Amazon - iTunes First Straight Up Competition
09.26.07 - 04:54pm
We’ve heard about Amazon’s soon to be music store for months and it is finally here, proving to be everything iTunes but for less.
Amazon has decided to go straight DRM free, launching with over 2 million songs from Universal and EMI. All DRM free. Apple has some DRM free music from EMI but not from anyone else. Amazon was lucky enough to step in at the right time between the Apple and Universal feud and has secured Universals songs DRM free. If you buy the same songs on iTunes you are locked.
Amazon is also offering the tunes for less. 31 percent less, selling their DRM free songs for just .89 cents while iTunes DRM free songs cost $1.29. Along with that the varied pricing in Amazon lets them offer many albums for less than iTunes traditional 9.99 price, with many below $4.99. Some of course are more than iTunes $9.99 but those you can just buy from iTunes. (Ah, the wonderful world of competition.)
The Amazon store is similar to iTunes with the one touch click easibility, retaining the same ease of use that the iTunes store has.
The only thing the Amazon store doesn’t have is the same amount of songs. Apple’s 5.5 million from all record labels beats out Apple’s 2 million, but don’t count Amazon out yet. They are in talks with other major music labels such as Warner to sell their music.
Warner may jump on board soon as they too have had a dispute with Apple. So much so that it may be enough to change Edgar Bonfman Jr., Warner’s Music Group Chairman’s mind. He was fervently against going DRM free but recently told Goldman Sachs investors in New York, “We need some online competition” for Apple’s iTunes Music Store.” Brofman said that the iPod is “the default device” and iTunes the “download model.”
“As long as the iPod is dominant, they’re going to have to reconcile themselves with dealing with what the consumer wants: something that will play on the iPod,” said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media. “The smartest thing they can do is sell music without DRM. It’s not as though DRM is stopping pirating in other ways, anyway.”
Amazon’s music is compatible with a mp3 players including the iPod.
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