Amazon Announces iTunes-Killer MP3 Store
May 16th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: General 
Amazon.com today announced it will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels, including EMI. Every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software.
Amazon’s announcement is the most promising prospect for an iTunes-killer. Amazon’s service will work with any player, Amazon already has a well-established business and audience, and Amazon’s content will be Web-based, instead of a proprietary interface like Apple’s iTunes.
Amazon’s DRM-free MP3s will let customers play their music on PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens and burn songs to CDs for personal use.
“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, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We’re excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone.”
While I’m glad to hear Amazon.com’s DRM-free announcement, I’m not quite following the iTunes-killing significance? Apple announced a similar DRM-free deal with EMI last month and there will be absolutely no incentive for the record labels to offer Amazon such an option with offering the same option to all retail online channels. Again, as a long-time customer of both iTunes and Amazon, I think I’ll benefit from the competition, but there’s no way the “iTunes-killer” label can be attached to it. By the way, will the Amazon.com store support podcasting?
Will there be room for podcasts???
Rex
There have been dozens of music services that have been characterized as iTunes-killers by analysts. I’ve never been impressed with their offerings, because they’ve either been subscription services or used some proprietary DRM. These limitations have proven to be fatal flaws.
Amazon’s offering promises to be free of these flaws, and to offer some things that iTunes doesn’t, like a larger customer base and a web-based interface. These things alone won’t make the service an iTunes-killer, but they are sure to help Amazon give Apple its first real competition.