Neal Augenstein, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – “Old-school” music listeners have something to new to cheer about.
Amazon customers who purchase vinyl records will receive free MP3 copies of the music. The online giant will even honor vinyl purchases that date back to 1998.
The new service is an extension of Amazon’s AutoRip program, which began in January. The program gives free digital copies of music to customers who purchase CDs.
“Many of our music customers are vinyl fans and it’s traditionally been very difficult to make digital versions of vinyl records. Now customers can enjoy the albums they buy wherever they are, not just when they have access to a record player,” says Steve Boom, vice president of Digital Music for Amazon.
When customers buy a hard copy of music from AutoRip, which contains more than 23 million songs, a digital copy is automatically added to their Cloud Player libraries, where it will be available for immediate playback or download, says an Amazon press release.
Since so many people have retired their turntables, the new digital copies spare customers from searching for friends with turntables in order to convert the analog music to digital.
The 256 Kbps cloud-based copy can be played from any Kindle Fire, Android phone, Android tablet, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Samsung TV, Roku and Sonos. The digital copy can also be played from any Web browser and from Ford SYNC App Link-equipped vehicles.
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