Isn't it normal nowadays for vinyl to have downloads made available via a pwd inside the sleeve. Friend of mine mentioned it recently.

Yes, nowadays it is normal to include a download code or the CD. Problem is that there is nothing included when you buy older vinyl records (I would say more or less everything that is older than three or four years) and that some labels include download codes that expire one year after the release date.

My point is that it's not restricted when it's physical, as you can quickly and easily rip it to the format and quality of your choice.

Digitally however, it is frequently restricted (although more and more services now deliver DRM free MP3s) by various licenses which prevent you from playing the music anywhere you want.

But yes, as long as what you get is DRM free, then it's fine. Of course, the quality may be diminished. One of the great benefits of physical media is that they contain the raw sound data, allowing you to convert them to a variety of formats, including lossless ones.

So, Amazon is ripping a CD you purchased and giving you the MP3s, while you could have done the same thing all by yourself in all these years with no need for a dedicated on-line service? Is this the big deal or I got something wrong? Yeah, that's nice, but useless to me.

And Amazon continues to amaze me for their shitty DRM protections and policies: won't purchase a bit of e-book from them in any case.

This feature raises some interesting issues and also has some downsides if you're a serious Amazon cloud user.

Firstly, autorip seemingly can be exploited to get free music (order CD, download autorip tracks to a hdd, return CD); (order CD as gift, give gift, retain autorip MP3s). Of course one assumes the record labels who signed on for this were willing to accept that possibility for whatever reason. But still.

Downsides are that my meticulously organized cloud player library is now polluted with tons of stuff I don't want in there, to include many old soundtracks I purchased years back for relatives. This stuff can be deleted but since there's no way to turn autorip off at this point, I'm thinking they'll all come back again later. If you're someone who likes to have control over what goes into the cloud player, this is really annoying.

For $20 a year you can store up to 250,000 songs that aren't from Amazon purchases.

Yeah I wasn't sure what the point of this was at all, but I guess it's the instant thing. No waiting for the CD to ship, get it today.

I'd argue it is more beneficial to those who use the cloud player often (like I do at school) and would like to have both a physical copy (for collecting or other physical use) and a digital copy for streaming and downloads.

Oh right, I don't use the cloud thing, that makes sense. Saves you uploading time.

For me it does, my connection is slow. :(

Give me FLAC. Then we'll talk.

Can't you rip Flac from the CD?

I guess that means you don't buy much digital music. :P

Mostly video game soundtracks released by the artists, but I do have a few things that are only in MP3 format.