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Amazon MP3 Store to Go Global in 2008
Amazon announced in a press release today their plans to sell DRM-free music worldwide through the Amazon MP3 store beginning later this year. This news is being viewed by some as the latest volley in Amazon's digital music sales war with Apple's iTunes. Since Amazon has completed its plans to offer DRM-free music from all four major record labels (most recently, Sony and Warner), the global availability of the MP3s can only be excellent news for customers.
This is what I've been waiting for, seriously. I will be able to buy my music online, and actually own it now. I don't think anything more than "awesome" need be said.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
Why's this tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"?
This may be a bit off topic...but:
Does every single Slashdot article need to be tagged with "What could possibly go wrong?" I mean, seriously, what could possibly go wrong here?
It's nice to hear about these companies that are going to release DRM-free music, but I have yet to see anything real. It's the kind of thing that makes a nice press announcement, but it seems like they don't really have to do anything. With today's technology and the existing infrastructure, it should take about 15 minutes to get this thing up and running. What's the hold-up? I'm still waiting on my Beatles on iTunes that was announced in early 2007!
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
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This is good news since refilling your balance at mp3sparks was getting complicated. Plus you get the added benefit of money actually going to the artists without having to suffer through locked down formats. All players play mp3 nowadays, not all of them play AAC or WMA.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
thepiratebay?
Amazon limits the number of tracks you can buy and $$ you can save per download unless you download entire albums using their download software. However, it's only available for Windows and Mac.
eMusic also requires that you download their application, but they offer a nice GUI-based app for Linux. They even claim that it runs on a 2.2.14 kernel! Their selection isn't as good, and their business model is different (subscription vs. per download), but it's worth taking a look.
If nothing, email Amazon and ask for a Linux downloader. Mentioning eMusic ought to help get them moving in the right direction.
I shopped a lot at Allofmp3.com and now at their sister site, mp3sparks.com. However, there is no denying that their insane prices were in part due to not giving anything back to the artists/record companies. You can scream all you want about artists not really getting much back from record companies all you want, but 0.01$ is still more than 0.00$.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Being UK based I remember last year I got all excited about some obscure MP3's I found on the amazon.com download section - and then spotted the little (Amazon MP3 Purchases are limited to U.S. customers.) disclaimer. D'oh!
I guess it won't be there much longer...
"He Who Dares Wins"
It's easy to charge low prices when you don't actually pay the people who make the music.
What could go wrong? How about:
Music industry starts selling DRM-free mp3, stopping its decline and saving the RIAA for the next clueless battle.
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Steve Jobs claimed a while back that he didn't like DRM, and had to do it because of the labels. Now we have Amazon selling true MP3s for all four major labels. So where's Steve?
Wow, could it be that he really wants DRM to lock people into iTunes and the iPod? Nahhhhh, not our Steve! He'd NEVER do that! Maybe he's just not as crafty as Amazon.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It's a sales war between Universal/Warner/Sony and Apple, Amazon is just the labels' chosen weapon.
What would really be good for customers would be if the labels let everyone sell DRM free music, including Apple, and let the consumer decide where they want to buy their music in a real free-market sales war.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
No, because unlike AllOfMp3 these stores are operating according to U.S. (or similar) law; and more importantly to me, purchases from Amazon MP3, iTunes Plus, et al. result in the artists actually getting paid for their work. (Yes, I know, "the evil record labels don't pay their artists that much anyway, blah blah blah"... but if an artist is in a bad contract, at least it's an arrangement that he or she voluntarily entered into; AllOfMp3, on the other hand, is profiting off these artists' work without any compensation or agreement. If you give a crap about your favorite musicians, you don't buy their stuff from AllOfMp3.)
Quality rate, obscure bands not signed by one of the big corporations, etc.Amazon MP3's quality is good, better than iTunes but not quite on par with iTunes Plus. Tracks are encoded with LAME 3.97 at a high VBR bitrate (~230 kbps or so?). The collection is still a tiny bit spotty, but growing fast. It certainly has a better selection than iTunes Plus does, by a long shot. All things considered, it's an excellent service.
