Game, set and match to Amazon?

Amazon has announced that it has agreed licensing deals for its cloud player with the ‘big four’ major labels.

In addition to Universal, Warner Music, Sony and EMI, more than 150 independent distributors aggregators and music publishers are signed up the service, which is set to give the underwhelming iTunes Match a run for its money.

Vice President of Digital Music at Amazon, Steve Boom said: “We are constantly striving to deliver the best possible customer experience for Cloud Player, and today we are offering our customers a significant set of new features, including scan and match technology and audio quality upgrade”

Boom continued: “We are happy to have such broad industry support in enabling these features for customers.”

As the Temple of Boom pointed out above, in a similar way to other cloud based services, Amazon will scan customers’ iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries, matching the songs to their 20 million strong catalogue. All songs, including music ripped from CDs (remember those?) or purchased through iTunes will be available in the cloud player and upgraded to 256 Kbps and can then be accessed through all web browsers and devices including android and iPhone.

Amazon’s cloud player is also tiered in a similar way to other online services, with a free version and a premium upgrade in which users can store up to 250,000 tracks in the digital locker for an annual fee of $24.99 per year.

In other digital news this week, Spotify announced that it has passed four million paying subscribers with total active users at 15 million. The streaming service reported in January this year that it had reached the three million mark.