Amazon’s New MP3 Download Service is a True iTunes Competitor
Posted on October 2, 2007, under Media, Podcasts, Software, Tools and Services.
Many have tried to steal part of the large market share that Apple owns of the digital music market. Many have also failed. Amazon was in a perfect position to take on this challenge, but it’s biggest point of failure could have been itself. Amazon failed with it’s Unboxed service for movies and TV shows, with too much DRM, no mac support, and just a user experience nightmare. So what makes the new MP3 service from Amazon a true iTunes competitor, bottom line it works and works well!
Amazon is not playing any favorites. You have to download a small piece of software just to download the purchased music, after that the music works with iTunes, iPod, Zune, and any other media player or software. It also is available for Mac and Windows.
The prices are good, better than Apple in most cases. I hope that they will continue to be this low. It seems like Amazon might be initially taking a cut of revenue to get their foot in the door. If they do raise prices I can’t see it going higher than other digital music stores out there.
The music is DRM free! Yes, they are watermarked, which really is not a form of DRM just a little meta data that says where it was purchased from. The music is clean, which really would have been a show stopper for this new service and made it unusable for most like Amazon’s Unboxed service.
Amazon has been getting more into the service department, with it’s A9 offerings. These services line them up great for offerings like this new MP3 service. The downloads are fast, taking just about two minutes to download an entire album over broadband.
Amazon integrates the service very well into it’s store, again giving Amazon a leg up on competition and threatening Apples market share.
I have downloaded about three albums from the new service, and honestly it is so well done it might even convert the pirates. I truly hope that the record labelssee this service working and do not try to pull the stunts that they have pulled with Apple. Amazon needs to push back on the MPAA and get it’s Unboxed service working as well.
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