Can I get my old Amazon MP3 purchases to appear in Amazon Cloud Player?

January 14, 2013 4:20 PM

Is there a way for me to get the MP3s I bought from Amazon.com before they introduced the cloud player (where you downloaded them once and that was it) to be available via cloud player now?

I have purchased MP3s from Amazon.com for several years. Back in 2011, Amazon launched their cloud storage and associated Cloud Player, which allows you to keep and play/download the digital media you have bought from them repeatedly.

Before that time, you could only download the MP3s you bought once. I had done that for quite a few albums. Unfortunately, the hard drive I kept them on took a turn for the worse and eventually failed (yes, I learned that lesson the hard way). I was able to get the lion's share of the music off before the drive finally gave up the ghost, but there are still a dozen or so albums I would like to have "back."

Just this weekend, Amazon retroactively added MP3s to the Cloud Player for (eligible) physical CDs I bought, all the way back to 1998, as part of their new "Autorip" scheme. "Great," I thought, "now I have those albums back!" Well, not the old digital albums I bought pre-2011.

Does anyone know if there is a way to get those old digital albums available in the Cloud Storage? Has anyone had luck talking to Amazon customer service about this? Thanks.

posted by dhens to shopping (9 answers total)

It just worked for me. Are you sure you're using the same Amazon account?
posted by primethyme at 4:24 PM on January 14

Yes, I am using the same Amazon account (the only one I've ever had). My MP3 purchases from before 2011 are not showing up in the Cloud, while the Autoripped MP3s from CDs I bought back in 2002 and 2003 are.
posted by dhens at 4:30 PM on January 14

Yeah, I only bought a physical copy of one of the 43 albums that retroactively appeared in my Cloud Player this week. The rest I bought and downloaded as MP3s, just like you did. Have you gone into Cloud Player in your Amazon account yet to check whether they're there? Mine started to show up after I did that.
posted by limeonaire at 4:31 PM on January 14

I have songs I originally bought as mp3s dating back to 2007 in my account (and songs I bought as CDs dating back to 1999). I may have bought mp3s before 2007 (I don't really remember), so maybe it's not going all the way back, but I definitely have a lot of them.

It doesn't hurt to contact customer service.
posted by primethyme at 4:33 PM on January 14

OK, now I see (almost) all of them. I guess there must be an issue with copyright on some of the albums I bought earlier...
posted by dhens at 4:34 PM on January 14

I actually had this same issue and went to amazon, got on a chat with customer service and they hooked me up right then and there. Evidently they had to do some sort of search and then put them back in my cloud drive. No worries.
posted by THAT William Mize at 2:20 AM on January 15

When I first signed up it took a while (5-10 minutes and some refreshing of the list) for everything to show up.
posted by aught at 5:46 AM on January 15

THAT William Mize: I got on a live chat with someone from Amazon and they uploaded said files, claiming that they were "making an exception" for me (!).
posted by dhens at 1:43 PM on January 15

If all else fails, this is one of the few times when I think downloading a torrent is legitimate. If you've already paid for the digital files, then it's not immoral to re-download them.
posted by tacodave at 3:52 PM on January 15