Amazon Matches iTunes Match With New 'Audio Upgrade' Feature 157
New submitter bostonidealist writes "Just after the July 6th 1-year anniversary of its unlimited music storage promotion (and presumably after early subscribers have all renewed their annual subscriptions), Amazon.com has changed the way its Cloud Player and Cloud Drive services work. Starting today, music uploaded to a Cloud Drive will count against its owner's Cloud Drive quota and will not be accessible through Cloud Player. Further, music files previously uploaded to Cloud Player or Cloud Drive are being automatically converted to 256 Kbps audio whenever Amazon 'has the rights to do so' and new audio files uploaded to Cloud Player will automatically be checked against Amazon's music database in iTunes Match-like fashion. One of the appeals of Amazon's Cloud Player service up to this point has been that users could pay a flat fee and store an unlimited number of their own music files (with their own tags, artwork, and audio data intact). Now, Amazon is automatically replacing users' previously uploaded data with its own, without allowing users to opt in/out."
Cloud services are for idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Now, Amazon is automatically replacing users' previously uploaded data with its own, without allowing users to opt in/out
*Exactly* why cloud services are for retards only. You would have to be a complete moron to trust a third party with your personal data. A complete and utter moron.
Re:Cloud services are NOT for idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
See what I did to the titel there? Yep, I added a "NOT" negating it.
Amazon being unfair does not mean that cloud technology is unfair just that there is no "unlimited storage for free" solution.
Every service you obtain from someone comes with it's cost. My personal opinion is that - given you are capable of handling
the complexity - you just do it yourself and incur the, usually decent pricetag in favor of privacy/certainty.
Using a cloud infrastructure provider (like aws) you can cloudify all your assets without a problem. Of course certainty (and
often paranoia) dictates that you at least manage to have secured backups of your static data, like, images, video, music and
db dumps on the ground.
Of course all the above takes for granted that you are not an idiot and actually can live with your own custom cloud.
Re:Cloud services are NOT for idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
While a cloud service provider isn't necessarily like Amazon, this is a prime example of why the cloud can't be trusted: you are at the mercy of the service provider, and if they alter the deal you can only pray they don't alter it further.
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You are at the mercy of who you choose for the service provider. Which, as justforgetme pointed out, can be yourself. So no, this isn't a "cloud issue" as much as this is an "amazon issue" as everyone has stated. What's to stop people from hosting things themselves? Nothing.
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In common usage, the term "cloud" refers to an alternative to setting up servers yourself, in which somebody else maintains all the infrastructure for you so that you don't have to. In principle, you could become a cloud provider, but then other people would presumably be at your mercy. Either way, a private server with a single user is not generally considered to be a cloud. It is just a private server.
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Which is exactly correct.
The difference between private server and 3rd party hosted private server is nothing. Cloud is just a marketing phrase and still doesn't reflect anything that hasn't already existed for 5-10 years minimum.
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>>Amazon being unfair does not mean that cloud technology is unfair just that there is no "unlimited storage for free" solution.
99.9% of all governments having a history of genocide towards their own citizens does not mean there is no good government somewhere. Still I'd prefer not to trust any government rather than take the 999-to-1 odds that I will get screwed. Likewise I'd prefer not to trust any stranger with my data on their cloud, since the odds of screwage are way too high. (Also the same
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What part of my sentence did you misread?
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Cool. Some other things You could have pointed out are that `titel` isn't even correct if you are speaking German (which I wasn't) and that `you just do it yourself and incur the, usually decent pricetag in favor of privacy/certainty.` introduces a semantic ambiguity that could have been avoided had I actually typed in the comma after the word `decent`.
Duh, grammar Nazis of late You disappoint me.
Re:Cloud services are for idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I think music one of the few good uses for this so called cloud thing. One easy to connect to location for my desktop, laptop, tablet, cell and automobile to connect to my music library is a good thing. No need to worry about keeping things in sync or forgetting to transfer that new song you like over to the device you have on hand at the moment. But like anything, if you keep your one and only copy in there, you get what you deserve.
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Seriously, it's easier to copy files. I use Total Commander, the very best descendant of that most excellent DOS shell, Norton Commander. I can bang out file copies using nothing but the keyboard, and do it faster and more accurately than a mouse user.
