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Ever since Amazon launched its music store back in September 2007, everyone assumed its discounted prices and DRM free catalog was a result of the music industries dissatisfaction with Apples dominance. With iTunes being the primary management software for the most popular MP3 player on the planet, Amazon knew it would need an edge to stay competitive. The 10 cent per track discount was a nice touch, but techies and audio enthusiasts alike were eager to switch if it meant we could free our music. Most of us assumed the DRM restrictions on iTunes would remain for the forcible future, but now that this has turned out not to be the case what else wasn’t true?
Well, according to unnamed sources cited by CNET, everybody selling downloadable music is also paying the same wholesale price. Though it has never been confirmed, many believe Apple makes but a few pennies per .99 cent download. If this is indeed true, anything else sold below this price might actually be a loss leader. Now with iTunes discounting its back catalog of tracks to a mere .69 cents, and at comparable bit rates, it’s well positioned to steal back business from Amazon. NPD senior industry analyst Russ Crupnick claims the two services don’t impact each other as much as we might think, but at the very least it certainly makes switching from iTunes to a separate web store much less desirable then it used to be.
Now that iTunes has gone DRM free, and has begun to discount its back catalog of tracks, can Amazon still compete?
Comments are closed on this article
tenbears66
January 12, 2009 at 11:43am
Apple applies the same logic to their music service as they do to their computers; just because it has that little apple symbol people will clamor to get in line and drink the koolaid. Now that DRM has come back to bite them in the ass we see who's doing the clamoring.
Kudos to Amazon for thinking of the customer first.
dcrail
January 12, 2009 at 9:25am
I definitely like Amazon over iTunes, I just can't believe anyone is buying Coldplay songs.
tenbears66
January 12, 2009 at 11:48am
Although I'm not a fan of Coldplay I do respect any band that can put up these kinds of number:
"Coldplay's CD has sold more than 2 million copies since its release in June, and has sold more than 500,000 copies digitally - most of which was through iTunes, according to the band's representative."
~source Billboard Magazine
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ib1405eaa568fd52d2fdac714eff93e42
dwr50
January 12, 2009 at 9:15am
I won't be buying music from the itunes store, even if it is DRM free. Too little, too late in my opinion. I've been using Amazon since 2007 to purchase music.
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atomaweapon
January 12, 2009 at 9:01am
Itunes sucks, plain and simple. My stepmom got an ipod, and as easy as I thought it would be, getting stuff synced and setup was a pain. I don't know if I was just doing something wrong but I barely understood how to get stuff synced. Then to buy music you without a doubt have to have Itunes running. The times I've installed itunes I count no less than 3 services humming in the backrgound needing to run. Not to mention you need quicktime installed.
All great if that's your gig, but with amazon I just click download and the little lightweight mp3 downloader starts sucking down whatever tunes I purchased into my music folder. Then I close the box and I'm done. So for me personally, I wouldn't use Itunes if it were the last music store on the planet.
dorerd
January 11, 2009 at 8:18pm
I've been an irregular purchaser through both iTunes and Amazon. While I enjoy the non-DRM of Amazon, I have enjoyed certain features of iTunes.
Before Amazon, I had a simple way of bypassing DRM through iTunes. Simply purchase the tracks, burn to re-writable CD and import in MP3 format from the CD using iTunes. No DRM to worry about. Though a little time consuming, this worked wonderfully for adding music to my Philips 6GB GoGear. Keep in mind, this was a couple of years before Amazon began selling music downloads (and before I discovered Media Monkey).
The import as MP3 format as an iTunes feature (and for a while was the only way I knew of to import in MP3 - again, thanks Media Monkey) was nice for ripping my CD collection and adding nice quality artwork with song info was, back then, far easier than typing in CD info for hundreds of CDs. I would still have to do that occasionally but the benefits far outweighed the typing.
MrNaPaLm32
January 11, 2009 at 8:57pm
That works well If you want to go through a hundred CD's every month, and waste time burning a ripping, which you'd probably want to spend doing something else.
nduanetesh
January 11, 2009 at 9:30pm
Actually he said he would burn to a rewritable CD...so he could reuse the same one over and over again.
The real problem with this method is that music from iTunes is encoded in a lossy format, so when you expand it onto a CD and then recompress it into mp3s (another lossy format), you've lost even more sound quality from your already compromised music. It's much better to buy real CDs or just deal with a service that doesn't require you to jump through hoops to be able to do what you want with the music you bought.
Back in the day, Musicmatch Jukebox used to be a great program for ripping CDs. It would look up track/artist/album info, and even get album art for you...but alas, that was before Yahoo sunk their claws into it and made it suck.
nduanetesh
January 11, 2009 at 7:07pm
I use lala.com and will for the foreseeable future. The ability to upload my entire music library to lala's servers (even stuff I didn't buy from them!) and listen to it from any internet connected computer is awesome! Also, you can add tracks to your lala online account for TEN FREAKIN' CENTS and listen to them any time you're on the 'net. Downloads are usually 89 cents (cheaper if you buy whole albums) and are DRM free mp3s. What's not to love about that?
I Jedi
January 11, 2009 at 6:55pm
I would only ever buy my music from Amazon.com after I stopped using my iPod and switched to my Sansa e260. However, because iTunes is lowering their prices and getting rid of their redicilous DRM attached tracks, I'll probably shop there more often now. I'd say what would make me stay with Amazon.com is if they offered to backup my music collection to my account automatically... That would probably keep me with them.
kowal
January 11, 2009 at 5:59pm
I like amazon better............they don't force you to install some piece of cr@p software like itunes to buy their music.
amazon...buy...download....enjoy
gothliciouz
January 11, 2009 at 4:22pm
i'm a fan of itunes & I will never buy music from other place than itunes :)
blackzarg
January 11, 2009 at 4:14pm
I use both. I'll just search both catalogs and whichever has it cheaper gets my business! =)
jcollins
January 11, 2009 at 7:32pm
Likewise, especially since Amazon has that addon that puts the songs into iTunes for you. I think I've posted this before, but other than price and DRM/quality, the main difference between iTunes and Amazon is the extras you can get in some of the albums on iTunes (pictures, extra songs). With DRM going away and quality being the same, I'll usually look at the extras and see if I really want to pay the difference for them or not. No extras, Amazon wins on price.
