Amazon MP3 store to spread DRM-free love global in 2008
In perhaps the biggest threat to Apple's global dominance of digital music, Amazon just announced the international rollout of Amazon MP3. Right, the on-line storefront offering DRM-free music from all four major labels. That's 3.3 million songs (priced at $0.99 or less) from over 270k artists encoded in 256kbps MP3 files for playback on any PC, any Mac, and pretty much any portable device you might own. Sure, it's beta but so is that gMail account you've been using for the past 4 years. Unfortunately, the best that Amazon can commit to is "this year" which leaves plenty of time for the house of Apple to get their DRM shiznit together.























This is clearly a huge step forward. We now have one interoperable, legal music source. Now we need the big (three of four) to stop screwing everyone else over so we can have a marketplace.
The big (3 of 4) may not be interested in removing DRM from iTunes, but you can:
http://radioshrike.8.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?p=12#12
PS, does anyone know how to remove DRM from iTunes videos?
Its true that iTunes has excellent intergration with its music players. And the iPod is the most user friendly player around, add in the iTunes intergration, and a perfect interface, and you've got the best a non techsavy consumer can ask for. It also seems that they don't mind purchasing music at the .99 cents price. They won't know the difference between MP3, AAC, or WMA. Nor do they have the slightest idea what bitrate means. If I referred a customer to amazon and explained this DRM stuff then they'd be like, ok what aisles are the iTunes cards on?
:'( I had been waiting for this day for so long...I LOVE you amazon!
First, please get on with it. Second, please set *reasonable* prices. And third, bring it on. Let's have a full on price/features war between iTMS and Amazon. $0.25 MP3s by year end?
The price is reasonable, with a better quality and NO DRM. Fair enough for me.
We don't know what the UK price is going to be. Will it be the old rip off $1=£1 ? And I consider a reasonable price to be anything under £0.25 otherwise it can't compete with free.
I'm a bit dissapointed that Amazon would put the iPod Classic in front of the Zune.
The iPod Classic is the world's most expensive hard drive based mp3 player, and it doesn't do WiFi!
HaHa
It's also the one with the largest market share.
Learn to market.
@ E
That's one sad Blog you have there, Eric. And confusing, because it makes me want to cry and punch you simultaneously.
...but not nearly as good as 320 kbps.
Eric, Rose... What The FUCK (?!?!?) is with your blatant link-spamming to some site nobody gives two flying shits about?
Go dump your content somewhere else instead of spamflooding something that's already painful to read sometimes. It's like peeing in industrial waste. You're making me want to add those respective sites to my HOSTS file.
Dude, and to think, I have an ipod, and anapod explorer, and to think, I get my stuff from many places and pay nothing to the record companies...I would do emusic, if it weren't so hard to get their stuff to work with my computer.
I've had a chance to attend Midem this year, and I've potentially seen the future... AmazonMP3's a good contender for the time being, and it fills a void, but don't expect it to be around in its current incarnation for ever and ever.
Retailing of static audio content is a dying art, just like physical sales... What's really going to kick the market into gear are things like wrapper formats allowing for the combination of audio, video, text, alternative versions of songs with fan-produced remixes and the ability to switch between them in a musical way, the ability for the artist to subsequently send their fans remixes or alternate versions without having to download another file at a later date...
I'm not saying that'll be the be all and end all for digital music, but it's where the industry should be ending up - not a perpetuation of the old habits of selling the very same format audio files that people were sharing freely more than a decade ago.
This is not DRM free, all of the music they are releasing is digitally watermarked to track what you do with each track you purchase. http://www.squidoo.com/drmfree