Amazon discontinues its iTunes Match competitor that stored up to 250,000 songs in the clo...
Users looking to consolidate all of their legacy music purchases in a single cloud-based service will have one less option come mid-January, as Amazon has announced it will discontinue its song matching and uploading capability.
Both free and paid plans for the the Amazon Music Storage Subscription service will no longer be offered after Jan. 15, 2018. The service itself will remain active for subscribers, allowing them to stream or download their matched songs, until January 2019.
The cloud storage option was a direct competitor to Apple's own iTunes Match. It launched in July of 2012 for $24.99 per year, but at the time offered 10 times as many matched tracks -- 250,000 -- as iTunes Match.
In the years since, Apple has expanded the limit for song matching beyond 25,000, while retaining the same $24.99 price.
The discontinuation of Amazon Music Storage Subscription was first noted by Slashgear.
Matching services offer cloud-based storage of songs that may have been ripped from CDs, purchased from competing online stores, or even obtained through illegal means. Though Apple still offers iTunes Match subscriptions separately, it has also rolled the matching functionality into its $9.99-per-month Apple Music service, which also includes unlimited streaming.
In a notice to its website, Amazon explains that music purchased from Amazon, including MP3s and AutoRip CDs, will remain stored in the cloud for both playback and download. The change only affects matched songs that were not purchased from Amazon -- such as tracks that may have been bought from iTunes.
The cancelation affects both the free 250-song tier and the paid 250,000-song service. Free users can no longer upload songs, while paid subscribers will be able to do so until their subscription ends.
Amazon continues to offer its Music Unlimited service, which competes with the likes of Apple Music and Spotify. With those, customers pay an ongoing monthly fee for the ability to stream and download songs, but they do not own the tracks, and access to them is removed if the subscription is canceled.
Both free and paid plans for the the Amazon Music Storage Subscription service will no longer be offered after Jan. 15, 2018. The service itself will remain active for subscribers, allowing them to stream or download their matched songs, until January 2019.
The cloud storage option was a direct competitor to Apple's own iTunes Match. It launched in July of 2012 for $24.99 per year, but at the time offered 10 times as many matched tracks -- 250,000 -- as iTunes Match.
In the years since, Apple has expanded the limit for song matching beyond 25,000, while retaining the same $24.99 price.
The discontinuation of Amazon Music Storage Subscription was first noted by Slashgear.
Matching services offer cloud-based storage of songs that may have been ripped from CDs, purchased from competing online stores, or even obtained through illegal means. Though Apple still offers iTunes Match subscriptions separately, it has also rolled the matching functionality into its $9.99-per-month Apple Music service, which also includes unlimited streaming.
In a notice to its website, Amazon explains that music purchased from Amazon, including MP3s and AutoRip CDs, will remain stored in the cloud for both playback and download. The change only affects matched songs that were not purchased from Amazon -- such as tracks that may have been bought from iTunes.
The cancelation affects both the free 250-song tier and the paid 250,000-song service. Free users can no longer upload songs, while paid subscribers will be able to do so until their subscription ends.
Amazon continues to offer its Music Unlimited service, which competes with the likes of Apple Music and Spotify. With those, customers pay an ongoing monthly fee for the ability to stream and download songs, but they do not own the tracks, and access to them is removed if the subscription is canceled.
Comments
Amazon dropping this seems a bit surprising IMO. I guess Amazon is in the process of changing some of their market strategies, with stuff like the Whole Foods purchase and their new plans for an online drug store? Perhaps the "free services" are being phased out?
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There was also a good rather interesting Quicksilver clone that they took over and then canned.
On the development side side it can also get rather annoying because they went from Angular1 to Angular2 and the new version was so incompatible that developers reckoned that Angular had been discontinued and then a new product was given the same name to avoid the backlash. The new version was much better, but it should have been renamed.
To be honest though, you get what you pay for, and Google has never hidden the fact that everything they do is considered beta and so could be dropped at any moment.
This is is why I tend not to rely on any of their services (that, and the raiding of customer data, oh and the whole “tracking when I asked you not to” thing.)
My recollection of movie "purchase" sites like VUDU and Amazon is that you don't actually download a local copy. iTunes offers that option.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog. So, if you subscribe to Apple Music, then drop that subscription for any reason, it deletes what was uploaded? Admittedly a very esoteric point.
I saw you can get an 8TB drive for $150. Seems like maybe there is a homegrown solution to this. Plex likely does it, but I saw subscription fees and moved on. Maybe there is a free version.
If Apple simply canceled iTunes Match tomorrow and said you have a year to deal with it, it would be an atomic bomb.