In truth though, if you only use the file management interfaces built in to the operating systems, synching with a catalog program probably is easier, just because Windows Explorer and Macintosh's Finder file management interfaces are both abysmal. Seriousl
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"cloud" issues aside, it is easier to have a dozen devices reading from the same file store via the network as compared to copying individual songs to each of the devices over and over as music preferences change. Especially so since the other devices probably do not have enough storage for the entire library.
Not sure why you jumped all the way to "too hard" when the OP just said "no need to worry".
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Some Mac advocates try to claim that file management is too complex for the non-technical user.
The "puny device" is the real problem. We have actually gone backwards in this regard. I have a 10 year old iPod that is capable of storing my Music collection while more "modern" smartphones and tablets are not.
iTunes becomes a bother once you have to use it constantly to manage the fact that your device cannot accommodate much of your media.
Being able to connect to the mother ship is nice but it's simply not fea
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This, THIS! I 100% agree with this, which is the one thing I absolutely hate about iTunes match. I love my iPhone, I love that I carry music, video, a camera, phone, my calendar, email and more in one device. I love that they finally got wireless syncing done RIGHT on my device so that podcasts, smart playlists and autogenerated genius lists are automatically updated. As soon as I turn on iTunes match though, the phone forgets how to sync, instead replaced with a system that can download/psuedo stream
Re:Cloud services are for idiots. (Score:5, Informative)
I can no longer push "play all" because it tries to play music that may not be on the device, if I'm on a wifi is just starts playing music that I might not want on my device at all or worse, burn up cell data with a switch buried far into the settings menu that makes it a pain to enable and disable freely.
Have you tried a smart playlist that filters by "download status"?
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This is trivially solvable by caching. Furthermore, on e.g. Android, where Google Play Music is also technically a cloud service, you can "pin" any track or album so that it's permanently cached on a given device, and therefore available regardless of connectivity issues. What's nice about this is that even then, it'll still sync metadata changes across all devices automatically, so you only need to edit them once.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cloud services are for idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not entirely sure how that's "personal", and I'm not sure how you're defining "trust", but it's hard to see how anyone would be a moron for merely using the system... I can't see anyone actually being seriously affected by this move.
It's very much personal. If I've stored files at 320K, then the conversion to 256K represents a loss of quality. If I'm content with 128K and Amazon converts to 256K, then they're effectively halving the number of songs per dollar that I can store. And if they also mess with my custom tags, the files are less useful to me, and it will cost me some work to restore them on Amazon's service. So basically, if someone dicks with my data without my consent, then it's personal, regardless of the extent or nature of the dicking.
I don't use cloud services - hell, I don't even use players that 'organize' my music for me. But I can see how people will be pissed off at this latest move by Amazon. It's yet another example of the high-handed 'all of your everything are belong to us' attitude that corporations are ramming down our throats.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Honestly, I think you're using a different definition of the word "personal" to everyone else. It doesn't normally mean "technical attributes of files stored on a PC not being propagated across a buffered network".
From the summary: "Further, music files previously uploaded to Cloud Player or Cloud Drive are being automatically converted to 256 Kbps audio whenever Amazon 'has the rights to do so'". So they're changing the "technical attributes" of files in Cloud Drive.
From the Amazon Cloud Drive Learn More page [amazon.com]:
"Your Files are Secure. Never worry about losing your precious photos, documents and videos. Store them in your Cloud Drive where they will be protected from a hard drive crash or a lost or stolen laptop. Your
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If I'm content with 128K and Amazon converts to 256K, then they're effectively halving the number of songs per dollar that I can store.
Except they're charging per song, not mb.
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This isn't an entirely theoretical problem; there are at least a dozen remixes of popular tracks (Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus comes to mind), and while many are distinguishable from the original, they're not all immediately distinguishable from each other.
Yes, this is a definite problem. Their music matching algorithm is a guy in his 50s named Pete. Pete has great tufts of hair growing out of his ears, and can't hear anything about the 10k range. He listens closely to every track, but mistakes are bound to happen - even with his trained ear.
Re:Cloud services are for idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
The intention of cloud music services like Amazon's (and Google's, and Apple's, and Ubuntu's...) is to provide a convenient way to access your music from anywhere at any time.
No the purpose of cloud players is to keep track of what users listen to.
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No the purpose of cloud players is to keep track of what users listen to.
Maybe, but also to make more money and lock people in to an "ecosystem".
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The intention of cloud music services like Amazon's (and Google's, and Apple's, and Ubuntu's...) is to provide a convenient way to access your music from anywhere at any time.
