD we bought 9 years ago, Fatboy Slim and Arvo Pärt. Partying tonight, for sure.
posted by phong3d at 10:32 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


After this influx of "new" music, my cloud player says I have space for 250 more songs. What happens if I keep buying music that's automatically added to the cloud player?

From what I understand, anything added by "Autorip", just like any MP3s directly purchased from Amazon, don't count towards the space limit. That's strictly on MP3s which you personally uploaded.
posted by kmz at 10:38 AM on January 10, 2013


So... much... Christmas music.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:41 AM on January 10, 2013


John Wesley Harding's cover of "Like A Prayer," awww... and a bunch of Flaming Lips I'd forgotten about.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:44 AM on January 10, 2013


This is kind of awesome because I lost some of these CDs and was wishing I had digital versions. On the other hand, I can't remember who I bought The Lion King (1997 Original Broadway Cast) for as a Christmas gift in 2002, but whomever you are, I'm really sorry.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:44 AM on January 10, 2013


Look, John Denver's Greatest Hits is a fine album, and there's no shame in it showing up in my account.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:46 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Who knows any Spin Doctors song besides "Two Princes", and the Bill Nye the Science Guy parody of the same ?
posted by Apocryphon at 12:11 PM on January 10


"Little Miss Can't Be Wrong."

(But if you had included that, you'd be right.)
posted by cribcage at 12:14 PM on January 10



To be fair, I think most people just thought these were the same song until they finally heard them back to back even though they had originally heard them both over and over on the radio back when they were seniors in high school, driving their parents radio-only-having second car around for no good reason just to have some place else to be, and miserably slogging through to graduation.

I may be projecting here.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:46 AM on January 10, 2013


I looked to see if that Moody Blues Christmas album I got for my Dad a few years ago was on there, but no... I marked it as a gift.
Right now my cloud player just has Mojo Nixon and Daft Punk.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:46 AM on January 10, 2013


Denied - when I try to load the Amazon.com cloud player here in the UK, it auto redirects to the Amazon.co.uk cloud player which of course is empty. I guess this is not designed for people who travel around.
posted by Lanark at 10:47 AM on January 10, 2013


I'd be so much more excited if every physical book I ever purchased through Amazon was now downloadable to my Kindle.
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:00 AM on January 10, 2013 [7 favorites]


Ooooh! Hello, Stax-Volt: The Complete Singles 1959-1968!

I give the nicest gifts.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:02 AM on January 10, 2013 [5 favorites]


Funny, I sent things as gifts to other addresses but never bothered marking them as gifts. All of my purchases seem to be there. I give out a lot of Leonard Cohen.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:18 AM on January 10, 2013


I'm sure a fair number of people also remember Jimmy Olson's Blues, if only because it was the album opener.

Nothing has shown up for me yet and I'm sad. That said, I can only think of three CDs I ever purchased from Amazon, and I wouldn't be shocked if they weren't covered by the agreement Amazon worked out (Ween, Old 97s, orchestral arrangements of some Rachmaninov piano Études)
posted by SpiffyRob at 11:24 AM on January 10, 2013


mippy: "How does that work in practice? I can order French books from amazon.fr with free delivery in Europe ..."
Books have never (or rarely, idk) been restricted across the different Amazons. Try buying phones or music, though ...
posted by brokkr at 11:28 AM on January 10, 2013


Although my MP3 store purchases (free) haven't flowed in either, so maybe I just need to be patient.
posted by SpiffyRob at 11:30 AM on January 10, 2013


I was thinking it wasn't working for me, but then it popped up when I was manually looking through my purchase history. They even added the Dionysos CD even though it's not listed as autorip.
posted by ckape at 11:30 AM on January 10, 2013


I have bought many, many, many CDs from Amazon in that time period but none of them are appearing in my Cloud Player.

Yeah, same here. I assume they're slowly working through all the users who've bought stuff ... I can't imagine that all of my Amazon CD purchases are so obscure that they're not available as MP3s, but I guess it's possible.

For some reason I'm surprised that they have my purchase history all the way back to 1998. I shouldn't be, but I guess I naively assumed that they would discard it eventually. Can't imagine that data that old is really worth anything for predictive purposes.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:31 AM on January 10, 2013


You know what is a slight derail but fun as hell? Go through your Amazon purchase history, backwards. Starting from the earliest one. It is a walk down memory lane.

