Scan & Match will trawl your music libraries and provide back-up copies of tracks.
Amazon has ramped up its Cloud Player offering considerably in a bid to make it more attractive to hesitant consumers.
Users are now able to control more of their music via Amazon and move more of it to the cloud by using the firm’s new Scan & Match service.
Boiled down, Amazon will scan users' iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries and match the tracks it finds with mp3s in its own catalogue. These songs will then be upgraded for free to 256 Kbps audio.
What’s more, the Cloud Player now works with a wider range of devices, including Android tablets and smartphones, the Kindle Fire, iPhone, iPod Touch and web browsers. Functionality with Sonos and Roku is coming soon.
Unfortunately, Amazon Cloud Player is only available to US customers right now, but it won't be long before the rest of the world can join in.
The service is available in both Free and Premium flavours: Free allows customers to store all MP3 music purchased on Amazon, plus import another 250 songs to Cloud Player. Premium customers can import and store up to 250,000 songs in Cloud Player for an annual fee of $24.99. One nice touch is, songs bought on Amazon don’t contribute to that 250,000.
Amazon has signed licensing agreements with Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more than 150 independent distributors, aggregators and music publishers.
With the similar iTunes Match service costing the same but only offering storage for 25,000 songs, Amazon have really upped the ante. Let’s see what Apple does next.
Find out more at www.amazon.com/cloudplayer
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