Competition
26 September 2007
With little fanfare, Amazon have finally launched their MP3 download store. It’s been widely rumoured for ages so it’s good to see it finally out there.
The details are pretty much as expected: DRM-free 256kbps MP3s, which is a good standard quality to be selling at; variable pricing (with some things cheaper the iTunes, not more expensive); Universal and EMI the only majors on board, along with a host of indies (lots of which still haven’t managed to get DRM-free tracks on iTunes yet) and – of course – it’s US only for the time being.
The take away point: they haven’t screwed it up.
We – for the first time – have a decent competitor to the iTunes Music Store.
That’s not to say it’s by any means perfect, however. For a start, the general design and UI of the store is miles behind iTunes. A general browse, which you can do on iTunes by either drilling down from the home page or by using the browse function, seems to be a lot harder on Amazon. Of course, the flip side of this is that MP3 downloads now show next to the physical version on the rest of Amazon, so I guess it’s probably even-stevens as everyone knows how to browse on Amazon.
Another interesting usability choice on their part is the decision to force you to use the “Amazon MP3 Downloader” application if you want to download a whole album. This is a simple app that queues then downloads tracks from Amazon, and can then automatically add them to your iTunes library (which is a nice touch). It’s a nice convenience, but I’m not really sure why they force it upon you – why can’t you just download a .zip of all the files (when buying an album you get a small .amz file, which when opened launches the downloader app)? I wonder if they are – or plan to use – some form of bittorrent-style p2p within the downloader app, to take the hit off their bandwidth for full album downloads.
The other interesting point is the variable pricing model they’ve gone for. Apple has been steadfast in their policy of not offering variable pricing for single tracks, their reasoning being that the choice would confuse customers and that the big, bad record labels would use it to up track prices. The second point has some weight, as they do offer variable pricing on albums, and in the majority of cases they seem to go higher, rather then lower.
This steadfast refusal to offering different per-track pricing has been one of the biggest issues labels have had with Apple (or at least that’s what they claim), so it’s completely unsurprising Amazon has got variable per-track pricing. It’s also unsurprising that it’s going lower then the normal, $0.99 per-track price, as opposed to higher, for two reasons: 1) Amazon are going to be very aggressive in this market, and this is just the start and 2) This is a way of the major labels getting one over Apple. It’s pretty much along the lines of “Look! We told you we wanted variable pricing to lower prices – see!”.
And make no mistake, the record labels do not like Apple. I imagine they couldn’t be happier that the Amazon store has launched.
What’s next then? Obviously, one place Amazon is trailing far behind is the catalogue they offer, so getting Warner and Sony on board must be a high priority. This, though, could be tricky as they’ve so far shown no interest in selling their music DRM-free, so the Amazon store is vitally important for anyone who wants DRM to go away: if it’s successful, then there’s no way Warner and Sony won’t sit up and take notice. After that a world-wide rollout seems pretty assured, all though it wouldn’t surprise me if that doesn’t start happening until sometime next year.
Apple’s response to this will be interesting to watch – hopefully it will mean that Apple stops resting on its laurels and starts innovating again, which we’ve seen precious little of since the store launched (adding video doesn’t really count). Of course, don’t forget that the Amazon store isn’t the worst thing for Apple though:
It all just helps sell iPods.