Yesterday, Amazon announced an important update to their Cloud Player. From now on, users are offered a ‘scan and match’ service, which means that they don't have to upload their songs to the cloud anymore. This new service doesn't come as a surprise. Recently, Amazon obtained licenses for the ‘scan and match’ service from the top-four record labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Warner Music Group. 

The ‘scan and match’ feature will scan the user's hard drive and match the music found there to the more than 20 million tracks stored on the company's servers.If Amazon finds a match, the user gets access to the copy of the song stored on Amazon's servers, even if the song is purchased from another digital store like iTunes or ripped from a CD. Amazon doesn't have to store multiple copies of a song anymore, as all users get access to the same copy. All songs will be made available in high-quality 256 Kbps audio, even if the song on the users hard drive are in lower quality. The songs can be played on any web-connected device. For $25 a year, users can import and store 250,000 songs in the Cloud Player. With a free account, up to 250 songs can be imported and stored. Apple offers a similar ‘scan and match’ service. However, only 25,000 songs can be stored for the same yearly $25 fee. 

The cloud services of Amazon and Apple allow users to stream their own music on every web-based device, without having to copy all their songs from one device to another.  According to many industry analysts, storing digital media via Internet services is the future. Now, we'll have to wait and see if the public will also embrace cloud storage.

Read more about online music services on FutureOfCopyright.com:

• Entertainment industry and the digital era, an interview with Wouter Rutten
• Online music sales booming in Sweden
• Major changes in music industry: from offline to online, from product to service

Source: CNET

By: Marjolein van der Heide