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Dec 27, 07 - 10:30 am Comment from: stormy

Pretty soon Amazon could be the new #1 in digital music downloads.

I think that this is a great consumer development, and I'm very impressed that Amazon executed it in a way that supported ALL formats! OSX, Windows, Linux, BeOS, Unix, etc

A new standard is developing, and it's OPEN for business.

Dec 27, 07 - 10:32 am Comment from: GizmoDan

Can this be the death of Micro$oft DRM? It certainly gets harder and harder to provide MS DRM'ed music and still make a profit . . .

Perhaps "Platform" is a better term to use

Dec 27, 07 - 10:39 am Comment from: M.X.N.T.4.1.

Honestly, who emails a company like amazon for offering such a service? Surely it should be the norm not some amazing thing everyone has to be thankful for. I've certainly never emailed apple thanking them for iTunes.

Dec 27, 07 - 10:45 am Comment from: pastrychef

I think that iTunes can be hurt by this. Amazon now offers far more DRM-free tracks than iTunes. I hope Apple manages to parallel Amazon soon.

Dec 27, 07 - 10:47 am Comment from: Spark

" I've certainly never emailed apple thanking them for iTunes."

Everyone else did.

I realize all "ears" are different but I find AAC sounds better than MP3; even after converting a MP3 file to AAC.

Dec 27, 07 - 10:55 am Comment from: dallas

I'm all for it. I Bought a song from Amazon mp3 last night. It works great with the mac and instantly sinks to iTunes. I can't wait until Sony drops their DRM that will be the official end of DRM forever.

MS Zune still far behind.

Buy from whoever, store on whatever, play it whenever, take it where ever. Forever.

DRM-Free for life.

Why are the labels (except EMI) not offering Apple the same deal to sell non-DRM songs? It's because Apple wouldn't let them f*ck over consumers with bundling and similar schemes, so they're trying to kill iTunes. If they succeed in killing iTunes, non-DRM songs will disappear and Amazon will let them do whatever they want. Apple's Fairplay has never really gotten in the way of what I want to do, so I'm sticking with iTunes. Any consumer who doesn't want to hand the reins back to Bronfman and his ilk should do the same.

Let's not forget that the labels (except EMI) are deliberately denying iTunes access to DRM-free music. Vivendi offers DRM-free music to every provider except Apple. No doubt Warner is doing the same.

I believe in competition and am glad that Amazon is here. But let's not forget that this isn't about ending DRM. It's about breaking Apple's dominance in online music by building up a competitor.

Dec 27, 07 - 11:08 am Comment from: Predrag

Apple continues to command a respectable lead here. The problem is the labels. Their main goal here is to choke Apple's iTunes to death. They are cutting their nose to spite their face by bending over backwards for Amazon. There is no reason why Warner Music wouldn't be able (or willing) to make the same deal with Apple. After all, it was Apple that was already offering this kind of deal anyway.

Here's the deal; in order to seriously undermine iTunes, Amazon will have to offer more tracks than iTunes, make it easier than in iTunes to purchase songs and move them to iPod, and make all that cheaper than iTunes. Untile ALL THREE of these happen, iTunes will continue to dominate.

It is very easy to underestimate the consumers' appreciation for one-stop-shop convenience. While I must admit Amazon had made it a rather slick and smooth process (at least on Windows) to purchase songs and move them to iTunes, still, the process requires surfing to Amazon and finding your way through to the song/album you're looking for, buying it, which then launches that little Amazon applet that downloads it for you and dumps it into iTunes. With three distinct applications doing the song-and-dance routine here, there is eight times more chance something could go wrong.

The future of Amazon's digital downloads will depend on the vindictiveness of the record labels against iTunes. The future of iTunes store will depend on Apple's success in building a video rental business around it.

Dec 27, 07 - 11:10 am Comment from: Macromancer

"Pretty soon Amazon could be the new #1 in digital music downloads."

Not until their download store ceases to be a convoluted mess of pricing and versions. I tried it, and while its OK, its just, well, OK. Not great.

Also has anyone bothered to read the EULA?
I wonder what sort of land mines are hidden within.

Dec 27, 07 - 11:11 am Comment from: Macromancer

"It works great with the mac and instantly sinks to iTunes. "

Kitchen or bathroom?

Dec 27, 07 - 11:15 am Comment from: Ampar

" . . . instantly sinks to iTunes."


You sink to the Zune Marketplace. You rise to iTunes.

Are the Warner songs available on iTunes in DRM free format?

Dec 27, 07 - 11:20 am Comment from: Zune Tang®

I like the DRM Zune Marketplace offers. Microsoft's efforts in this area are to be commended. Their DRM is another Microsoft value added item much like the advertisements you can't bypass. Once again Apple is left in the rearview mirror as Microsoft advances. What's Redmond's secret for continually delivering a superior digital music experience?