My biggest pet peeve with Amazon MP3 is that while you can purchase individual songs through the standard Amazon web interface, purchasing whole albums (and thereby receiving the album discount, where applicable) requires the Amazon MP3 Downloader. On the plus side, this program seems well-written, can pause downloads or resume interrupted ones, automatically imports your songs into iTunes or other MP3 players' libraries, and doesn't behave suspiciously. But why should it be necessary? The downloader is currently available for OS X and Windows, and a Linux version is "forthcoming".
It's not the $0.01 which is the problem, the problem is that to buy the music legally so that the artist gets $0.01, I have to give many more times that to scumbag corporations, who (on a lot of the music in question) long ago covered their costs and earned their profits, yet still charge me and the artist a premium for expenses, many of which no longer exist.
All while wreaking havoc with society by causing copyright terms and powers to go crazy out of balance when at the same time society actually needs them less and less .
We are anonymous. We are LEGION. We never forgive. We never forget...
Well, duhh. 4 pounds (about $7.90) to ride the tube between Covent Garden and Leicester Square, a fantastic journey of maybe 35 seconds!
Amazon has a staff, pays lawyers, runs some ops, etc in the UK.
They have to charge a lot more.
Dollars have become Banana-Republic money, thanks to Chimp in Chief and his henchmen.
I've been using the Zune Pass subscription for the past couple of months, and I'll never go back to one-off music purchases ever again.
For $15/month, I can download all the music I want. If I stop paying, the music will stop working after 3 months. For some people that's unacceptable, but for the price of a single CD, I think it's a damn good deal.
I've found myself simply clicking on the "related artists" link in the Zune Marketplace and downloading everything that's listed. It's a fantastic way to discover new music. I also stream the music directly from the marketplace and listen to it at work and at home. The Zune Pass lets you access the content from up to 3 different computers simultaneously.
The Zune Pass is the primary reason I purchased a Zune, but to be honest, a Zune isn't really even necessary. The streaming capabilities are worth the $15/month all by itself. I have discovered tons of new music that I likely would never have sought out if it wasn't for the all-you-can-eat Zune Pass.
I think there will be a market for higher quality audio. Ultimately everyone will want the highest quality sound and MP3's won't cut it for that. So the record labels could see the high quality formats which of course are larger in size and don't move as well over the Internet.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
As a long time iTunes customer, I have started buying from Amazon. With iTunes, I would always backup the music that I bought to an audio CDR, then re-import as MP3 -- Amazon selling MP3s saves me real effort.
Buying music online is a good deal, if you can back it up and enjoy it over a long time period.
Well, the creators of the music gets LESS than the credit card company per download. A Swedish artist sad in an interview that he got Euro 0.03 ($0.044) per download on itunes (price per dl ~Euro 1). That was not nearly enough to make a living on. To him it did'nt matter if the song were downloaded on p2p or itunes.
Non the less, this is good news!
What makes you think music corporations should or could work any differently from any other industry? No industry reaches a point where they have "earned their profits". Where is there the point that says "ok stop now, you've earned enough from that"?
...it's just built into the iTunes media player application since version 4.
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Dear Amazon,
Please go to AAC. For the same space it's possible to get higher sound quality, and most digital players (including phones) support it. Those companies that don't will be forced to add to support because of its ubiquity.
While some may say that most people won't be able to hear the difference, the "alpha geeks" who do care about such things will appreciate it and steer anyone who asks us (like friends and family members) over to the new system.
Your truly,
A fan of fine music
Does Amazon embed any personally identifying information into the DRM-free songs one purchases? I was pleased when Apple went DRM-free with the EMI catalog but was disappointed when I learned they were including one's email address in the purchased songs.
That's a load of bull really. You're correct to point out that most of the money you spend is going into the pockets of the greedy companies, not into that of the artists. If you give a crap about the fact that record companies have so much leverage over the artists, you don't buy their stuff from U.S. music stores either.
I've got a better idea. If you're so interested in compensating the artists, just send the $.90 that you save on the music buying from mp3sparks and send it directly to the artist.
And add transcoding support in your downloader, so that people can pick the encoding they want. Hell, pre-encode in MP3 and offer that as an alternative (transparently, of course) to those who want it, but if I'm paying for music...
