Amazon Launches Public Beta of Amazon MP3 — Bests Apple’s iTunes Plus by 1.7 Million Tracks

Amazon launched their MP3 store — as widely predicted — but did it in the first commercially viable fashion the market has seen since iTunes debuted years ago.Others have tried, but all have failed to gain much ground on Apple’s store, not because of onerous copy protection schemes, but because all the competitors to date have been so, so very stupid.Apple succeeded on three key points:

1. The application is easy to use and is largely pretty intuitive… on most things.
2. Apple’s FairPlay copy protection is broad enough not to affect the majority of users.
3. Interaction with the store and purchasing music and video is a seamless process for most users.

There are a lot of qualifiers in there, a lot of “mosts” and such, but truly the iTunes store opened a door for legal downloads that no others have been able to beat. The integration between device and application that has been so important for Apple allowed them to hit the sweet spot: create a device that people want, and don’t piss users off when they try to use it. Microsoft couldn’t beat it. So, they jumped on board with the Zune and eviscerated all their partner contracts for the old “PlaysForSure” program in one motion. The Zune Marketplace created the same walled garden that the iPod/iTunes ecosystem used, and even while the early Zune execution has been sluggish, they are doing a lot of things right, making their core user base very happy in the process. They have a lot to be proud of there. Amazon MP3 adds what this market has needed for a very, very long time: store level competition. The Amazon store hits home in the three key areas, too:

1. The store has an almost-application feel, making browsing intuitive and welcoming.
2. All 2 million tracks are DRM-free; no artificial device count limits to hit your head on.
3. Interaction with the store is — after the first purchase — as easy as dealing with iTunes; music is automatically transferred to your music library on purchase, with no additional user interaction required, Windows or Mac.
4. And of course, it’s cheaper…

In some cases a whole bunch cheaper. Apple’s DRM free tracks come only from EMI and cost users $1.29 each, while most albums still hold the $9.99 price. Amazon hits home with $.89 tracks, price variability by song length. So longer songs cost you more, but not enough more to cost more than Apple. This competition thing… it’s important. Of course, Apple will drop the price on their DRM free tracks in the very near future, and will likely announce new label partnerships to one-up Amazon. And Amazon will counter, with more music, more labels, and better service. And all of this will better the industry and the musicians who exist here. If the production of music is truly becoming the promotional piece for the concert set, then having access to all the music I can get my hands on in a smart, efficient, fair manner benefits both sides of the transaction. What’s coming out of the fray is a new model for thinking about distribution and it’s got artists thinking. The same way corporations are stepping up and creating their own media, their own signal, musicians are realizing they can do the very same.As frustrating as label-opoly markets can be, the transition to the other side of the bell curve is a good place to be. This is a good time to be a fan. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 2:57 pm. It is filed under Blog and tagged with Amazon, iTunes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.