(1) Zune digital music and video player
(1) Zune Marketplace
(2) tablespoons or (2) 15 ml DRM

The rest is pure magic. Even if you give the losers in Cupertino they still wouldn't get it right. Dorks. Kudos, Microsoft! Good job!

Your potential. Our passion.™

Dec 27, 07 - 11:28 am Comment from: HolyMackerel

@pastrychef: "I think that iTunes can be hurt by this."

People thought that the demise of DRM would hurt the DRM-laden iTMS since we can now choose our player more freely. I have just spent 2 days with a friend trying to get a Creative Zen to load some MP3's for his daughter. The combination of hardware/interface/Windows/Zen software problems showed me that Apple has nothing to worry about from this company at least.

My hope is that the iTMS will soon move to totally DRM-free.

Bluewing: I realize all "ears" are different but I find AAC sounds better than MP3; even after converting a MP3 file to AAC.

The first part is true, the second part is a placebo effect.
AAC sounds better than MP3 at the same bitrate due to a better, more advanced compression algorithm which keeps more information than MP3. However, AAC is still a lossy compression scheme. That means if you take an original recording and convert it to MP3 which then subsequently transcoded to AAC, you lose information twice.

An AAC file converted from an MP3 file can never sound better than the MP3.

I'm waiting to some day see a link to the Amazon store in iTunes. Maybe mid January?

Dec 27, 07 - 12:09 pm Comment from: deepdish

just downloaded to .89 mp3 tracks from amazon.

pretty simple.

apple might want to keep an eye on this competition from amazon.

Yep! I buy bottled water and then pour it into a glass to drink....

Dec 27, 07 - 12:34 pm Comment from: Predrag

Re: conversion from MP3 to AAC: there IS one scenario where this statement could in fact be correct. If you take a source MP3 file encoded at, say 320bps, then transcode it to 128bps AAC, well, in that case, the resulting file would still sound better than if you were to have transcoded it into 128kbps MP3.

Obviously, this wasn't the spirit of the original statement and no, there is absolutely no way by which a process of transcoding MP3 into AAC could have RESTORED lost audio properties from that MP3 encoding. As ../. has mentioned, encoding with lossy compression always degrades quality. Encoding from already encoded material only degrades further.

Dec 27, 07 - 01:08 pm Comment from: MacMarc

Amazon:

I want my AAC!

MS DRM is the only thing going down.

iTunes will only become bigger. Soon you'll be going there for your movies and iPhone, iPod Touch applications.

Apple will use the torrent technology, so download will be super fast kind of like with usenet.


The SDK will only work on a Mac, so more developers will be introduced to the easy Mac platform next year, and things will only get better.

Dec 27, 07 - 04:57 pm Comment from: Big Al

LimeWire syncs instantly to iTunes too.

Dec 27, 07 - 05:04 pm Comment from: Big Al

At 256 kbps the DRM free MP3s are virtually lossless.

Just convert them to AACs at 192 kbps and you have smaller files and only my dog can tell the difference.

I know, the assholes that are holding out for lossless files say they can tell the difference. They are either full of it or there mothers were canine.

Dec 27, 07 - 10:43 pm Comment from: KingMel

"But let's not forget that this isn't about ending DRM. It's about breaking Apple's dominance in online music by building up a competitor."

@calpundit: Fortunately for consumers, it amounts to the same thing. And now that most of the majors have let the DRM-free genie out of the bottle, there will be no putting it back in. DRM-free music will become the norm, I hope, because consumers will demand it and reward those who listen. My opinion is that is will make a small dent in iTS sales, but will not begin to even slow down the Apple juggernaut.

Dec 28, 07 - 01:22 am Comment from: MacSheikh

Maybe soon you can buy your DRM-free music from the "iTunes Amazon Store"?

Dec 28, 07 - 03:53 am Comment from: twilightmoon

1. Apple has already won. They created the iTS to have content available for their hardware (macs and ipods, etc) and with DRM going away that is no longer an issue.

2. The digital download business will grow enough to allow both Apple and Amazon to make money doing this, and as DRM goes away the consumers will ultimately win.

3. Microsoft's hopes of controlling the format and making licensing revenue off digital media and tying everything to Windows has nearly completely unraveled (only streaming files and video remain). When DRM loses, Microsoft loses and consumers win.

4. In the short term the big labels might do some harm to Apple's iTS with this petty tactic, but in the longer run I think they'll all get run over by Apple as artists sign up directly with iTS to deliver songs and albums to consumers directly without any money going to the big 4. Apple might even become a record label themselves, or at least act very similar to one as far as distribution goes.