by Yesterday, it was announced that Spotify will tightly integrate with Facebook. That’s great for sharing music, but if you want to buy music instead of just taste-testing on Spotify, then you should really check out the Amazon.com MP3 Store.
I enjoy listening to new music on Spotify that I would not normally purchase, but if you like building a permanent music library you can take with your everywhere and anywhere forever and ever, then the Amazon.com MP3 Store is really tough to beat on price and convenience of sharing.
I’m back to buying music. Amazon’s prices are killer good. $5.00 for a Jazz album or two or ten? Yes, please! The trouble comes once you buy a new song. How do you manage all of your music libraries on Amazon and Google and in iTunes and keep them in sync?
I’ve discovered the easiest way to automate the buying and sharing/uploading process is to purchase all my new music on Amazon. The Amazon MP3 Downloader then pulls all the newly purchased music from my Amazon Cloud Player/Music Locker and into my local iTunes library.
After iTunes auto-processes the new music, my Google Music Manager automatically tickles my iTunes library, and when it finds the new music, it uploads those new songs to my Google Music library. The Google Music upload isn’t immediate, and sometimes it takes a day or two, but the new songs do eventually make it into my Google Music cloud storage. With one purchase click, I automatically have all my new songs in three places: The Amazon Cloud, my local iTunes network drive and, finally, in the Google Cloud.
The next time I fire up Spotify, that service scans my iTunes library and finds the new music and makes it available to permanently play inside my Spotify account. If I tell Spotify to make my new music purchases available offline, then I have my new music on my iPhone and iPad, too.
I know this all sort of sounds like a musical mess to manage, but so far, it works. In a direct comparison of pricing, convenience and ongoing ownership of my songs — Amazon is the clear winner. Their prices are crazy good. Their music downloader is visually informative and appealing and, unlike Google Music, I can download my stored music at will and at any time.
How do you manage your music? Do you place your music in an online cloud locker or do you have another solution? I’m done with CDs. They take up a lot of room and I much prefer having the virtual song over the physical disk.
I buy vinyl records of albums that I really like. Most of them come with mp3s which is good because I am still saving for a good record player. The ones I don’t buy I listen to on Spotify! 🙂
Are the MP3s bundled with the vinyl, or are there instructions for going online to download?
It nearly always comes on a small piece of paper. Either a one time download, or more generous depending on the music publisher. Depending on your internet connection a one time only download is bad because if it gets interrupted you can’t get it again. There’s a unique code that you put into a web site and that then initiates the download. 🙂
Neat! Is the code usually done in iTunes or somewhere else?
What turntable are you hoping to buy? Do you have speakers that can take advantage of a good player?
The code is never done in iTunes — always on the publisher’s web site.
I hope to get a Technics 1200 or something along those lines. They can be had for about $200 or so if you find someone selling theirs. Then I just need to get a $200 cartridge (needle). I can work on the speakers next! 🙂
That’s cool the record companies handle their own MP3 codes.
I hope you get your new setup! Be sure to write about the process and the end result. We’re dying to know how it all turns out!