My first one was PalmOne Color Shades for my Palm IIIx in 2001.
posted by griphus at 11:33 AM on January 10, 2013


I didn't get to see any of mine until an email arrived, so they're probably just working their way through and letting people know. And I still rock out regularly to "Off My Line" by the Spin Doctors, thankyouverymuch.

On the super-plus side, I can download the Metallica S&M album that I think I lost at some point!
posted by brilliantine at 11:44 AM on January 10, 2013


I worked at MP3.com when we launched the instant Listening service that let you do what Amazon's now doing. But our service worked with multiple online CD stores (and some brick-and-mortar stores too).

It was amazingly cool. You went to say CDUniverse, bought a CD online, and there'd be a little option in the check-out flow to add your purchase to your My.Mp3.com locker so you could enjoy Instant Listening of the music you just bought. You make the purchase, and then go into your My.Mp3.com account, and presto, the music files are THERE and you can listen right away. It might take a week for the store to ship the CD to you but you had the tunes . . . instantly.
posted by brianstorms at 11:47 AM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


I just went through my entire Amazon order history, starting from when I must have first made an account in 2000. (Pretty sure that they let you place orders without creating an account and I did that for a few years, since there's stuff I remember buying well before that.)

Something about looking through my old orders seems to have triggered AutoRip, because I just got a message that they added a bunch of songs to the Cloud Player.

So if you're not seeing anything yet, try looking at your old orders and see if that has any effect. It might just be coincidental but certainly seems related to me.

Also, Amazon claims that I didn't order anything from them in 2007. That just can't be right.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:49 AM on January 10, 2013


No thanks, Amazon. All of your albums seem to cost $8.49 and up. I'll keep buying the $0.02 + $2.98 S&H used albums from Goodwill and ripping them myself. It's a neat idea, but I feel that it's missing something - not sure what.
posted by Tehhund at 11:53 AM on January 10, 2013


Seriously, younger me? Yngwie Malmsteen?
posted by cosmicbandito at 11:53 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Oh, duh, I just figured it out. I would have purchased those CDs with a different email/account. And I can't seem to remember the password for that one. Sadness!
posted by SpiffyRob at 12:03 PM on January 10, 2013


There's definitely something to looking at your old orders. I had one CD and some Christmas music in Amazon Cloud. I went back to my very first order in 1999, and five seconds later I had an email on my phone saying that eighteen new albums had been added.
posted by diogenes at 12:08 PM on January 10, 2013


Looks like I just got MP3s of Uncle Earl, Diana Krall and Laurie Berkner. Guess that about sums up my life.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:13 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Wouldn't Amazon's reason for doing this - other than any competitive edge it gives them over iTunes - be to lower the amount of server space they require. Instead of maintaining thousands of copies of Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas Extrordinaire (it must have been a gift) in various bit rates and lengths and quality on its servers from uploads, they can just provide a look-through the the mp3 versions they already have for sale to anyone that bought the CD.

Has anyone uploaded a CD purchased from Amazon to their Cloud Server? I'm curious to see if it replaces them with AutoRip versions.
posted by rtimmel at 12:17 PM on January 10, 2013


Does AutoRip only apply to certain songs, too? I bought a CD as a gift, but only three songs from the entire album appeared in my cloud player.
posted by CancerMan at 12:19 PM on January 10, 2013


Sigh. And now I'm all sad that I can't remember the password for the Amazon account I had in college.

Of course, as above, I'd be much more upset if ebooks were available and I couldn't get to those.
posted by nat at 12:26 PM on January 10, 2013


I bought a CD as a gift, but only three songs from the entire album appeared in my cloud player.

FWIW, I've found in the past that Cloud Player can be sluggish in adding songs when it's under high load. For example when Amazon offer popular albums at super-cheap prices -- I only saw three songs off Born This Way that morning, the rest didn't arrive in Cloud Player until later that evening.

Most of my CD purchases have been from Amazon Marketplace sellers so aren't eligible for AutoRip anyway.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:31 PM on January 10, 2013


I said SAW Doctors, dammit, not Spin Doctors!
posted by wenestvedt at 1:06 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


I was about to get excited about this, but then I remembered that most of the physical CDs I purchased were from one of those mail-in buy one, get five free deals, and I basically moved on to eMusic after that. (When I wasn't pirating in the glory days of Napster and Kazaa, natch.)

I would be really impressed and thrilled if they did this with books. I have bought an awful lot of books from Amazon over the years, and would love to have them in ebook format (legally). I just bought a few non-fiction books that I couldn't find ebooks of, and I was surprised at how annoyed I felt about having to buy physical copies instead of just getting ebooks instantly sent to me.

