

Amazon announces unlimited MP3 storage with any Cloud Drive plan - phinze
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=tsm_1_tw_s_dm_lnxnwv?node=2658409011

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thamiam
E-mail I just received from Amazon. I can't believe how exactly right this
this, and how unexpected that is.

(full disclosure, I am an Amazon employee, not affiliated with the MP3 or
cloud drive team. I was just independently motivated to share this, because
not one hour earlier I had been looking at my downgrade options on my phone).

"Information About Your Cloud Drive Account

Hello,

Thanks for your prior purchase of the 100 GB Amazon Cloud Drive storage plan.
Beginning today, all paid Cloud Drive storage plans include unlimited space
for MP3 and AAC (.m4a) music files at no extra charge for a limited time.
Learn more here:

<http://www.amazon.com/mp3gettingstarted>

Because your current plan now includes unlimited space for music, we're
refunding the difference between the cost of your original Cloud Drive plan of
100 GB and the cost of a current 20 GB plan ($20), which is the least-
expensive Cloud Drive plan that includes unlimited space for music. A refund
of $80 will be issued to the card originally used for your Amazon Cloud Drive
storage plan. Refunds are typically completed within 10 business days and will
appear as a credit on your credit card statement.

We hope to see you again soon!

Sincerely,

The Amazon MP3 Team <http://www.amazon.com/mp3>

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technomancy
Q: What is the cloud?

A: The cloud is a term used to describe the Internet. [...]

Hm; that kind of straightforwardness is actually kind of refreshing.

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reaganing
Clarification, obvious: You only get unlimited MP3 (and AAC) storage with any
_paid_ Cloud Drive plan. You won't get it with the free 5GB plan.

Of course, I think most people are probably on the 20GB plan since Amazon was
giving those away with the purchase of an MP3 album for quite some time.

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kylec
Are there any indications on what "for a limited time" means? Is there a term
for which Amazon has promised to provide this service for free? Once the
unlimited storage is no longer offered, will the existing files in the cloud
be 'grandfathered' in and continue to be free to store, or will people be
expected to pay or face loss of access to the files in the Cloud Drive?

~~~
chris11
I don't know what "for a limited time" means, but when accounts get
downgraded, you keep the higher storage capacity until the end of the billing
cycle. Then they give you a limited amount of time to delete files and
download them.

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mcpherrinm
I wonder how much verification is done that the files are MP3? You could
reasonably put other data inside MP3 containers and use Cloud Drive as a nice,
inexpensive backup solution.

Time to start writing a tool ;)

~~~
unfletch
People did this to share non-mp3 files on the original Napster. I wonder if
Wrapster still runs... <http://www.team-mp3.com/mp3/wrapster.htm>

~~~
JonnieCache
Thank-you for that dose of nostalgia.

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llambda
Okay I tried and failed: what qualifies as "eligible" MP3 and AAC files? I
misread the "Learn More" link that was related to previous purchases as being
the "Learn More" for eligible files, but afaict that "Learn More" link related
to eligible files isn't active so I'm confused as to what will qualify as
eligible.

~~~
TillE
In my cloud drive settings (I have a temporarily-free-with-purchase 20GB
account):

"Upload an unlimited number of songs in any supported file format with Amazon
Cloud Player.

Supported file formats for songs Cloud Drive currently supports song files in
the following formats:

.mp3—Standard non-DRM file format (Includes Amazon MP3 Store purchased files)

.m4a—AAC files (Includes iTunes store purchased files)

Any MP3 or AAC files added to your Cloud Drive will be available for playback
and download using Amazon Cloud Player. Upload your music now with Amazon
Cloud Player."

~~~
chris11
Do you know if this includes filters for length? For instance would rips of
audiobooks be viewed as eligible for free storage?

~~~
re
Answered here, somewhat:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200704820&ie=UTF8)

> Files must be music recordings in MP3 (.mp3) or AAC (.m4a, iTunes non-DRM
> files) format and must be less than 100 MB in size... audio recordings that
> are not of songs and non-audio files (even if in MP3 or AAC format) are not
> eligible for unlimited music space.

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mfringel
So.... the paranoid part of me thinks this sounds like:

"Upload all of your mp3/aac files for free with any paid cloud drive plan...
until we start charging for the 'mp3/aac files don't count towards your quota'
option, which is $9.99/mo."

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esrauch
Amazon seems to use images of text an awful lot. Anyone know why that is?

~~~
drivebyacct2
Very frustrating for anyone who is on mobile or happens to like how their text
renders. These images are flat out difficult to read in places.

But since I bought an MP3 album a while back, I effectively have a free cloud
to store my 40GB of music in. I'll take text-ful-images for that.