As for why they went MP3? Well, MP3 works on any digital music player, which is why they're generally called "MP3 players". I'm not entirely sure, but I'd guess that AAC doesn't work on the Zune, and WMA doesn't work on the iPod, and OGG works on next to nothing. The only reason FLAC isn't included is it's an extra step, but c'mon, you're already making us use your software...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sell me DRM-free CD-quality tracks, not mp3s (so I can convert them to mp3s myself, or can burn myself a full CD, or can convert them to oggs or flacs or whatever I like, repeatedly, for any device).
And sell them for a reasonable price. For dowloaded music, that means no more than 10 cents per track.
Do that, and I am SO there.
Don't do that, and I'll just keep ripping friends' or libraries' CDs for free, or buying cheap used CDs for a couple of bucks that the RIAA never sees.
I work for the CMRRA (Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency), we are the ones who handle music publishing in Canada. Period. The reality is that this is mostly a move to stimulate sales but not a long term reality. The vast majority of higher selling (charting) product will continued to be delivered with DRM protection. It only stands to reason. Everybody in the music industry realizes that DRM is nothing but a 'speed bump' and not a long term solution to meeting their goals. The reality is, despite the Sony rootkit fiasco, the future will bring either more invasive software at the consumer level or more control at the ISP level. Trust me... I am a not happy about this, I am not impressed with many of the actions of the RIAA and WIPO but this is the reality. You are looking at an entire industry collapsing.... and fast. They are fighting for their very exsistance and loosing. The money is gone. It will very soon be harder and harder for artists to have access to the funds to successfully produce and market their music in the conventional format. Physical distribution will not be consistant... and films are next. You can keep making 400 million dollar movies when you can't make more the 250 million back. It just not sustainable. Things will continue on, however, in a far different model. The problem is that no one can forsee the emerging buisness model and how to transition into this model. Open Source software will replace conventional digital tools for media editing (since the art and beauty of analogue has already died) and do so quite well. Online distribution, which will endup enduring harsh filtering and monitoring. We have brought this on ourselves. I don't agree with ISP filtering/monitoring, root kit technologies, or suing of endusers. I have watched my friends loose their jobs, one after the other for too long. Studios closing left and right, labels laying off staff year after year, great musicians not getting the finances they need because there isn't enough to go around and they haven't got enough "Bling". Last year, for every 32 artist that got signed, only two of those made money, a couple more would break even, and the rest lost money. Record companies are the agencies which provide the funding and marketing resources where conventional banks won't. It all soo sad. I love music. I've invested years of my life and 10's of thousands of dollars on education and equipment. Now I'm back in school at night studying programming and network administration. Perhaps if people took a minute to realize that by not paying for the music they are starving artist, engineers, producers.... people who have worked in the industry for 20 and 30 years are finding themselves at 50 yrs old and having to try and find some sort of job to continue feeding their families. My heart goes out to the 2000+ people who are loosing their jobs with EMI. PLEASE... TAKE A MINUTE TO CONSIDER THE FACTS. Don't let the fat paycheques of the CEO's and ignorant lawsuits of the RIAA blind your eyes to the realities being endured by thousands of people who work hard to make the music you listen to.
The thing about AllOfMP3 was that it showed how much the distribution costs for the digital music are. Give me a store like AllOfMP3 where the price is twice as much, but they guarantee that 50% of the money goes to the artists, and I'll be there in a shot.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
AllOfMP3 charges 12 for a 4-minute 128Kb/s song. iTunes charges 99. AllOfMP3 can cover their costs and make a profit at 12. If they paid the artists 12 (i.e. 50% of net, which is a hell of a lot more than most artists get in any medium) then they would be charging 24, about what eMusic charges. Why, then, is music so much more expensive from places like iTunes and Apple?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
With services for developers like EC2 and S3 I feel Amazon is underestimated big time - they are one of the few big companies that really "get it".
I've got a better idea. If you're so interested in compensating the artists, just send the $.90 that you save on the music buying from mp3sparks and send it directly to the artist.
Is that what you do? If so, then how many times have you done it?
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Here's his position:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
Thoughts on Music
Steve Jobs
February 6, 2007
...
"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music."
...
"Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."
Don't misunderstand. The point is simply that if people want to support their artists, they're going about it all wrong by purchasing from U.S. online stores, and it actually might hurt the artists by giving those record companies more leverage against the artist.
