Amazon's new DRM-Free Music Download Service
From http://www.vnunet.com:
Amazon has launched a public beta of AmazonMP3, a digital music download store which the firm claims has the world's largest selection of DRM-free downloads.
The new service boasts over two million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels.
Well, I have to admit that when I logged onto the Amazon music store I wanted it to suck. Even before I clicked onto the link I expected it to be another half-baked attempt at a painful service designed by the RIAA.
However, looking at the site it actually looks like a pretty decent music store. They certainly don't have every album out there, or even most of them. The catalog looks like it's mostly dominated by independent groups, but there are a few big name artists to be found. It's even priced to compete with iTunes, Most albums are $8 or $9 USD and individual songs are $0.99 each. The downloads are unrestricted mp3 files which will play on anything, you can preview tracks before buying, they even have album art.
That being said though, I still don't think the site is going to be a major threat to iTunes. Why do I think that ? It's because of the process you have to go through to purchase songs. Buying music from iTunes is simplicity itself, you click a button marked "Buy", the music is downloaded, added to your music library, and ready to go in one seamless step.
No web-based service can begin to approach that level of simplicity, Amazon's offering included. With a web-based process you have to download the files to your computer, remember where you saved them, drag them into iTunes (or windows media player), wait for them to import, delete the extra copies, and then Finally you can put them on your ipod and listen to them.
The whole thing is positively exhausting, even typing about it takes up too much time. Your average ipod user isn't going to go through that many extra steps unless there is a compelling reason to do so, and I don't think DRM-free music is going to be a good enough reason for most people. After all emusic.com has had essentially the same service for years now and they still aren't a major player.
You can get the same music from the iTunes music store and the DRM'd files will play just fine on your ipod music player. What Amazon is going to have to do is offer the DRM-free music at a much lower cost, which makes sense anyway, allofmp3.com has proven to the world that you don't have to demand a buck a song to be successful in this business.
Given the attitudes of most Record Labels I think it's going to be a long long time before we see them offer mp3 albums for 3 bucks a piece.