Oh boy, we're sensing an
all-out war. Of course, the tables are slanted mighty heavily in favor of Apple, but it sounds like Amazon is up to the challenge of stealing some of the digital download market share that Cupertino currently owns. According to the UK's TimesOnline,
Amazon is ready to "to launch an online music store next month," and while music execs
never thought they'd see the day, this
service too should have "reduced protection against copyright infringement." In short, the (hopefully) forthcoming service will serve up at least some DRM-free tracks as Apple's
iTunes already does, and as expected, a vast majority of the free and clear music will come from
EMI and various other "independent labels." Interestingly, it was stated that Amazon hoped to have the service live "by next month," but it was still unclear as to whether it would meet that goal. No word on whether this service will attempt to undercut iTMS' $1.29 per DRM-free track, but a little competition never hurt anybody, right?
[Via
ArsTechnica]
posted Apr 23rd 2007 5:15PM
Competition is good. I would love to see them roll this out.
The more options we have the better.
- Josh
http://www.StateOfBrain.com
Hip Hip Hooray for Amazon! There's no doubt prices will be lower. 1.29 per track is way too high.
Good luck Amazon!
Bring on the competition, it's the only way this is gonna fly.
Good things are going to happen. Good things.
Competition is good. I would love to see them roll this out.
The more options we have the better.
--
Competition is good. Seriously, please repeat that 4 billion times.
Thank God for geeks in Econ 101.
No one buys digital music on Amazon.
Okay Amazon, great, just be sure to make it real cheap, and let us choose from lots of different files formats and bitrates. Then I'll be there.
Whenever I see a news item like this I just have to say: http://www.emusic.com. They're an online music store that seems to get surprisingly little attention. I've been using them for a year, their prices are about 1/4 of what iTunes charges, and everything they sell is DRM-free. Of course you won't find anything there from the Big Five, but if you're interested in stuff from smaller labels, or in discovering music you might not be familiar with, they can't be beat.
Yes, we all know about emusic. I wouldn't say they get "surprisingly little attention" - in almost every article I've read lately about online music, they at least get a mention.
They sell indie music, which is great, but you can't expect them to get as much attention as the big retailers. That's the nature of being indie. An indie label that gets as much attention as a major label is called a major label (and the same extends to retailers). That's basically what EMI is - they're often called the "world's largest indie label" both because of their artist lineup and their relative lack of corporate affiliations. But because of their size, they're considered a major. But it's no surprise that they're the first of the "majors" to go DRM-free.
You must be reading different articles than I am. In any case, they sure weren't mentioned in this article, thus my post. But it's comforting to hear that it turns out we all know about emusic already. Guess I'll stop worrying. :-)
This type of competition is great. This is the only thing that will drive costs to a truly fair market level. Yea!
DRM-Free is great, but unfortunately it does not equal "platform agnostic".
How much do you want to bet that in order to get DRM-Free tunes, the resellers will require some lame Windows-only app to get it?
I wonder if Amazon will be selling music via Amazon.com or via Amasong?
I recently done a who is on Amasong.com and found that Amazon Inc own it. Sounds good!