autoripAmazon.com customers who bought vinyl records from the site over the past 15 years may have a surprise in their online music libraries this morning.

The company has expanded its “AutoRip” feature to vinyl, providing digital copies of tracks as a companion and backup for people who buy music in old-fashioned physical formats. The feature applies to new purchases of vinyl records — yes, Amazon still sells those — and also extends the feature retroactively to past purchases dating back to 1998, when the company opened its online music store.

Amazon customers who bought records over that time period will find the tracks automatically added to their Cloud Player libraries.

The company launched the AutoRip feature for CDs in January.

“AutoRip has been wildly popular with customers since it launched earlier this year,” says Steve Boom, Vice President of Digital Music for Amazon, in a news release. “It’s a fun experience to suddenly find CDs you purchased just today—or 15 years ago—added automatically and free of charge to your digital library. We’re thrilled to extend this experience to vinyl records. Many of our music customers are vinyl fans and it’s traditionally been very difficult to make digital versions of vinyl records—now customers can enjoy the albums they buy wherever they are, not just when they have access to a record player.”

So what about cassette tapes? No, seriously! We’ve asked a company representative if there are any plans to extend the AutoRip feature further.

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