Amazon May Start Automatically Ripping Any CD You Purchase - UPDATE: It's Now Live

Amazon may be working hard to take over the digital content market, but it's still selling a lot of physical stuff, including physical media, i.e. books, CDs, DVDs.

Just like Netflix is pushing people to switch from DVDs to online streaming, Amazon is working on ways of getting people still buying CDs more accustomed to using digital music.

Cnet reports that Amazon plans to automatically bundle the MP3 version of any CD bought from the site. The MP3s would be added to the buyers’ Amazon Cloud Drive.

Essentially, it's automating a step many would have made anyway. While it may sound like a nice perk to those still buying CDs, it's a major move since, the music industry would count the CD and the MP3s as two different sales.

It's unclear how Amazon handled this particular issue, but if it pulls it off, it's going to be a major win. In the US at least, CD sales still outnumber digital sales, even if they're declining.

Amazon may also try to include past CD purchases in this move, instantly building a huge cloud library for those that have made a lot of purchases at the site. But this may be trickier than just doing it for future sales.

UPDATE: The service is now live in the US.