Amazon announces long-rumored DRM-free music store
This is awesome. I already get 99% of my music from Amazon. iTunes also will have DRM-free music before the end of the year. The current task is to convince the big fat record labels to accept that their bullshit is nearly dead, and hop on board. Once those flood gates are open, I doubt there will be any exclusive contract not shared by the big two and following hundreds of clone services. So who am I going to buy from? Who the fuck knows. The competitive edge could come from a few angles:
Interface. iTunes already has it, and I already use it. iTunes wins. Anyone that's ever sold anything commercially on Amazon and used the Amazon Advantage program knows that they're slow and clunky on development.
'What's Next'. iTunes does have a 'similar artists' feature, and pushes a lot towards getting users to see 'what others bought' and the like, but nothing compares to the accuracy of Amazon's recommendation technology.
Price! DRM-free iTunes will cost $1.29, while Amazon's price hasn't been announced. My guess it will again settle under $.99 per song after it's revealed that all fears are for not and DRM was truly just training wheels for the digital music age. First to get there will make a lot of money, mostly from me.
API. Someone will do it. The third dimension of DRM free music is to not only allow sharing but to ENCOURAGE it by becoming content capable of spidering outward like text does today. Amazon might do it. I don't think Apple will, however. Their brand is too dependent on proprietary goods (good as they are). I'd guess that a third party will come in and take the lead to make an 'mp3' icon as symbolic to 2010 as the little RSS icon is to 2007. Please, o'please CDBaby.com.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
I guess I'll just continue to sort my music until September-ish
at 10:50 AM
Labels: Digital Music, iTunes
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