Digital

Amazon announces AutoRip service for CD buyers

By | Published on Friday 11 January 2013

AutoRip

Amazon has announced a new service, called AutoRip, which will instantly deliver MP3s of tracks from selected albums if customers buy said releases on CD via the etailer. Currently only available in the US, MP3s will be delivered to the customer’s Amazon digital locker service account, allying the locker set up with the Amazon mail-order business as well as its download store.

Just under 37,500 releases are currently listed as eligible for AutoRip on Amazon.com. However, Amazon’s VP of Worldwide Digital Music, Steve Boom, tells TechCrunch that over 50,000 are currently licensed, with deals in place with Sony Music, Warner Music and EMI (though not the rest of Universal), and all the major publishers, as was as many indies.

Although digital music has, of course, boomed in recent years, CDs are still the dominant format on a worldwide basis. That dominance is slipping though, with digital now outperforming CDs in some territories, and schemes like this may be a way to further transition those consumers still buying all their music on disk over to a digital platform. And if Amazon can become suppliers to those later-adopters, that would help the firm further expand its Amazon MP3 service, which, while the second biggest player in the market, remains overshadowed by Apple’s iTunes.



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