You know what is a slight derail but fun as hell? Go through your Amazon purchase history, backwards. Starting from the earliest one. It is a walk down memory lane.

This is indeed a walk down memory lane! My first orders: The Two Towers, Extended Edition DVDs and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2003. Good times.
posted by yasaman at 1:16 PM on January 10, 2013


Sleater-Kinney, Neko Case... This confirms what I've always known; I have excellent taste in music.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:17 PM on January 10, 2013


Absolutely no music in my Amazon history. I suppose I was either pirating or buying from independent record stores.
posted by naju at 1:52 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


I got a ton of albums (more than 50), mostly cast recordings. Musical theater nerds unite!!!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:27 PM on January 10, 2013


Apparently, I've only ever bought two CDs from Amazon. One is a CD I bought myself digitally, and then bought someone as a gift in physical form. The other is a terrible Now! rip-off CCM album I bought my mom.

I've been happier about things that I am about this.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 3:22 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


FYI for those who may be missing music or having an odd-seeming user experience; this message is near appearing at the top of the Amazon Cloud Player:


AutoRip update: due to high demand, we are experiencing delays. We will email you when we have added your music
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:34 PM on January 10, 2013


Well thanks Amazon. I buy all my CDs from you. How am I supposed to get back the three days I spent between Christmas and New Year in 2006 ripping all my CDs?

I'd this how you reward your loyal customers?
posted by MuffinMan at 4:05 PM on January 10, 2013


30 seconds later I now have more Dave Matthews Band MP3s than any sane human should own.

1, right?
posted by banshee at 4:07 PM on January 10, 2013 [11 favorites]


AutoRip update: due to high demand, we are experiencing delays. We will email you when we have added your music.

Me too. That's what I get for being out of town all day and not being in front of the computer.
I live in a very rural area and I refuse to buy CDs from fucking WalMart. So I'm going to have a lot of music sitting in that cloud. This could be an interesting weekend if they get it fixed.
posted by Ber at 6:11 PM on January 10, 2013


OH DAMN - IT JUST KICKED IN. It's full of tunes...
posted by Ber at 6:30 PM on January 10, 2013


I have cd purchases every year since 1998. None of them are included. :(
posted by maggieb at 9:27 PM on January 10, 2013


Oh... maybe the sun will come out tomorrow...
posted by maggieb at 9:28 PM on January 10, 2013


Leonard Cohen, Magnetic Fields, and Philip Glass for me. I remember buying the first two. I'll still happily listen to Magnetic Fields any day!
posted by speicus at 11:22 PM on January 10, 2013


I don't think I ever bought a CD from Amazon. I don't think I've bought more than a handful of CDs since 1998. From 1990-1993, I probably bought 500+. NAPSTER FTW!

But me + Cloud Player for the loss. The big loss. I'd love to hear He Poos Clouds right now. Or Island's Arm's Way ... oh wait. but ...

I do have 18 songs from Free to Be You and Me ... Dudley Pippin FTDFW!
posted by mrgrimm at 12:47 AM on January 11, 2013


MetaFilter: OH DAMN - IT JUST KICKED IN
posted by mrgrimm at 12:51 AM on January 11, 2013


Yeah, most of my CD purchases have been from marketplace sellers, so if they instigate it in the UK, I will not get my copy of Dandelion Milk Summer by The Secret Goldfish.
posted by mippy at 2:57 AM on January 11, 2013


Cloud Player reached all the way back to 1998 and served me up Climate of Hunter, plus a pair of 2005 purchases - Fall Heads Roll and Mark Eitzel. Cool.
posted by porn in the woods at 6:08 AM on January 11, 2013


Also note that the imported music seems to be separate from your general Amazon storage.
posted by Evilspork at 8:38 AM on January 11, 2013


Went to amazon this morning to buy an mp3 album, and noticed the physical cd was cheaper. So now I have a cd on the way and I'm almost done listening to the album. And I saved a buck. How awesome is that!
posted by Big_B at 8:40 AM on January 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


How awesome is it going to be when you sell the CD on Amazon Marketplace!
posted by box at 2:33 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


Bob Dylan, Bright Eyes, Beth Orton and Josh Ritter! Thanks, young me!
posted by rmless at 8:51 PM on January 11, 2013


If I ran Amazon's Cloud Player, everyone would get He Poos Clouds for free, because how could I couldn't?
posted by hydrophonic at 9:22 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


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