Amazon.com threatens iTunes’ MP3 dominance
An article in The New York Post tells us about a new digital music service that Amazon.com has been developing that may threaten iTunes, the currently undisputed leader in digital music downloading. Amazon’s new service, which is supposed to be launched sometime in the middle of the month, is supposed to have over 1 million songs for download from a large swath of indie labels, as well as two of the four majors. The biggest advantage to their service, for both labels and fans, is that the prices for songs are expected to be cheaper. While iTunes currently only has 2 flat rates for songs (99 cents for protect files and $1.29 for DRM-free songs), Amazon’s new system will allow labels to set their own prices which will vary depending on the song’s popularity. Full albums from Amazon are expected to be somewhere between $8 and $10.
This is great news for fans. While you may love iTunes, new competition usually means better prices and service for customers. And if Amazon knows what it’s doing, their files will be playable on your iPod. Amazon.com already offers some of the lowest prices for books and CDs, so it will certainly be interesting to see how well they do coming into the music downloading world.
News via Coolfer.
