Amazon Music HD Launches

Desktop app is required for HD playback on computer. No surprise though.

I wonder if there will be a download option for HD and Ultra HD albums or even better, available as music download in the regular store, without subscription. 

Already a thread at the Roon site asking if they are going to try and integrate it into Roon. 

It will be interesting if Amazon will cooperate and let Roon use their database within the Roon user interface. Spotify wasn't willing, so Roon didn't want to cooperate with them. They are pretty picky about their UI. 

This will be an interesting thing to watch.

Signed up as well and installed the Amazon Music app on Mac. Working fine so far.

Very happy they are not using MQA but rather true high res (although in my experience it rarely improves past CD quality...).

However, if no Roon integration, this is a no-go for me. I already have both Tidal and Qobuz.

51 minutes ago, #Yoda# said:

I wonder if there will be a download option for HD and Ultra HD albums or even better, available as music download in the regular store, without subscription. 

Two slightly OT comments (but I would deem useful):

I subscribe to Qobuz Sublime+ for $299/year. This includes purchases of high res (higher than CD) at a discount. When I really like something I always buy it - I have saved more than $299 from the discounts! So the subscription pays for itself.

As for MQA, it is odd that not every release is for sale AFAIK. For example, where to buy Amy Winehouse's "Back To Black" (the MQA version sounds best)?

So are they applying DRM to FLAC files, or are they using Apple Lossless? Because it's always possible to retrieve files from a cache, so they must have some form of DRM. Anyone have any thoughts on how they could be doing this? 

I tried the Amazon service, i then cancelled. Allowing customers to sample only 30 seconds of a song is not acceptable.

Searching for Classical music brings up TRACKS not Albums. Also, the fonts in the App are way too small, So, I'll keep Qobuz  (for now) and will check the price on Amazon to see If the buz price can be beat.

35 minutes ago, kirkmc said:

So are they applying DRM to FLAC files, or are they using Apple Lossless? Because it's always possible to retrieve files from a cache, so they must have some form of DRM. Anyone have any thoughts on how they could be doing this? 

All services that allow offline music use DRM. All streaming services also have to use watermarked content if provided by the label. 

9 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

All services that allow offline music use DRM. All streaming services also have to use watermarked content if provided by the label. 

Yes, but can DRM be easily added to FLAC files? 

12 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

If you sign up you can listen to the whole track 😁

Chris, I was signed up and in.😁 Was using the Amazon app.

3 minutes ago, greyscale said:

Chris, I was signed up and in.😁 Was using the Amazon app.

 

Obviously you were not correctly signed in. Do you really think that with a full account they'd only let you play 30 seconds of each track? 

2 hours ago, mansr said:

There's no way to find it from the amazon.com front page either. Do they not actually want people to use it?

You can change the country you want at the top right corner.

5 minutes ago, kirkmc said:

Yes, but can DRM be easily added to FLAC files? 

Anything can be encrypted. This website is encrypted. Music streaming is no different. One way or another, the servers provide files encrypted such that only an authorised application can decrypt them. I don't have much of a problem with that, since they'll obviously keep providing client software as long as the service is operational.

7 minutes ago, mevdinc said:

You can change the country you want at the top right corner.

Is there a way to navigate from the amazon.com (or .co.uk, de, or whatever) main page to the HD music signup page? Clicking on any of the music related links takes me to a signup page for the regular Unlimited service with no HD option. The direct link Chris provided works.

Actually, this website is not encrypted; all that HTTPS does is ensure that sensitive information - user names and passwords - are encrypted. 

But my question was more about FLAC with DRM in general. I haven't heard of this being done before. 

Taking the risk that there's an obvious answer to my question, what can I do if I want to stream HD music from my NAS? 

Joel

8 minutes ago, kirkmc said:

Actually, this website is not encrypted; all that HTTPS does is ensure that sensitive information - user names and passwords - are encrypted. 

 

The website itself is not encrypted at rest.  It''s the traffic between the browser and web server that is encrypted.