No the purpose of cloud players is to keep track of what users listen to.
That tracking is actually a feature that benefits the artist who actually gets royalties when played (which is tracked). This way cloud services like iTunes Match and this Amazon service get to 'legalize' all your illegally downloaded music. The artists eventually (if you play them) get paid fairly.
In the midst of all the humbug about illegal downloading and the music industry going down the drain, I find this a very sympathetic feature.
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I highly doubt Amazon gives a rats ass about the artist. They want to know what music you listen to so they can recommend more music for you to buy.
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Do I use them myself for anything other than music I've bought from them? No, largely because I'm too much of a cheapskate and 5Gb isn't enough to store my music collection.
I never understood why people would use the services like this with such a small storage amount. My collection is too big to take with me (over 300GB) but I have an SD card on my phone (32GB of drive space I literally take with me everywhere). Only has a one time cost. Weighs virtually nothing and is the size of my pinky nail. I can use it anywhere, more places than the cloud reaches with more space than the services typically offer. I can connect it to anything that has a USB jack or microSD slot. Unless t
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There isn't much unique about MP3's encoded from CD's.. sure they can probably distinguish between the encoder (and parameters) used to rip the track, but pretty much everyone that rips tracks off of CD's does so with one of the top 3 programs that only expose one or two encoding parameters and those from drop-down lists...
So we are at a dozen or two unique files at this point...
Then that MP3 gets inserted into the users music library, managed by one of the top 3 programs aga
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Even personally encoded files may leave enough differences from one run and one machine to the next that even with the default settings they produce different files. I think
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Is music your "personal data"?
Seriously, I think this is the difference between some people feeling they "own" music vs other people feeling they "use" music.
I use music. If I paid for it and have access to it, in whatever form, then I am happy, period. Doesn't make me an idiot, just makes me a user of content.
I don't personally feel that the music files themselves matter. If a company wants to "upgrade" my music for me, free of charge, then by all means, please do so. I would rather this then being for
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> Is music your "personal data"?
My copy is. I own it as much as I own the little plastic disc it came on.
I did not pay for an Amazon copy. I might not even want an Amazon copy. Amazon's copy is different and that's not something that can be trivially glossed over or excused.
It doesn't matter if it's Music, Video, eBooks, or anything else you happen to think of.
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My copy is. I own it as much as I own the little plastic disc it came on.
That file on Amazons servers isnt your copy. Its their copy. You still have your copy, unless you deleted it.
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> How is a song you did not create your "personal" data in any way?
It's the copy I paid for. It's not someone else's copy. It's not your copy and it's not Amazon's copy.
You have ABSOLUTELY ZERO say in it.
It's certainly not your copy you stupid meddling little shit.
Store this! (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of forcibly replacing your music with a good-quality one is so they can massively reduce storage. Now they just need one copy of each song.
Which makes it doubly bizarre they're now counting it against your cloud storage -- it's not even stored in your "piece" -- all that's stored are a few bytes of an ID pointing into their song database.
Profit! (Score:5, Funny)
The point of forcibly replacing your music with a good-quality one is so they can massively reduce storage. Now they just need one copy of each song.
Which makes it doubly bizarre they're now counting it against your cloud storage -- it's not even stored in your "piece" -- all that's stored are a few bytes of an ID pointing into their song database.
This is the cloud equivalent of the "?????" step between the "Charge money for storage space" step and the "Profit" step.
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No More Free Option (Score:2)
I don't really care about the conversions because I can't hear the difference between the bitrates. What kind of bugs me is that Amazon took away any type of meaningful free option.
Looking at Google Play right now.
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So I actually went and read the article. Turns out that people are misinterpreting what is happening (I know, shocking!)
Amazon is splitting out the music from their current Cloud Drive and moving it to this new "Cloud Player" where they are doing some of this stuff w/ 256kbps copies and whatnot.
However going forward, they have 2 different cloud services, Drive and Player. Drive is for files and the Cloud Player clients do not connect to it. If you upload a music file to your Cloud Drive (from this point for
music laundry (Score:5, Insightful)
upload pirated music get clean copies .. ;D
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Except, of course, that pirated music comes in lossless formats or at least in higher bitrates than what Amazon is giving you here.
Uh, not that I'd know. A friend told me.
