Thursday, January 10, 2013

AutoRip

There are many reasons why Amazon is my favorite company, and here's another one.

I started buying music from Amazon in 1999. On CD, of course. Over the years, I bought a ton of CDs from them before I finally started buying music digitally.

From Amazon, of course, because it was DRM-free.

I don't think I've bought a physical CD in at least four years now. And I'd like to convert my CD collection (which I never listen to anymore) to digital format, but I'm too damn lazy (and really don't have time) to rip the CDs. So I have quite a bit of music that I don't listen to anymore.

Here's what I reveived in my inbox today from Amazon:
You may have noticed that songs from 153 CDs you have purchased from Amazon were added to your Cloud Player library. This means that high-quality MP3 versions of these songs are available for you to play or download from Cloud Player for FREE. You can find your songs in the "Purchased" playlist.

In addition, we're excited to announce AutoRip. Now when you buy any CD with the logo, all songs from the MP3 version of that album will instantly be delivered to your Amazon Cloud Player library for FREE.

Unbelievable.

I'm sure I would have eventually broken down and started buying digital versions of the albums I had on CD, because one-click purchase is so much easier than manually ripping the CDs. So Amazon was going to get my money, eventually.

An accountant would say that this was a terrible business move by Amazon, because people like me would eventually buy the digital versions.

Amazon, though, understands that this just means I'll spend even MORE money with Amazon. And they also understand that it makes me more likely to buy CDs again, which have a larger profit margin.

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