Amazon announced a huge update today for their Cloud Player service, adding a new iTunes Match-like “scan and match” feature that allows users to access their entire music library in the cloud by matching their tracks with Amazon’s media library.
The service scans a user’s entire iTunes or Windows Player library to find matching tracks, and like iTunes Match, even upgrades all matched files to 256 kbps quality. Besides its many functional similarities with iTunes Match, Amazon Cloud Player also copies Apple’s pricing of $24.99 per year, although the first 250 tracks are free.
Amazon Cloud Player now has more benefits, including:
- Faster music import for Cloud Player using scan and match technology
- Upgrade of matched files to high-quality 256 Kbps audio
- Delivery of future Amazon MP3 purchases directly to Cloud Player
- Delivery of eligible past Amazon MP3 purchases to Cloud Player without having to import them
- Ability to edit song and album information (such as title and track number), and the ability to import that information for matched files directly from Amazon’s catalog
- Support for more music file types
While Amazon’s service is similar to iTunes Match, it’s worth noting that Amazon is actually offering a better value than Apple at the moment, allowing users to access 250,000 files rather than 25,000, and adding the ability to edit song and album information.
And so the story goes. Now that iTunes Match has been available for a while, it was only a matter of time before everyone else started copying them – and Amazon didn’t disappoint…
Music can be accessed through Amazon’s Cloud Player app, which is available as a free download from the App Store.