If your point is that sending money to artists is inconvenient, fine. But at least when someone purchases music from mp3sparks, they're not fooling themselves into thinking they're supporting their artist to any measurable extent.
Personally, I purchase from independent artists whenever I can, as directly as I can.
What makes you think music corporations should or could work any differently from any other industry? No industry reaches a point where they have "earned their profits". Where is there the point that says "ok stop now, you've earned enough from that"?
I'm not the AC above, but my opinion is that the music corps should work differently. I don't blame them for the way they work, but I think that the music corporations are not needed in the same way they used to be (The same link once again.)
It is the fact that they are simply not very necessary that I think they should work differently. Corporations that make exorbitant profits do so because they have leverage of some kind. They provide something high in demand and low in supply. In the case of music, it's the supply that's artificially limited that allows them to rake in the profits.
Ok, I know MS-Windows has 90%+ of the market, Macs have another 5%, Linux has ...maybe 3%... but it is irrelevant...
Why do I need an OS-specific downloader? Once I've entered in my credit card info or whatever else is needed, why can't they just put up a link that I "right-click" on (or whatever - some of us occasionally use a non-mouse-non-GUI) and use whatever method MY BROWSER uses to download a file?
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EMI! Those wankers got what they deserved.
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On the contrary, they did -- and mp3Sparks do -- pay their dues to ROMS (and those dues are significantly bigger than for radio stations in the US, I might add). It's just that the US record companies decline to collect them from ROMS out of bloodymindedness. It's not like mp3Sparks would suddenly go out of business if US record companies decided to start collecting; they've been paying up all along. (I suppose ROMS might encounter financial difficulties, though ...)
I do so fairly regularly. I spend a *lot* of money (over 300/month) at concerts on merchandise, tickets, copies of albums for the artist to sign, etc.
If an artist I've downloaded via p2p comes to town, there's a damn good chance they'll be more than compensated for the music I "stole" from them.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Your never going to see RIAA signed artists getting 50%, but magnatune has plenty of quality bands, CC licences, and flexible pricing.
(not affiliated)
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
...than 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.
As I understand it, the copyright has expired on all of the music that AllOfMP3 sells. Russia has (more) sane copyright terms than places like US and Europe. In other words, according to the terms of copyright, the artist has already got the money that they were owed, or at least given the chance to earn money from their work.
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I was hoping that this would mean that as a US customer I could easily buy international music but unfornately it doesn't look like that's going to be the case.
But that's also missing part of the picture. A big part of the "currency" of recording artists is popularity. You know, the charts. Being popular can mean a lot more than initial income from sales. If you donate directly to the band, but don't buy through an official channel - then that doesn't register on "the charts" and thus the band gets less exposure, and less potential future income, less revenue from concerts and tours, etc.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Amazon is convenient if you already have an account with them (the 'one-click' convenience is pretty compelling if you want to buy just a single MP3), but there are still submission hassles for the indie artist, and they remain a gatekeeper of sorts between artist and audience / customer.
CDBaby.com is a pure service provider - pay them a flat fee, and they handle both physical CD sales and now whole-album MP3 sales. Lots of junk on there, but lots of great stuff also.
I'm also interested in Nimbit's model - they're a 'collect a piece of the action' model where you can put songs up for sale at any price you want as soon as they are done - it's pretty cool to be able to put something up for sale the second you get it back from Mastering. iTunes/Amazon/others have pretty long delays before your stuff appears for sale.
On the other hand, I'm just giving an older record of mine away for free (over here if you're interested - it's 'interesting rock') - I'd rather get the promotional milage out of it and focus on selling the new one I'm working on.
eMusic costs around 30 cents a song, and half the music goes to the label/artist. I'm not sure how much actually goes to the artist from the label, but I guess that would depend on individual contracts. Since it's mostly indie music, I imagine it's probably a respectable percentage.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
with the tagging system?
Is it truly international that there won’t be any country restrictions? I would love to see that. ITMS only supports limited countries, and my country is not one of them. Also it may be weird that a Chinese wants to buy music, I did tried once and could not even pass the credit card validation. I have credit cards usable in the US, but the billing address is in China, of course.
If artists get such a raw deal, then why don't they go independent then?
It'd be great if Amazon allowed *everyone* including joe public to submit music for people to start buying.
