Amazon MP3 Vs. iTunes Music Store

Ali writes "As discussed here recently, amazon.com has launched a public beta of Amazon MP3, a digital music store that provides DRM-free downloads of over 2 million songs from 180,000 artists and 20,000 labels. In comparison, Apple says the iTunes Store now contains over 6 million songs. Here is a head-to-head comparison."

Comments

Bad info in article.

[SocialEngineer]

iPod compatibility. Thanks to the lack of DRM, and in particular, Windows-specific DRM, songs purchased from Amazon MP3 will play on an iPod, something that has never been true for a mainstream online music retailer (other than Apple) before. Wow. I wonder if this place has ever heard of eMusic.

Re:Bad info in article.

[Jeffrey Baker]

eMusic is certainly not a mainstream music retailer. They don't sell you MP3s the way the grocer sells you a melon. You have to sign up for a month and you're allowed to download a song a day, roughly, although nobody does that. I can go to Amazon and spend 89c on a single song and never return. At eMusic, I have to pay $9.99 at least and then I have to remember to cancel it if I don't want it any more.

Re:Bad info in article.

[arth1]

Actually, eMusic does have a $6 per month plan, covering 0-10 songs per month (i.e. averaging at $1.20 per song, or $.60 if and only if you make sure you always download exactly 10 songs in any given billing period.
Of course, even getting to see their plans without signing up is deliberately made difficult, but if you follow the links around from their legalese pages, you find a well buried link to the plans.

I have had no luck in finding out what quality the tracks are ripped with, or what software was used to rip them. Nor any other technical details.

Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

For those too lazy to RTFA, here's the verdict:

Not Too Shabby -- Amazon MP3 is the first online music store that hasn't left me cold. Its advantages are very real:

        * No DRM. No consumer likes DRM, and although Apple hasn't yet released any statistics on how the DRM-free tracks from EMI have sold in comparison with the DRM-encumbered versions of the same tracks, Amazon has done the right thing by eliminating it across the board. Hopefully Amazon's move will give Apple some leverage with the music labels to make more DRM-free tracks available.

        * iPod compatibility. Thanks to the lack of DRM, and in particular, Windows-specific DRM, songs purchased from Amazon MP3 will play on an iPod, something that has never been true for a mainstream online music retailer (other than Apple) before.

        * Low prices. I don't have a sense for how price-conscious the online music market really is, but with many tracks priced below even the cost of Apple's DRM-encumbered tracks, and albums priced even lower, I could see budget-driven consumers or those who buy a lot of music preferring to purchase from Amazon MP3 over the iTunes Store.

        * 1-Click shopping. People do not like creating new accounts for shopping, but there's no question that some people shop from Amazon over other venues purely because it's such a known quantity after years of easy ordering. Ordering via Amazon MP3 isn't as easy as from the iTunes Store, but it's not far off.

Re:I'd rather go Amazon

[fangorious]

When will people get a fucking clue that the MP4 files that iTunes sells are not an Apple proprietary format? It's the codec developed to replace MP3. It was developed by the same freaking people who developed MP3. You know you can buy songs without DRM from iTunes? Thirty cent price jump for 256 kpbs MP4 (theoretically superior quality to 256 kbps MP3) with no DRM for individual tracks. No price jump if you buy the whole album. And reportedly Amazon's terms of service don't allow re-downloading of transfer of ownership.

I'd like to try Amazon

[Zonk (troll)]

However, they lock out Linux users. While I can apparently buy indivual songs, I can't buy an album without using their downloader which is Windows/OS X only. I don't feel like booting into OS X just to download some mp3s.

For now I'll stick to eMusic and DownloadPunk (albums are downloaded as a zip).

Re:I'd like to try Amazon

[jalefkowit]

Oh come on now.

1. They are working on a Linux version of the downloader as we speak.
2. In the meantime, reports are that the Windows version of the downloader runs fine under Wine. And the only thing you need the downloader for is for full albums, Linux users can buy singles today straight from their browser, no downloader required.

With this offering, Amazon has done more to make Linux a first-class citizen in the online music space than maybe any other company to date. That's hardly "lock[ing] out Linux users."

Re:Redundant?

[BungaDunga]

And, FLAC doesn't play in mp3 players like iPod etc. Does if you run Rockbox. Granted, that's a small minority of users.

Re:profit margin

[Wdomburg]

The problem with that, and maybe with the whole amazon gig is the profit margin issue. My impression, perhaps I'm wrong, was that apple was pocketing less than a dime a song for itunes music store.

Current estimates are about a dime, with "wholesale cost" (i.e. the label's cut) being about $0.70 for majors and $0.60-65 for independents.

The rest of the cost is supposed to be comprosed of infrastructure, operational expenses, and transaction fees from the credit card companies. I'll eat my own shoes if Amazon's costs aren't lower. They're largely reusing a pre-existing retail infrastructure. And as a major retail operation, they doubtless have a ton of clout with the credit card companies (which are commonly cited as having the next biggest cut after the labels).

Presumably this is not too server lite either since I'm guessing the songs are watermarked with your ID and then MP3 compressed.

Nope. The songs are being provided encoded by the labels and the only watermarks identify the retailer, not the purchaser. Bandwidth would be the predominant cost here.