Amazon.com Inc. has updated its cloud music player to mimic AppleInc.'s iTunes Match, but is offering 10 times more storage space for the sameprice.
Songs purchased on Amazon.com have always been stored for free on its serversfor playback on mobile devices. Now the online retailer will scan a person'scomputer and automatically match songs found there on the person's storagespace in the cloud.
Like iTunes Match, Amazon will upgrade songs of lesser quality found oncomputers or existing cloud lockers to files encoded at 256 kilobits persecond.
The price is the same as iTunes Match at $25 a year.
But Amazon.com offers free storage for 250 songs bought elsewhere, and willstore 250,000 songs for paying customers. ITunes Match tops out at 25,000songs.