Amazon Shuts Down Its Music Importer Software, Points Users To Amazon Music App Instead

Streaming has been eating away into digital and CD sales for years, as consumers turn to online services like Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, iHeartRadio, and now Apple Music, among others, to listen to their favorite songs and artists. Alongside this shift, it seems that users are becoming less interested in managing their collection of MP3s, in favor of getting the tracks they want delivered on demand, via streaming.

Today, Amazon is recognizing this change by informing Amazon Music customers that it will no longer offer a dedicated software application to help them upload music into their Amazon Music library.

It’s possible that this tool wasn’t seeing much usage, as the need to import then organize a digital collection of MP3s wasn’t likely something a ton of Amazon Music customers had to do these days.

Still, the uploader program itself did make it easier to get on board with Amazon Music for those who were making the switch, or simply trying to backup their music collection to Amazon’s cloud. The Music Importer, as the deprecated program was known, would scan your music library in its default location, then move music into Amazon’s “Cloud Player” service for streaming. That service was later renamed “Amazon Music,” for simplicity’s sake.

The tool, however, is now a little redundant given that Amazon has a fuller, more feature-rich software app called Amazon Music for Mac and PC which includes the uploading function and much more.

The app not only keeps your music up to date as you purchase additional songs from Amazon or iTunes or as you rip CDs, but it also lets you access Prime Music, including that service’s over 1 million tracks, hundreds of playlists, Prime internet radio stations and more. The app also supports Amazon’s “AutoRip,” which is when you buy a physical CD from the retailer and it puts the digital copy in your online collection for free immediately after purchase.

Amazon says that, going forward, users will need to download and install the Amazon Music desktop software if they want to continue to upload digital files to its music service.

The process for doing so is as follows, explains the company:

Select “Upload” in the “Your Library” tab of the  Amazon Music application. Then drag and drop music files from your computer into the app window. You can also click “Select Files” or “Select Folder” to browse your music.

After the music has been uploaded, you can play it from your music library on any device with the Amazon Music app installed, including both desktop and mobile.