Amazon Updates Cloud Player With New Features

Amazon has had its Cloud Player music streaming service available for users of various devices for a while. The online retailing giant has announced some new significant updates to Cloud Player that should make it even more appealing to customers and users. One of the most significant updates is licensing agreements to bring new music to Cloud Player users.

Amazon has announced new licensing agreements with Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and over 150 independent distributors and music publishers. Cloud Player can now be used on a variety of devices from the Kindle Fire to the iPhone and Android devices. Amazon also notes that it will soon be adding two additional devices to the supported list for Cloud Player.

Those two additional devices include Roku streaming players and Sonos home entertainment systems. Another new feature of Cloud Player is that all Amazon MP3 purchases, including tracks that the customer purchased in the past, are automatically saved to Cloud Player. That allows the buyer to have a secure backup copy of all music purchased from Amazon at no additional cost.

Perhaps the best feature Amazon has added is the ability to scan the customer's iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries, match songs on the computer to the 20 million song catalog Amazon offers, and make the music instantly available in Cloud Player. Those tracks are also upgraded at no cost to high-quality 256 kbps audio. This feature is supported on music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs.

"We are constantly striving to deliver the best possible customer experience for Cloud Player, and today we are offering our customers a significant set of new features, including scan and match technology and audio quality upgrade," said Steve Boom, Vice President of Digital Music at Amazon. "We are happy to have such broad industry support in enabling these features for customers."