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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.
Why's this tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"?
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.
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.
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.
My question is whether Apple will release a utility to strip the DRM from previously purchased tracks that they now offer DRM free. I haven't heard that this will be the case. I have about a hundred Itunes tracks purchased with it, that will eventually be worthless.
If they don't, I will use Amazon to purchase individual tracks from now on.
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)
See, it is because of the moral issues involved that I grab music I don't even like and burn it for friends who never asked for it out of my own pocket.
From my perspective, it's a war, and every purchase prevented is less resources for the enemy to use against me and mine.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
Actually you hit the nail on the head, there was an article about how DRM free music would mean the deathnell for the music industry. This year alone as short as it has been I have spent more at amazon.com on DRM free music than I have spent on music in the last 3-4 years.
It is fast easy and cheap, available 24 hours a day, it is not proprietary. I also find myself buying weird things as well I never ever would have bought in a store. The other night I was having trouble sleeping, usually sounds of rain or something like that would put be to sleep. So I searched all over online for sounds of rain thinking i could put it in a loop or something. I finally after digging and digging for anything free to download, looked to old faithful Amazon, sure enough they had a ton of DRM free MP3's of sounds designed to help you sleep. 89 cents for a 60 minute track of rain with some thunder mixed in, 20 minutes later I was sound asleep.
Come home from work, hear a song on the radio they tell you what the song was and what the band is, by the time you get around to going to the store where they sell CD's you have forgot, not anymore I come in type it into amazon and now I have it permanently for use on anything I want.
Actually, that probably would be very bad. With the iTunes store in a strong position the big four have an incentive to give favourable terms to everyone else (no DRM, lower prices, and so on). Without iTunes, the market would be fragmented and no one would have enough bargaining power to get a particularly good deal. Microsoft would probably blow a billion or so giving discounts on their store in Zune-only format, propelling the Zune to the number one spot, at which point the labels would start saying 'you can only sell our music in Zune-DRM form' and everyone loses.
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'm also in Canada. Instead of offering the age old complaint that musicians need to get paid (with which I don't argue) you need to tell us all how to make sure that that happens in a technologically changing environment. Wishing won't make it so, neither will bullying, so what does the music industry (and/or performers) need to do?
As is the case with spam, the technology will always stay one step ahead of the government. For instance, many of the big ISPs have been throttling or otherwise crippling traffic from Bittorrent clients, even though many quite legitimate and legal downloads are well suited to using that technology. The solution turned out to be relatively simple. Most Bittorrent clients now offer the option of encrypting traffic so that it can't be identified as Bittorrent, and speeds pop right back up.
Beyond that there is a generation of music lovers who have grown up with file trading and peer to peer, and who either see nothing wrong with up and downloading songs, or who at least see it as just one of the ways that they may acquire music. Just as my friends and I traded mix tapes, these kids trade songs and albums on-line.
Even I have finally started ripping my CD collection to MP3. Sometime this month I realized that I had more music in digital format (much from emusic.com) than on disc, and I was listening to five albums on the computer or MP3 player for every one that I heard off of CD.
The discussion is not about how or if you can stop file sharing - you can't. It's about how working musicians adapt to that changing technology and make a living from their music.
Three Squirrels