My favorite Amazon! Arf!
Late last week Amazon began circulating contracts to labels aiming for a late 1st Q ’07 music downloadAmazon_12 store launch. Rumors of an Amazon entry have been circulating all year, but died down as attention shifted first to the URGE launch and then to Microsoft’s ZUNE.
What is most surprising (and exciting) about Amazon’s new store is that the online giant is apparently telling labels that they will only sell DRM free mp3’s and will offer variable pricing.
As the first major download store launch since Microsoft made it clear with ZUNE that it was not supporting it’s own PlayForSure DRM, perhaps Amazon was left with no choice.
Plus by embracing mp3’s, Amazon completely avoids all player compatibility issues by selling in the only format that plays on all devices including the ubiquitous iPod.
Amazon leads the way. My experience has always been positive with this company. I hope they are making some money finally.
No.
IF such a thing happened, it would have the eMusic problem — mainly second or third choice content, often nothing by an artist available at all.
Incidentally, for those who don’t know it, Amazon already has a free MP3 download section with thousands of songs.
#1 – Amazon leads the way.
Hmm… no. It was true at the beginning of the WWW, but Amazon.com is more and more a Me Too company, ever so desperate of finding new revenue streams in an attempt to live up to its $16B+ market cap.
#2, #3, It is a big deal. The key: VARIABLE PRICING. Neither Itunes (with DRM) or EMusic (without DRM) offer variable pricing.
I’ll take this time to reiterate my point that at this time, the iTunes/iPod combination has realistically made the DRM as a bad-guy moot. I have an iPod, and it plays MP3’s perfectly well (which is what my collection is in). iTunes as well handles mp3 with aplomb. And people who download DRM from the iTunes Store seem to be perfectly happy with the limitations imposed (ie: playing only in iTunes, or on your network, or on your iPod, and burned to a CD 5 friggin times).
Question to the folks out there. If the iTunes store, overnight, went to non-DRM format, what would be their REALISTIC increase in sales?
I doubt very much, as the only additional market they don’t have is for other MP3 players, and I’m not sure that would increase it so much.
I agree with #3, I used to love Amazon when it was an up and coming company. Back when you could call a real person to deal with a problem and you’d get what you bought within three days. Sort of like where Newegg was about a year ago.
But now it sucks. You’re lucky to get your stuff in two weeks. Stuff that is claimed to be in stock will suddenly be out after buying it and waiting a few weeks. They make money, almost all of their profit, from selling for third party sellers, but will offer no support when you’re screwed by them.
Amazon is an elephant looking for a quiet place to die.
#5: Generally Amazon’s pretty good when they have stuff in stock, which is about 95% of the time. That’s books, household goods, and other things they sell directly. Indirectly (used books for instance) is usually good too.
If they’re out of stock but are taking orders anyway, you’ll probably be waiting awhile…and might have to cancel your order.
Isn’t this just plain sad, that we’re hungrily looking forward to a single store selling drm-free music?
#4. I tend to agree that the huge success of iTunes with Apple’s non-intrusive DRM tends to weaken the “DRM hurts sales, non-DRMed music will sell a lot more” argument.
Two counter-arguments – DRM could becoming more intrusive, as desperate MPAA and RIAA seek to close “analog holes.” So much for burning your iTunes music and ripping back to MP3s. Also, upcoming hardware capabilities – like the WiFi on the Zune – that are crippled for DRM purposes will take the buzz out of new products.
Then, I can see DRM making a major dent in sales. But as far as Amazon goes, the real advantage of making these things regular, non-DRMed MP3s is, as others have said, it gets you onto the iPod.
“Question to the folks out there. If the iTunes store, overnight, went to non-DRM format, what would be their REALISTIC increase in sales?”
Um… yeah. I’d give it a try because I could play them in my non-iPod music player.
But the issue for Apple is pointless. Apple does not make money off of iTunes. It makes money off of iPods. So there is no advantage at all for Apple to sell more music on iTunes if they end up losing iPod sales. The point of DRM for Apple is not to keep people from copying music. It’s to force users of iTunes to buy iPods.
However, a major problem exists for anyone else who wants to create a music store with popular music. Now that Microsoft has pulled support for its Playsforsure DRM, you’d either need to create from scratch a vertical market to compete with Apple (i.e., a bullet-proof DRM system, a DRM equipped player, and a DRM equipped webstore to sell them) or to sell DRM-free music.
I personally think the former choice would be impossible, so that leaves only the latter choice as a viable option. Which I also see as a long shot. The music industry might give Amazon a few hits to sell, but there is no way in heck they’d ever allow a vast catalog of DRM-free music to exist on the net.
Unlikely. They don’t sell DRM-free movies. Why would they sell DRM-free music?
“Why would they sell DRM-free music?”
See my post #9.
#9. “The point of DRM for Apple is not to keep people from copying music. It’s to force users of iTunes to buy iPods.”
to an extent, yes. someone with a couple hundred dollars worth of iTunes music is going to keep buying iPods. but also, the music industry would not have cooperated with Apple without DRM. no content on iTunes Music Store, and the iPod doesn’t sell nearly as well, since all you could play on it would be ripped or illegally downloaded tunes.
Never going to happen. The RIAA will never allow it. It cuts into their agenda of pay per play forever.
#12 “but also, the music industry would not have cooperated with Apple without DRM.”
You’re right. But that’s not why Apple uses DRM. Imagine if the RIAA had a change of heart and decided to sell DRM-free MP3s. Would Apple suddenly drop its FairPlay DRM and sell DRM-free MP3s?! No way in heck. Apple’s entire vertical business model would come crashing down.
To put it simply, keeping DRM in iTunes is infinitely more important to Apple than it is to the RIAA.
14. Yes, that’s why I put in both motivations. but lets not get the cart before the horse. You don’t get iTunes in the first place if you don’t have the RIAA on board, THEN you can enforce your vertical monopoly once you have sold a few million units and a billion songs..
It will be interesting to see the result of the anti-trust suit. I can see Apple being forced to allow others to use their DRM and put iTunes songs on competitive music players.
which would be good.
What antitrust suit, Doug?
BTW, according to an NPD paper reported today, iTunes is responsible for 90 percent of paid digital downloads.
#16. I don’t know if it is still pending, but it was plowing forward last year:
http://tinyurl.com/y6d9ep
and if they have 90% of the market, it is tough to say they aren’t a monopoly.
It occurs to me that Amazon already sells lots of un-DRMed music by major labels – CDs!
This, of course, brings up how the music industry’s paranoia is harming it. Rather than get into the download biz themselves, cutting out the middleman (Apple) by selling unDRMed downloads, they refuse, even though every day they sell thousands and thousands of songs on little plastic disks, which are promptly ripped, compressed, and shared.