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upload, upgrade, download? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, can I upload my music, have it upgraded and tagged by Amazon, then download the improved MP3s and quit the service?
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So, can I upload my music, have it upgraded and tagged by Amazon, then download the improved MP3s and quit the service?
Yes, you can do that if you want, but since they make you prepay for the entire year -- the joke will be on you if you quit their service after just 24 hours.
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So, can I upload my music, have it upgraded and tagged by Amazon, then download the improved MP3s and quit the service?
Yes, you can do that if you want, but since they make you prepay for the entire year -- the joke will be on you if you quit their service after just 24 hours.
I'm not sure what laws Amazon operate under, but a contract that says "and after you sign up we can vary the contract however we want and you will like it" is probably not enforceable, so if you already had an account you should be able to do this then get a refund.
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Prepay for what? The basic service is free, last I checked. You only get 250 imported files max, but you could process them in batches of 250...
What happens if it's already higher than 256? (Score:2)
Can you upload higher bitrates already? I would be pissed at them converting my audio if I had taken the time to upload FLAC copies, for example. Or even 320kbit MP3 that one usually does if they are ripping CDs.
Re:What happens if it's already higher than 256? (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary seemed quite clear to me, all music is being converted to 256kbps. It didn't say 'upgraded to', though I suspect Amazon may try to spin it like that.
What is likely happening here is that Amazon has a file of "Stairway to Heaven" in 256kbps on their server, and in order to save space everybody who uploads their own personal copy of "Stairway to Heaven" has it substituted with Amazon's version, so instead of 100 copies of various version of the song on their server, you just have 100 people accessing the same file, and guess what! Yes, that file you share with 99 other people, it counts towards your quota.
It's brilliant, they sell the same piece of hard drive space 100's and 100's of times over.
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I wonder how fuzzy the matching is? Will you suddenly end up with a different mix or remastered version of the song because it assumed they were the same?
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For example, create a file that's 3:14 seconds or whatever the song I want is, name the file "I was born this way", and my file of shit turns into a the song - courtesy of Amazon's service.
You just just upload a tiny file with the right tags and marked as '1bps' and see what happens :)
Another experiment would be to record yourself singing a song and see what Amazon replaces it with.
Re:UPload shit (Score:5, Funny)
Another experiment would be to record yourself singing a song and see what Amazon replaces it with.
I tried that, but all it came up with was "The Very Best of Assorted Cat Mating Calls"
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For example, create a file [of static] that's 3:14 seconds or whatever the song I want is, name the file "I was born this way",
You could stop there and you'd have a copy of the Gaga song
(just kidding, gaga isn't that bad)
Re:What happens if it's already higher than 256? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is likely happening here is that Amazon has a file of "Stairway to Heaven" in 256kbps on their server, and in order to save space everybody who uploads their own personal copy of "Stairway to Heaven" has it substituted with Amazon's version
There hae been at least 7 releases of Stairway to Heaven on CD. If I have the one from 1985, can I be assured that I won't be getting the remaster from 1994, or vice versa?
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There hae been at least 7 releases of Stairway to Heaven on CD. If I have the one from 1985, can I be assured that I won't be getting the remaster from 1994, or vice versa?
Note that the 1985 one probably has high dynamic range while the 1994 remastered is probably an overly compressed wall of sound.
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Considering that the cloud player does not currently recognize FLAC, I'm guessing nothing.
Bloody idiots... (Score:5, Funny)
Who would want 256 kilobyte per second, which turns a normal CD into more than a Gigabyte?
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How else are you going to take advantage of the fidelity of your Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable?
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According to the article: "Like iTunes Match, Amazonâ(TM)s Cloud Player keeps copies of songs at 256 kilobytes per second, even if the original version was lower-fidelity."
Who would want 256 kilobyte per second, which turns a normal CD into more than a Gigabyte?
Those are metric seconds.
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Who would want 256 kilobyte per second, which turns a normal CD into more than a Gigabyte?
It makes for a warmer sound.
Paranoid slashdotters 1: rest of the world: 0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the cloud! Where your data is our data.
As "the cloud" is getting more traction, expect worse things to happen. We are still in the acceptance phase.
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Welcome to the cloud! Where your data is our data.
As "the cloud" is getting more traction, expect worse things to happen. We are still in the acceptance phase.
Which is another way of saying they haven't discontinued the use of the anesthesia and lubricant yet.
