Amazon To Sell Unprotected Music

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bbe3caec-03bd-11dc-a931-000b5df10621.html">http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bbe3caec-03bd-11dc-a931-000b5df10621.html</a><br /><br /><i>"Amazon moved to shake up the online music business on Wednesday by setting up a direct rival to Apple’s iTunes that will sell tracks without copyright *protection. Amazon said its decision to abandon so-called digital rights management software and instead sell tracks in the MP3 format would allow consumers easily to transfer music among a variety of devices – from iPods to personal computers and compact discs. The pioneering online retailer believes that will help to spur the next growth phase of the burgeoning digital music market.“ Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” said Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon."</i><br /><br />Where do I sign up? :drool:

[Ilium Software]

This is great - I always want to buy individual songs, but refuse to install iTunes, Rhapsody or any other software just to see if they have anything I want. Not to mention the format issues.

Now if Amazon is really smart (and I hope they are), they'll put their weight behind the efforts to keep internet radio going (http://www.savenetradio.org/) and then let affiliates hook up individual songs, as well as whole CDs, to the live "buy" links in the players. Everybody wins.

[tom dunne]

I really don't see the big deal with iTunes and copy protection. I buy regularly from iTunes and the first thing I do is burn to CD and re-rip in mp3 format.

It's good to think that they may finally have some serious competition, though, like most things, it will probably be a long while before we see it this side of the pond.

[Dyvim]

I really don't see the big deal with iTunes and copy protection. I buy regularly from iTunes and the first thing I do is burn to CD and re-rip in mp3 format.

The big deal for me at least is the transcoding loss of quality when you re-rip tracks that were only 128 kbps AAC to begin with. For me iTunes downloads start off with only marginally acceptable quality. The only option for avoiding any further loss of quality is to resort to illegal (in some countries) means of removing the DRM (which I think is actually easier than burning a CD and re-ripping).

I'm looking forward to this new Amazon service and also to 256 kbps DRM-free AAC EMI tracks on iTunes. I hope other services and record labels follow suit shortly with higher quality DRM-free downloads.

[Jason Dunn]

I find it very interesting that they're using MP3 rather than AAC like Apple - I think it's a great move, consumers understand what MP3 files are. If the bit rate is high enough (hopefully 256 kbps), MP3s will be a great solution.

[fresh-popcorn]

Thats great news for people on the go. Not everyone has a laptop with a burner on them or even a way to convert the files into MP3 while on the go or in my case not on my home computer.

I was downloading music from Walmart and yahoo but I had to purchase a converting program to be able to use it on my phone or MP3 player.

/thumbs up

[Rob Alexander]

Now I just need the price to be reasonable and I'll finally be in the digital music market. I won't support DRM in any form for any media. Sure, I could burn a CD and then rip it, but aside from the technical quality issues already mentioned, it's a matter of principle. They aren't using DRM to stop piracy, they are using DRM to make honest people buy the same product more than once.

What the rest of the music industry will find, if they have the guts to join EMI in this venture is that 1) piracy will increase just as they fear and 2) enough honest people will buy their product to more than make up for it. They've got to decide what they want. Do they want to be sure that not one person who didn't pay for it ever gets to listen to their music or do they want to make more money. If they want to make more money, then tunes need to be DRM free, preferably in a universal format like MP3.

[beq]

Is it likely that the music subscription services (Rhapsody, Napster, etc) will also go DRM-free MP3/AAC for purchased tracks? I guess they would still need DRM in place for the all-you-can-listen subscription model though?

When is the iTunes DRM-free tracks supposed to be available? The month of May ends less than a week from now...

[Jason Dunn]

Is it likely that the music subscription services (Rhapsody, Napster, etc) will also go DRM-free MP3/AAC for purchased tracks? I guess they would still need DRM in place for the all-you-can-listen subscription model though?

Correct - the subscription services will always have to have DRM because no one is going to give away their their music catalog for $15 a month. ;-)