~~~
esrauch
Are you planning on actually using it? I uploaded some music to Amazon's mp3
when it first launched and more to Google's MP3 and I have found very little
need to use either one. I obviously can't fit all my music on my phone (an
android) but I generally am ok with the music I have at any particular time
and swapping.

~~~
reaganing
I don't stream much with it on my phone. But it's great to be able to download
the album(s) I want to the device without needing to connect to my computer.

Also, can never have too many backup copies of my music.

~~~
allwein
> Also, can never have too many backup copies of my music.

That's going to be my primary use of this service. I already have ways of
accessing my music on my home machine remotely. But an additional offsite
cloud backup of 150GB for $20 a year? Sold.

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dons
Well, that's kind of interesting. I just bought 100G so I could store all my
mp3s in the cloud player while travelling. After uploading about 40G, this
plan must have activated, and it shows "< 1%" of 100G used. Cool idea: I might
use the space for data now.

------
samstokes
Still no Linux support? :(

(I know about the web-based uploader, but it's super-clunky for uploading more
than one or two albums - unlimited MP3 storage is no good if you have to spend
a week navigating the interface, never mind the actual upload time!)

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cmelbye
Wow, Amazon continues to amaze. I'd really love an iPhone app, though. This is
kind of useless for me until they release one (I prefer iTunes to listening to
music on my laptop, it's faster and has a nicer interface.)

~~~
neuroelectronic
You can use the web player through safari.

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WalterSear
What's to stop me from changing all my file names to 'mp3'?

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yarian
I wonder why they are not offering ogg vorbis support. Is it just not as
popular? Are the files typically larger? Either way, it's a glaring omission
imo.

~~~
jonknee
Almost no one uses Ogg, not a very glaring omission in my opinion. Amazon
sells MP3s. Apple sells AACs. No one with any market share sells Ogg files.

~~~
wazoox
AFAIK all games sound and music have been in ogg format for ages.

~~~
jonknee
And none of that would be in Amazon Music... Again, no one with any serious
market share sells music in Ogg.

~~~
wazoox
The amount of music sold in file format is totally dwarved by the amount sold
on CDs. For a while I used to rip to ogg, I'm probably not the only one.

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dfischer
So I get unlimited space for music at $20/yr? Umm, yeah sign me up unless
there's a catch.

Unlimited space for music details Limited time offer: All paid storage plans
include unlimited space for music at no additional charge. Upload as many
songs as you like without taking up any of your storage space. Listen to your
music anywhere with Amazon Cloud Player.

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mark_l_watson
Big win. I got a free 20gb account for a year just for buying a Johnny Winter
CD (as MP3s) and I'll certainly pay for 20g after my free year is up.

I am using the player right now: very convenient to use from my laptop or
droid. I haven't tried it from the living room on Google TV yet but that
should also work fine.

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jrockway
If I wanted to sue people for having pirated copies of my content, the first
thing I would do is ask everyone to upload all their files to my servers so I
could inspect them. If I paid them, they probably wouldn't even realize that I
was out to get them.

~~~
baddox
How could they really know if the music you uploaded was pirated? Even if your
stuff is tagged with scene groups, that's not even close to proof that you
pirated it.

~~~
pyre
I imagine through fingerprinting, checksums of files, etc. Though that's not
fool-proof as people can an do change the metadata, filenames, etc of the
files they download. (That's not even touching people that download FLAC and
then convert to mp3 for 'actual usage').

~~~
technomancy
Easy enough to claim fair use. "I had this on CD, but it was more convenient
to download it rather than rip it myself." seems pretty bulletproof to me.

~~~
pyre
If they come to you with a lawsuit threat, you'll still have to pay money to
argue that defense in court.

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nicksergeant
I'd really like to know which of my files were not "eligible". I selected a
folder which had 9,192 MP3 / M4A files in it, and only 6,822 were "eligible".
I'm fine with some not being able to be uploaded, but please tell me which
ones.

~~~
nicksergeant
Completely, 100% never mind. There's a small, not-so-obvious link for "Music
that cannot be uploaded"

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8ig8
Anyone have experience mounting the Amazon Cloud Drive on OSX? It's apparently
different than S3.

I did find a reference to mounting it as a virtual drive on Windows.

Specifically I was wondering about the possibility of rsync.

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qixxiq
I wonder how much offering this actually costs them.

There must be some serious file duplication between users especially if
they're offering unlimited mp3 sharing, since many people will have the same
MP3 files (they can profit off piracy while pretending it doesn't exist).

If they're really clever about it they might even store the data separately
(which will increase duplicate collisions quite a lot due to retagging)

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Apocryphon
This, my friends, is why competition in markets is a great thing.

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sid0
No FLAC support?

~~~
reaganing
The Cloud Player Web and Android apps don't support FLAC, and the unlimited
storage only applies to MP3 and AAC files.

But you're able to store any kind of files in Cloud Drive if you just want
access to them to copy to different computers.

