Amazon's long awaited DRM-free online music store launched today. The service is called Amazon MP3. There's an estimated 2 million MP3 files there, for the low price of 89 or 99 cents each. I tried it out and am happy to report that there were four CocoRosie albums available for sale there - the desktop downloader worked well on my MacBook (see image below), the shopping experience was very simple and I'm looking forward to transferring the songs over to my other computer.
This is definitely a service I'll use when I want to buy whole albums and can't make it down to the local, independent record store. I've always felt dirty buying music from iTunes, now I think I'll feel a little less dirty buying DRM free music from Amazon. I saw the news first at Techmeme and there's good music-industry centric coverage at Steven Finch's Crenk. See a longer, more in-depth review of the new service over at our digital lifestyle blog Last100.
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The biggest news of the day so far has been Amazon's launch of their DRM-free MP3 store, which competes with Apple's iTunes. I find it kind of amusing, however, that Apple is actually driving some sales for Amazon on its... Read More
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The public beta — woohoo, no invites required — of the Amazon MP3 Store (note: all links in this post to Amazon are affiliate links) has been released offering the biggest amount of DRM-free, MP3 encoded (256k) music available online, via ... Read More
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I must admit i dont see amazon being a iTunes killer, but i really do think it will be an eMusic killer!
Posted by: Steven Finch | September 25, 2007 9:23 AMMarshall,
As always, content is king. If Amazon is able to signup all the major record labels and build a comprehensive library, they should do well. The quality should be good enough for most users.
On that note, good to see you found CocoRosie on there. Have not heard of them...what genre of music is that?
Posted by: Parag Mathur | September 25, 2007 10:41 AMHow do the prices compare against emusic? As an early subscriber I'm still on a 90 songs for $30 plan, so I've not checked how competitive the current plans are.
The recommendations are better than my iTunes ones (as Amazon have more purchase history I guess, but also because I will use iTunes to buy single songs by artists I don't like generally.
Nice to see Mac and PC support from the off. One thing I do wonder is if either of these guys (Amazon, emusic) could make an iTunes plug-in like iLike??? (Which lets you download free MP3s directly into iTunes).
Posted by: JulesLt | September 25, 2007 10:59 AMYou can also use http://amazonmp3.com/ to get there. It's a little cleaner URL, I think!
Posted by: Michael Trythall | September 25, 2007 11:10 AMThanks everyone for your comments. Re eMusic - I haven't spent a lot of time with that service as I found their interface really inhospitable and their music selection frustratingly small. I've heard somebody complain about the Amazon MP3 interface already this morning, though, and the music selection here may not be a lot larger. Any eMusic fans here care to chime in?
Re CocoRosie - they are hard to classify! I love them and hate to do this, but I'd suggest checking out their MySpace page to hear some of their music: http://myspace.com/cocorosie
@Michael thanks for the clean URL! I've read several people complaining about this and you've saved us here! I updated the post to point to amazonmp3.com Thanks again!
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | September 25, 2007 11:22 AMHow are they going to make money?
It is widely thought that Apple makes next to nothing on songs they sell - they make their money on the iPods. Amazon is selling cheaper songs without that other revenue stream...
Posted by: Kevin | September 25, 2007 12:03 PMso that's a good news! Amazon really does it well in selling...I would also want to try looking for the songs I like later. congratulations!
Posted by: my music blog | September 25, 2007 5:06 PMNeither iTunes, nor eMusic do a good job recommending music. Probably Amazon con do a better job there, they know how to.
Posted by: Alexis Brion | September 26, 2007 3:49 AM