Comments on: Wake Up, World! Amazon’s MP3 Store Deserves Better. Doesn’t It?

By: EddyKilowatt

EddyKilowatt — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:52:33 +0000

Hmmmm, hadn’t realized that Amazon’s MP3 store was faring poorly… it’s my first-stop shop for digital music. Hope they persevere and eventually give Apple some competition.

For me it’s not about copy protection (I only have one computer and one player) or even the Apple platform (since I use iTunes and my iPhone)… it’s about format and open standards, and five years down the road being able to play my music on whatever platform I like best at that time.

My teenage son sticks to the Apple Store though, even after I showed him Amazon and the Downloader and explained about open standards. I haven’t pushed him on the reasons why, but suspect it is some combo of comfort level, simplicity, and perhaps peer (did someone say ‘herd’?) influence.

Eddy

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:54:25 +0000

Amazon is great! Their deal of the day is epic and they even have new stuff really cheap. I just got Folie a Deux by Fall Out Boy and Day and Age by the Killers for 3.99 and All American Rejects’ Newest for 2.99. All of that on the day it was released! iTunes doesn’t even come close in terms of price if you get that sort of deal. Also, the lack of DRM is great too.

By: Mindchaotica

Mindchaotica — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:54:11 +0000

One could make the argument that you could buy from Amazon, use iTunes, and have an iPod and not ever have bought anything from the apple store.

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:09:28 +0000

Apart from the drm free, and the “it’s not apple” and any and all other reasons one could come up with…

Amazon mp3 does not work in europe… iTMS does…

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:41:01 +0000

I think the one thing that keeps me from buying songs from Amazon is the iTunes gift card. A couple of times a year someone will give me or my wife a gift card for iTunes and we maintain a balance in our account. To use Amazon I would have to drop the charge for a song onto a credit card. Buying songs from Apple is perceived as free by us as we never really feel the hit. If Amazon did a campaign where they pushed their own gift cards they might raise their profile in the music market.

By: ediedi

ediedi — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:05:11 +0000

Until music (and dmovie) downloads are available worldwide the issue of DRM or non-DRM is really non-existent, since we are pretty much encouraged to use illegal download methods.
Why isn’t any online music store available in Romania (EU member), not even the DRM-free ones?
iTunes can sell me apps with no problem for my itouch, so payment is not the issue.

A good method to compete for Amazon would be to open up music downloads to ALL markets, I think it would be huge.

By: John

John — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:25:59 +0000

Nobody I have ever met has ever mentioned DRM to me. I only here about it online like this. If I didn’t know that the music I purchase had DRM I wouldn’t know it was there.

Music just isn’t that large of a purchase. If I was buying a digital camera, an HD camcorder or a car I would do a lot of comparison shopping. When buying songs for a buck a piece it isn’t worth my time to shop around. As long as iTunes works really well I’ll keep using it.

By: Matt Sharpe

Matt Sharpe — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:34:34 +0000

I am extremely glad that Amazon’s MP3 store has opened in the UK.

I have already bought two albums from it. The experience was very smooth and I didn’t have to mess about burning to CD then ripping again to rid the songs of their DRM.

By: Dave Barnes

Dave Barnes — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:26:28 +0000

Better “stores”

1. MP3Sparks.com
2. ThePirateBay.org

By: Lawrence

Lawrence — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:50:37 +0000

People who read and post in blogs and forums like this have a skewed view of the world. They think they are representative of the general population. They are not. Most people don’t care about DRM. They don’t care about encoding bit rates. What they care about is that it’s easy to purchase and listen to music with an iPod and the iTMS.

The same is true of user-to-user troubleshooting forums. A group of users find out they have the same problem and nothing in the world will convince them that the particular problem isn’t pandemic. Everybody else has the same problem too. They have a skewed view of reality.