Amazon joins the MP3 download service arena with DRM-free digital music

Posted on September 26, 2007 at 12:04 pm

Yesterday Amazon announced it’s new MP3 download service with 2.3 million songs ready to download and all without copy protection! Of course, you might be thinking "Well that’s great, but Wal-Mart has been doing the same thing and I already use E-Music, so why switch"? Good question! I asked myself the same thing and basically came to the conclusion that Amazon selling MP3’s might actually work because I also happy to buy a crap load of other stuff from them!

It actually makes sense from a business perspective for Amazon, people are already buying books, DVDs, music CDs, electronics, and tons of other stuff from our site, why not give them the choice to now only buy an album online, but also download the album directly to their computers if they wish. Then the user can play it on their computer, on their iPod, on their Zune, or on any other media player they might have.

Currently, Amazon has two of the four major labels joined up on it’s music download service, Universal and EMI. This gives them the advantage of having songs from two of the largest music labels that are completely DRM-Free. Of course, they still need to get the other two major labels signed on, but it’s definitely a good first step. Also, they have thousands of independent labels and for the first time even have songs from smaller labels that are copy protection free, such as from Rounder Records, Trojan Records, HighTone Records, and Alligator records.

Currently, you can download songs individually or you can download a small application called MP3 Downloader that will allow you to download multiple songs or entire albums at once. Not only that, the program will automatically send your downloaded songs to your Windows Media Player or to your iTunes library.

Another aspect of Amazon’s digital music download service is the fact that all songs are not the same price. Actually, Amazon is the first company to try variable pricing for music downloads. Prices for songs start at 89 cents but could be sold for less depending on how much of a discount Amazon can get from the music labels. Also, most complete albums are selling for $8.99, whereas they sell for $9.99 on iTunes.

And if that’s not sounding good, Amazon has built the entire site around a great customer experience, so once you buy a few songs, Amazon will give you a list of personalized recommendations for other music you might like.

So definitely check out their new site and see how you like it. Have fun!

[tags]amazon mp3, mp3 music downloads, digital music downloads[/tags]

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