Amazon’s iTunes-Compatible DRM-Free Music Store
The new Amazon Mp3 store gives you 256 Kb/s MP3 files without any DRM, for generally $8.99 an album. They are already ripping iTunes up on quality, price, and digital rights management. Expect them to continue to improve their selection (Amazon is famous for long tail) and interface, at which point no one will buy Steve Jobs’ crippled music.
Even better, Amazon’s system integrates cleanly with iTunes. You can one-click buy an album from Amazon, and their downloader will pick up the .amz file, grab your tracks, and automatically add them to your iTunes library. I’m also a big fan of the cover-flow like Album pickers they float on some of the mp3 pages:
Paul has it right when he says “Amazon MP3 is kicking ass and taking names.” You can also check out the official blog post or Techcrunch, who notes they are carrying 2,000,000 songs.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 7:39 pm and is tagged with digital rights management, mp3 pages, mp3 store, s mp3, drm free music, quality price, s system, taking names, mp3 files, kicking ass, steve jobs, amazon, techcrunch, itunes, music store, interface. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
on September 25th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Um, $8.99 per track? Who in their right mind would spend that much money on a single track?????????!?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!?!
on September 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Whups, typo, that’s per album!
on September 25th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
I’m impressed–though maybe I shouldn’t be–that Amazon could muscle the record companies into DRM-free music in a big way. It’s nice to see them finally start relenting on that. We’ve been sorely lacking a good music store that works with both iTunes and Media Player-compatibles.
on October 8th, 2007 at 1:41 am
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on July 11th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
might as well keep iTUnes…mostly .99 a track