Amazon's Auto Rip

Hello,

What is Auto Rip you ask? When you go to amazon.com and buy a physical CD, the digital copy is automatically sent to your amazon.com cloud player. (Don't worry it's free for any songs you buy from amazon.com.) Then from there you can listen to the song in the cloud player or download it to your computer. In other words you bought the physical CD, but you don't have to wait for it to arrive before you can start listening to it.

I wanted to check out Auto Rip, so I bought Cinderella's "Gold" yesterday. The CD automatically went to my cloud player. From my cloud player I downloaded it to my computer. If you are scared about if you can do this, don't worry you can. As with most things on the Internet, it's extremely user friendly. I say this as someone who isn't a computer geek. Not only do I have the digital copy, but the physical CD is on the way so I can look at the booklet.

But here's even more good news, but an explanation first. I'm old school and so I've always preferred the actual physical CD. I like being able to listen to it in my car, to look at the booklet (usually for the lyrics) and a CD lasts for a long time.  although I have a lot of digital music on my iTunes. One of my criticisms about digital music has always been that what happens when you lose that music?  Previously in the past it was just gone, if you wanted it again you'd have to buy it again. However with this new Auto Rip, any Auto Rip eligible CD that you've purchased since 1998 you can now re-download to your computer. (No you don't get the physical CD again.) That was a welcome thing of Auto Rip. iTunes had a similar program a year or two ago.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday looking through all the music I've purchased from amazon.com over the years. I was able to re add 181 songs to my computer that have been missing for who knows how long. That included music by The White Stripes, The Strokes ("Is This It") , Living Colour, Erasure, Mother Love Bone, Counting Crows and Jurassic 5. (Although I could also re download Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" I didn't at this time. I'm sorry, but that's one of the most overrated CDs ever.)

Honestly a lot of that lost music I hadn't even missed, but it's good to have it on my computer again. On my iTunes I've been listening to the recently added playlist the last couple of days. I've ran into some long lost friends. Happy day!

Auto Rip is decent. You may not love it immediately, but it's good to have access to it. And honestly I'm surprised this idea hasn't happened before. Now that it's happened, it seems so obvious. I didn't explain this as well as I wanted. For more information go to the amazon.com MP3 section. They have videos there that explain this much better than me.

themusicaddict