Competition
It looks like Amazon has decided to kick Apple when it’s down (maybe not intentionally, but still) with it’s own music store. Before you say, “Another music store? If it’s not iTunes, I’m not using it!”, let me say that you would be wise to check out the new Amazon MP3 store. The new Amazon MP3 store offers approximately two million DRM-free tracks that will play on any MP3 player available today, are available for 89 cents per track (with albums as low as $5.99), and at a higher quality than all but iTunes Plus tracks. To try the store out, I downloaded the free track, Energy by Apples in Stereo, and was pleased at how straight-forward the process was. After downloading the Amazon MP3 Downloader, which is required for album purchases, I was presented with a link to the free track and quickly “purchased” said track. After downloading a small AMZ file (Safari is set to not execute downloads automatically) and opening it with the downloader, downloading commenced and by default, the track was added to iTunes. Currently, this means that I have a duplicate copy of the file, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon doesn’t add another option to delete the original file on successful add to iTunes.
Anyway, that’s enough of a review that you should want to check it out! But I also wanted to say that this is the first true competitor to iTunes and as such, should propel Apple to adopt new opinions on audio sales. As of this writing, I don’t believe that Amazon currently has a better experience than the built-in iTunes store, but until iTunes offers a larger DRM-free catalog at more competitive prices, I’m going to be looking first on Amazon!
via Daring FireballÂ