Amazon Wooing Big Record Companies

I recently wrote about Amazon’s super-cool cloud-player, and now here’s an update. According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is talking to the largest record labels and music companies to enhance what they already have. We’re talking about licensing deals that’ll help provide tons of content to their already existing database of music. Apparently, these meeting taking place are also an attempt to soothe music companies’ egos, as they were supposedly hurt because Amazon launched into this business really quickly, and without too much notice. According to sources, they only informed record labels about their new cloud player services last week, and the launch was held on Tuesday this week. Apparently, a Sony Music Entertainment representative said that the company was ‘disappointed’ in the manner that Amazon launched their service and that they are ‘keeping their legal options open’.

Amazon's trying to make it even better

Amazon’s cloud player need users to upload all their music onto a remote server, which then allows them to playback this content from a PC or Android phone that’s connected to the internet. Amazon is also allowing up to five users to access a single song, which may become a problem. If this problem does end up getting tied down with legalities, Amazon will be forced to give each user individual online space, which obviously means that a large amount of storage will be required for the service. However, Amazon is trying to get record companies to agree to a common database which will allow users only access to the files they’ve uploaded. This will avoid making of new copies of songs, in turn, saving a lot of storage space. This, however, cannot be done without the approval of record companies. Sources say that Amazon is trying to get this to deal to close in a matter of weeks.