(but eventually they will, citing the extra expense)
Below I reproduce the AC's comment I can't mod up since I'm posting in this thread, but it definitely deserves a +1, Insightful
foreign music listeners beware (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on Wed Aug 01, '12 06:01 AM (#40840123)
There may be all sorts of problems down the line with people who like music that isn't officially licensed in their country.
Reply to This
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Speak for yourself, I'm still in complete denial. For starters, I cannot accept that clouds, the pretty, free things without a greedy or evil thought in their whole body, should lend their name to something as banal as this. That's just arrogant and silly.
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I know right? I wish I could hug em.
foreign music listeners beware (Score:5, Interesting)
There may be all sorts of problems down the line with people who like music that isn't officially licensed in their country.
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There may be all sorts of problems down the line with people who like music that isn't officially licensed in their country.
Also, there is a problem with copyrights and your purchase being specific to the album you purchased.
If you have bought and stored a song from Album A, that does not give you any rights to the same song from Album B. Even if both albums used the same recording as a basis. This becomes a legal problem if Album B was never legally released in your country or jurisdiction.
In addition to other implications, of course:
From your perspective, it's like if you had a signed litograph, stored it in a bank, and they
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From your perspective, it's like if you had a signed litograph, stored it in a bank, and they decided to replace it with another one from the same series. It may look the same to the uneducated eye, but it isn't the same.
Even worse... what if your child has the 'radio edit' of a song and Amazon swaps it for the album version with all the naughty words left in?? Won't somebody _please_ think of the children???
Very much like Amazon in everything (Score:3, Insightful)
This is very much like Amazon in everything - you have no rights, only the obligation to pay them and have them do pretty much what they want with your data. There is no effective SLA, and if you don't like what they do only recourse is trying to win over a megacorp in court.
So ... You use their crap ? Blame yourself!
Weird domain (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why don't you just log in and find out.
Re:Weird domain (Score:5, Informative)
Try going to amazon.com and clicking on the link marked "Press Releases": http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1720457&highlight= [corporate-ir.net]
Hopefully you (and the people that modded you up) are a little less ignorant now.
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Already found that out; sorry that I didn't post an update. Also, that domain appears to belong to Thomson Reuters Financial [thomsonreuters.com]. My bad, I had no idea that there may be any benefit for a behemoth like Amazon to host investor relations materials on a third-party website.
Well, duh , they aren't insane enough to keep important information like that on the cloud! They have to use a service they can trust.
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It looks like it's a domain used by Thomson Reuters to host investors-relates sites for companies that contract that job out. More info from some blog post [ouseful.info].
Far Too Complicated... (Score:3)
I just buy the CD, rip it myself, put the CD on a shelf as it's own backup, copy the rips onto a portable hard disk and put the hard disk in my coat pocket.
I can access my music anywhere, not just where there's an Internet connection.
RIP Opera Unite (Score:2)
That's right, be old school and have a HD in your pocket which you can drop and lose all your shit (because we know you don't have backups) and lose the cost of the device itself.
A lot of people sneered at Opera Unite, calling it bloat.
To this day this derision of Unite by various people still bugs me, because under Unite, you could have an instant server on any computer that could run Unite. It was simple and drool proof. You didn't even need dyndns services. No more rolling your own with Apache or some
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> That's right, be old school and have a HD in your pocket which you can drop and lose all your shit
So? Just have another copy. Back before there were 32G microSD cards the size of a fingernail, I had my collection on CDR and DVDR. Media was cheap and very disposable.
I did this before any sort of Apple or Amazon music or cloud service existed. I could have another copy of my collection and spend about a dollar doing it.
A pocket sized hard drive is what you would use if you wanted to do some serious sneak
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(emphasis mine)
How about being even more old school, and learn how to read?
Mart
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Exactly, and 5GB is so incredibly cheap to buy in a USB stick or whatever, there's no need to use a cloud to store it. If they were offering 500G or some such, then maybe it would be useful. Hell, I've got 32GB in my phone, 5G just isn't worth worrying about.
Amazon Also Changes Pricing (Score:2)
And this is Why (Score:3)
I will not ever pay or use cloud services for anything important unless the files are encrypted on my end.
ObVader (Score:2)
The cloud is good for music (Score:2)
Too often I see people using Youtube or Pandora to play music they already own just because they forgot to sync it to their phone.
