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Review of Amazon's DRM-Less Music Download Store
fdmendez writes to tell us that he had a chance to check out Amazon's DRM-less music download store that was recently released as a beta trial. "Amazon one-ups the iTunes store in every way except for popularity. Never once did I find an album to be more expensive on the Amazon store in comparison to the iTunes store. The download experience was pleasant, and the lack of DRM truly makes it YOUR music. I don't know of any other download service that could top the Amazon MP3 store."
I don't know of any other download service that could top the Amazon MP3 store.
AllOfMP3.
> I don't know of any other download service that could top the Amazon MP3 store.
Any that sell FLAC for a start!
I hope this service takes off, as competition between iTunes and other services only means less DRM, higher quality songs, and better selection for all of us. Amazon just needs to land some deals with record labels...
You mean the service where everybody leeches, resulting in complete lack of bandwidth available to downloaders unless you're in an exclusive, ratio-metered club?
Or the one that really only works for popular albums, as anything old or otherwise unpopular and non-mainstream will have no seeders?
Even accounting for the $0 price tag, Bittorrent has a LONG way to go to rival ANY paid music store.
It had the music I wanted -- Didn't require a special download -- Is DRM free -- Is properly priced. When will MAFIAA shut it down?
Amazon trumps iTunes on DRM-free volume, but iTunes trumps Amazon by selling 256kbps AAC, as opposed to the 256kbps MP3 that Amazon sells.
Why was the parent modded funny? If anything is should be modded sad but true. Pirated music is typically of better quality (bitrate, encoder, etc) than any "legal" music store on earth.
Amazon trumps iTunes on DRM-free volume, but iTunes trumps Amazon by selling 256kbps AAC, as opposed to the 256kbps MP3 that Amazon sells.
Isn't that 256kb AAC the optional higher priced version?
More importantly the improved "quality" of 256 kb AAC over 256kb MP3 is largely hypothetical, few if any could tell the difference. However even if we accept marginal quality and size improvements these are overwhelmingly outweighed by the universal nature of MP3 files. Every digital player supports MP3. Portables, cars, home stereos, etc. There is no vendor lock.
That makes it viable. Good luck to Amazon, and I hope they can help to show the RIAA the pointlessness of DRM.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Good hit on BitTorrent and other 'free' channels...but how about some of those Russian sites?
So what you are saying is...they support 99.9% of desktop operating systms. Sounds reasonable to me!
They are struggling to handle users that can't master the concept of a .zip file.
When my hard drive crashes I could have lost my entire music collection but when my CD collection crashes (to the floor), I can just stand it up again. Will they let you re-download stuff you have brought? iTunes allows you once I think.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
While I agree (mostly), those lines of thinking side-step things like convenience (I download it when I like, from the comfort of my home, probably while doing other things) and format (I use mp3's exclusively, so buying 'hard' media simply adds an additional step between me and the music).
So while I agree that you end up paying more for less (no album cover, no liner notes, no physical media) it comes close to being a wash (not quite) with the immediacy and the convenience.
Quack, quack.
"Why can't they charge much less and make up the profits on volume?"
Well, first -- if by "they" you mean Amazon, my highly educated guess is that Amazon is making 15 points on the sale. They don't have much room to move.
Many people tend to put too much faith in unit elasticity: if you cut the price of oranges in half, you'll sell twice as many; double the price and you'll sell half as many. The real world seldom works that way, so lots of research is done on pricing theory. My industry (computer peripherals) does it, countless others do it, and it's a safe assumption that record labels and Amazon do it, too -- despite the fact that every Slashdotter just knows that music is overpriced and sold at obscene profits.
Putting costs of production aside (assuming that they have the ability to sell at any price and make a profit), it might simply be that they do not believe that they will double their sales if they sell albums at $4 rather than $8. I know it certainly wouldn't be the case in my situation; I would not spend appreciably more on music if prices were lowered. I buy all the music I could possibly want on iTunes (and I'll soon be trying Amazon). My interest runs out before my budget does. And, as nonsensical as this might seem, there are millions of other consumers just like me.
When you step closer to the real world and take into account the costs of sale, elasticity becomes even more of an issue. If (say) that album has a cost of sale of $3.90, then they'll make a dime per sale at $4, or $4.10 per sale at $8. So even if they double their sales by cutting the price in half, their net revenue would still drop by 95%. In this scenario, sales would need to increase by about 20X to make the same amount of money, and that's very unlikely to happen.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
As one who has never used a subscription service (I'm one of the low-volume types) I ask this: if your subscription ceases, do you still have access to the music you already downloaded?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Torrents generally aren't the place to go for music ... torrents are good for larger stuff. Try a good Gnutella client instead (personally I use Phex but there are many.) I think you'll have better luck.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
> ...they're intended to be heard in the context of other songs.
Not always. Sometimes an album is an integrated 'experience' that doesn't work as singles at all, sometimes the singles can stand alone but make more sense listened to on the album and some 'albums' are just some random unrelated songs sold as a bundle. It really just depends on the artist. Please avoid making sweeping generalizations.
All recording artists are not Pink Floyd. And even though I like a lot of Pink Floyd I still think it is good that not all music comes in such inseperable slabs.
Democrat delenda est
Garauteed to give you a rootkit if your dumb enough to leave autorun turned on. Although I really shouldn't blame the people who don't know enough to turn this mis-feature off. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have programs execute before you even have the chance to look at what's on the disk should be shot.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.