Amazon’s AutoRip Service Gets Your Digital Groove On For Free

In an effort to make CDs more attractive, Amazon is adding a new service known as AutoRip. If you purchase an AutoRip CD through Amazon, the retailer will now give you a free MP3 version of that same album. The MP3 version will be delivered to your Amazon Cloud Player library so you can access it from your computer, Kindle Fire, Android phone, iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad.

To make the deal even sweeter, Amazon is offering MP3 versions of tracks from CDs purchased from Amazon since 1998. If you previously purchased an eligible AutoRip CD, those tracks will also be available in your Cloud Player library. In some cases, select tracks from an album, rather than the whole album, will be AutoRip eligible. The first time you sign in to Cloud Player for Web, you'll see the eligible tracks that have been added to your library.

CD sales may be declining, but statistics from Nielsen Soundscan still show the CD as the dominant music format. We don't expect the service to revive the sales of CDs, but AutoRip may give added appeal to the format. The service also has the potential to help Amazon capture a larger share of both the CD and digital music format purchases since users can get the best of both formats for in a single purchase.