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Amazon's decision to go MP3 is what convinced me to actually buy music online. I've never been a fan of, nor have I ever used apple's DRM infested garbage in AAC format, but amazon changes the equation.
What I'd like to see is a larger range of genres and lesser known artists. Amazon won't lose anything by hosting these types of music.
You're right, it goes without saying that iTunes is a far worse offender at this than Amazon MP3.
I guess I should have explained the reason this bugs me so much is that Amazon is just this close [pinches fingertips together] to having the ultimate, cross-platform, web- (well, and some Flash, but mostly web-) based DRM-free music store. If they'd just drop the silly downloader requirement for full-album purchases, then anybody on any platform with a web browser could use the store instantly, no special software required. It'd be absolutely universal if they simply merged that single feature into the main web application.
And this is Amazon we're talking about; you'd think that concocting a decent web interface for downloading albums would be a piece of cake for them, right? Their odd insistence on requiring this downloader almost makes me suspicious that the program is doing something nefarious like scanning your music library and sending statistical data back to the company, but nothing in the program's EULA or its behavior seems to indicate that this is the case.
Unless the copyright terms were less than a week, no, what you are saying is false. Allofmp3.com had a ROMS license to broadcast music, and even then, the RIAA doesn't recognize ROMS as a proper licensee, even though it is a legal entity in Russia.
It's a big blackhole.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Observing that the downloader is only required for the purchase of albums, the downloader is most likely there for customer service. Some people have really slow or unstable ISP services (dial-up or the low-end 128KB DSL, etc.) and/or slow and unstable Windows PCs. And may not be able to complete the download at the time of sale.
I assume the download client receives a list of files to download, all the md5/checksum info, and likely a valid session "cookie" to say its OK to download the list of files (once per file), even if the downloads are happening long after the time of purchase.
Also, the client is a good way to ensure delivery. If you buy a single MP3 file, your browser's MIME settings may attempt to play the MP3 as it downloads, storing the download in a temporary browser cache. Joe Sixpack will think he's been had. The download client prevents this and downloads the file properly, and even automatically importing it into an iTunes library.
Without such a client, Joe SpywarePC and Jane Dial-Up will likely encounter problems completing their full paid-for download and call/e-mail Amazon to complain.
The Slashdot audience likely does not require the client for the above reasons, but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of the non-Slashdot readers out there likely do.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
But Amazon MP3 often sells albums for a price less than the sum of their parts; if you can't use the downloader and purchase whole albums, you'll wind up paying a couple dollars more than you otherwise would. So in a sense, the downloader really is a requirement.
Also, the client is a good way to ensure delivery. If you buy a single MP3 file, your browser's MIME settings may attempt to play the MP3 as it downloads, storing the download in a temporary browser cache. Joe Sixpack will think he's been had. The download client prevents this and downloads the file properly, and even automatically importing it into an iTunes library.Yes, the downloader does those things and it's nice to have this functionality on the supported platforms. But why shouldn't Amazon give users the option to buy whole albums without the downloader's help? They seem comfortable enough delivering single songs by simple HTTP transfer, and other sites sell whole albums that way. It's easy enough to save purchase records in a database (as though they don't do that anyway) and let the user restart a failed download.
Amazon could expand their potential user base without any adverse effects whatsoever on the rest of the operation, simply by dropping the downloader requirement. Just add a tiny "Not running Windows or OS X?" link hidden off to the side, I don't care, as long as it is somehow possible to access the entire store without special software.
It's true that most people run OS X or Windows rather than Linux or Solaris or BSD, so no, Amazon cannot expect a gigantic payoff from fixing this issue -- but since the cost to implement this would presumably be almost zero, for them to choose otherwise seems nuts.
Good. I'm glad someone is offering DRM-free music.
Stupid iTunes has randomly seem to forget that my computer is authorized for my music. This means it deletes everything from my ipod. Even the stuff that I downloaded from iTunes.
Of course it would be interesting to see if they offer a way to upload music into ipods. With some of the restrictions that apple has placed on the ipod Amazon may not be able to offer that ability. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Be prepared to be ripped-off.
As soon as the Amazon MP3 Downloads Store has anywhere near the clout of the iTMS, you can be sure that the record companies will push the price of digital downloads higher and higher.
Wow, isn't that great?!
Karma Schmarma