Thursday, January 10, 2013

Amazon 'Auto-Rip' Music on Demand



CNET today report, that Amazon is poised to release a facility that will enable CD buyer to automatically receive copies of the all the CD’s tracks stored for free in their Amazon cloud. The digital files can then be accessed on demand via any web enabled device so not only promoting Amazon’s cloud but also effectively giving the user access to their music at any time and place with them having to rip and copy themselves. Amazon are reported as also debating storing your past CD purchases and enabling those to be accessed free of charge.
It would be a novel way to both further lock customers into Amazon but at the same time combat the Spotify on demand model. Obviously this not only applies to CD purchases but will be could also be synchronised with your MP3 purchases. So you have a library of CDs and can continue to buy more and will have on demand web access to all these that were bought via Amazon for free.
We welcome the initiative as adding value to the consumer and to a CD purchase but we question who will own what. Consumers will be able to sell on their CDs and still retain a digital copy. There will be no link to the life of the ownership of the CD and only a relationship between the online copy and the original sale. You will be able to legitimately rip a copy and sell the original and it further raises questions about the arguments that continue to be raised in favour of retaining the lack of a first sale doctrine on digital material.

Breaking news from BBC Amazon AutoRip Service gives out free digital copies of CDs and starts with a 50K catalogue 

1 comment:

RCA said...

I think Amazon strategy is to kill the CD. As you, I'm a user of Spotity, im my case since 2009. Since then i haven't bought a CD. Actually they have done something similar with DVD.
I bother to deal with inventory?