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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."
I still like getting the actual CDs. Better quality, fewer restrictions, less chance of me losing it, etc. With Prime I get them in a couple days, which is fast enough for me, then I convert them to FLAC for later conversion to any other format I desire.
iTunes Plus is DRM free. However, it's unknown how many titles actually are offering using it (only EMI still and not all those titles) and the price is a little higher. The quality of a 256k AAC encode vs. a 256k MP# Amazon encode may be somewhat different, but at those bitrates it's probably basically indistinguishable.
Sometimes though buying it from the iTunes store is simply more convenient... but I sure wish they'd hurry and expand iTunes Plus.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's at least one Indie label doing something like this. They sell some vinyls as well as CDs. The problem with selling a vinyl is of course that you can't easily make a digital copy of it. Here's how they sell the music of Page France:
http://www.suicidesqueeze.net/order.html
"Page France
and the Family Telephone CD/LP...
CD Price: $12.00
LP Price: $10.00 (Limited edition! Comes with a coupon for a free download of the entire album in MP3 format.)"
So basically, you pay less for the vinyl and get to download MP3s as well. Pretty good deal there.
Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. -Orson Scott Card
AAC is not really open, but it's a standard and pushed by the same people that made MP3 (it's the audio part of mp4), so it is at least as open as mp3. For this particular comparison amazonmp3 sells non-DRMed music for about 40% less than itunes, so that is a better comparison. As far as I know OGG is the only really 'open' standard. I'm already being rated as a troll in an earlier post for implying that all music that itunes sold is tied to ipods and you're f***ed if you ever try to switch away from apple manufactured players. For joe-blow users I think that the added steps to make itunes music work on a non-itunes player are enough to effectively lock them into ipods forever.
non-DRMed music was available before itunes existed. I think the first non-DRMed music I bought online was from TMBG in the late 90's or early OO's (before cable modems and DSL was commonly available), after their 'major' label dropped them. At the time downloading the music from the internet was being pushed as 'bring-your-own-CD,' and the bandwith requirements were huge and it took the better part of a day to download it. non-DRMed music continued to be around for indie music and smaller labels.
With regard to Apple & the music labels...I think that Apple's executive management has many people in common with major branches of the entertainment industry, so it's very complex to try to say which are which. The issue of DRM is tied up in the disputes between Apple (which was rapidly becoming the only stylish way to sell musich) and the major labels.
Heck, in that sort of situation Amazon and Apple could probably sue "them" for antitrust violations.