Upgrade, eh? (Score:2)
I have been buying MP3s from Amazon for some time, I just ordered some CDs instead yesterday. Used CDs are cheaper than MP3 albums in many cases, including shipping, and they have better quality (assuming no defects, still to be determined) -- I'll just rip them to FLAC. So this is only an "upgrade" for people who pirated music or ripped there CDs as 128k or 192k. Anyone ripping CDs in the last 5 years would be stupid to encode in anything but FLAC, unless they only need it on an MP3 player with limited st
Audio Upgrade (direct from Amazon Help) (Score:5, Informative)
original copies of your uploaded songs will be available as well, take a look below:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200593970#pastpurchase
Audio Upgrade
For some songs and albums you previously imported to Cloud Player, Amazon may have rights to upgrade your music to high-quality 256 Kbps audio. We'll automatically begin upgrading the audio quality for previously imported files when you log in to Cloud Player; this process will only happen once and may take a few minutes to complete.
A pop-up message will display progress, and you can close this message at any time. Once complete, we'll display the number of songs that have been upgraded.
Music that's been upgraded can be found in the "Upgraded Audio" playlist. The "Upgraded Audio" playlist will only be available if songs are upgraded. Original copies of these Upgraded Audio files will remain accessible in Cloud Drive. Your Cloud Drive "Music" folder is now called "Archived Music."
Imported Music Upgrades
Music you import into Cloud Player in the future will also be automatically upgraded to high-quality 256 Kbps if Amazon has the rights to do so. This upgraded music will only appear in the Imported playlist and will not appear in the "Upgraded Audio" playlist.
I don't use Amazon's cloud. (Score:3)
I buy many MP3s from Amazon, but I don't use its Cloud. I do let it keep my bought MP3s as my backups though. I never upload anything.
How horrifying (Score:4, Interesting)
This actually turns out to be a real benefit for me. I ripped hundreds of albums over ten years ago into 96 and 128 bit mp3's, and lately I've been nagging myself to drag them out and re-rip them to a better sounding rate. This just did it all for me and I'm downloading the upgraded files now.
Thanks Amazon! You're the best! Apple wants me to pay for this, you gave it to me for freee.
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This actually turns out to be a real benefit for me. I ripped hundreds of albums over ten years ago into 96 and 128 bit mp3's, and lately I've been nagging myself to drag them out and re-rip them to a better sounding rate. This just did it all for me and I'm downloading the upgraded files now.
Thanks Amazon! You're the best! Apple wants me to pay for this, you gave it to me for freee.
That's true as long as you don't mind Amazon's watermarks and intentional glitches in your music.
I strongly suspect (though I have no proof) that the digital files that Amazon sells and streams are not pristine rips from CD or masters. They almost certainly have a way to tell if any random mp3 in the wild is "one of ours". Just like how cartographers introduce minor errors or made-up streets in order to prevent other publishers from copying their work undetected.
I do have some proof actually. A friend of m
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A friend of mine and I both bought the same mp3 track from Amazon, and then compared the files and md5 checksums. Same metadata, different checksum. Our amateur conclusion is that the tracks were watermarked with our account IDs or something.
Did you check IDv1 and IDv2 metadata? I don't have any Amazon MP3s handy, but as I recall Amazon puts a unique number into the Comment field. That's easy to change or erase. I'd be interested in comparing actual audio data between two purchasers of the same MP3.
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Well, they put a pretty dress on the pig too, and in the right light, well...
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> It's hard to match the catalog iTunes ha
It's pretty easy to find something that iTunes doesn't have without putting any real effort into it. It doesn't even require being into something exotic. Even pretty mundane stuff is missing.
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This is 2012. Forcing people to use a proprietary platform binary to use a pretty generic looking e-commerce site should be considered beyond absurd.
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I can't tell, is that sarcasm? Windows Media Player has been begging for an upgrade for the last three versions of Windows, and is considered an unholy abomination that sucks up waaaaay too many system resources while being incredibly ugly / unwieldy. There's a reason many Windows users immediately install WinAmp for playing songs, and VLC \ MPC for video: the authors of those programs got it right. When I am playing songs, I want something small but useful (and no, WMP in miniature mode doesn't count); whe
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If you purchase it using your own Amazon account, they automatically link that account to that Kindle (unless you explicitly mark it as a gift). I.e. once you take the purchased Kindle out of the box, it will auto-login with your account. They probably enable Prime subscription that way as well.