Amazon Updates Cloud Player: Scan & Match Imports, 256 Kbps Audio Upgrades, Premium Accounts
Amazon just updated its Cloud Player music storage service with a number of interesting new features, including an iTunes Match-like scan and match technology that allows Amazon to just scan …
Context & Ripple Effects
Cloud Player launched in March 2011 as an upload-your-files locker streaming to computers and Android, then quietly picked up iOS device support two months later. The strategic turn came in June 2012, when CNET reported Amazon was negotiating cloud-music rights so it could match rather than store user libraries — today's update is that scoop made real.
With the new scan-and-match imports, 256 Kbps upgrades, and premium accounts, Amazon is no longer selling storage; it is selling a licensed mirror of a user's library, directly mirroring Apple's iTunes Match at a moment when the two companies are confirmed to be going head-to-head across phones, tablets, and apps.
First-order effects
- Users importing existing libraries no longer need to upload files track by track — Amazon scans and matches them against its catalog, cutting setup time and Amazon's own storage costs per customer.
- Premium accounts give Cloud Player a paid tier for the first time since the service went live in 2011, converting a free locker into a recurring-revenue product.
Second-order effects
- Apple's iTunes Match now has a direct cross-platform competitor that works on Android and iOS alike, pressuring Apple's argument that iCloud integration is reason enough to stay in its ecosystem.
- Labels and publishers, whose licensing was the prerequisite for match-based imports per the June 2012 reporting, gain a second paying counterparty for cloud-music rights alongside Apple — strengthening their hand in future catalog negotiations.
Third-order effects
- If match-based licensing becomes the standard, cloud music shifts structurally from storage-priced lockers to catalog-access subscriptions, making label licenses — not server capacity — the binding constraint on every player.
- The move fits Amazon's broader 2012 pattern of building services that deepen Prime-style loyalty (the same month it added Warner Bros. TV shows to Prime video), pointing toward music bundled into a wider membership rather than sold standalone.
The trend: Cloud music is pivoting from pay-for-storage lockers to licensed scan-and-match catalogs, with Amazon and Apple racing to sign the label deals that make matching legal.