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Amazon MP3 Store to Go Global in 2008

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-in-this-corner dept.

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.

4 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Re:When is it going to happen by Niten · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are aware that the DRM-free Amazon MP3 store is already up and running, aren't you? I've bought about four albums' worth of music from it since the store launched months ago. The news here is only that Amazon MP3 will be opening internationally.

  2. Re:Linux support by RedK · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Linux version of the downloader is in the works :

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154260
    If you use Linux, you can currently buy individual songs. A Linux version of the Amazon MP3 Downloader is under development, and when released will allow entire album purchases.

    Though not very well supported, the Windows downloader works in Wine :

    http://mad-scientist.us/amazon.html

    --
    "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
    Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
  3. This isn't a sales war between Amazon and Apple by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  4. Re:It's about time... by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sweet! Now I'll be able to download all the music you buy off P2P networks for free! Like I'm ever paying copyright companies for digital media files. I'd rather burn my money. Disregarding the moral issues on either side of the argument, two reasons I'd pay for music downloads are that
    • Assuming whatever I want is already available, it's often less hassle than tracking down songs via P2P (in rarer cases) and waiting for them to become available from a single uploader, and
    • If it's a known-bitrate transfer from a known existing source, it also saves me wasted time "auditioning" which version to keep from various downloaded copies (some of which are better quality than others)
    OTOH, iTunes isn't "perfect" quality either though. I've had stuff downloaded from them (which I couldn't find on P2P anyway) which had digital "clicks" in it. Actually, I've even had minor digital pops/clicks in quite a few CDs I've bought (they remained even when played back on different players. It's not like it was a recent loudness-compressed let's-get-this-recording-to-the-16-bit-volume-limit release either, I had this problem with the 1994 reissue of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon".). So it's possible that either iTunes had bad error-compensation when ripping from the CD source and/or that a major non-correctable flaw was present on the CD *or* that the CD's master itself was flawed.

    In either case, WTF is going on there? I don't expect digital flaws- even minor ones- on stuff from iTunes, and I certainly don't expect them on my CDs!
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