I am now an Amazon customer
They finally started selling something that I want to buy.
Almost since the iTunes Music Store first opened, I’ve been a customer of the iTunes Store. 99¢ a song is fine by me, and I love paying by the song. There are few albums so consistently good that I’ll buy the whole thing.
Then iTunes Plus started, and I immediately switched over. Sure, it’s 30¢ extra, but I pay that 30¢ as a statement against DRM.
Then came the Amazon MP3 Store.
Amazon sells plain old MP3s, at roughly 256 kbps VBR (in order that nobody can complain about the encoding quality). Since they’re plain old MP3s, there’s no DRM.
Even better, Amazon beats iTunes’ prices: 89–99¢ per song. iTunes charges $1.29 (remember, no DRM, so the proper comparison is to iTunes Plus rather than to non-Plus).
So, in short:
- The encoding is almost as good as or better than iTunes.
- The price is the same as or less than iTunes.
- Amazon’s MP3s are never DRMed, whereas iTunes’ MPEG-4s are usually DRMed.
Like Simone, I shall buy from Amazon first from now on. (I haven’t switched away from iTunes; they’ll continue to get my business for songs that Amazon doesn’t carry. But, unfortunately for Apple, I expect that set to diminish.) Take notice of this, Apple—get the record labels to let you lower your prices, or you will lose serious market share to Amazon.
Just in case you’re wondering…
The Amazon MP3 Store works by downloading a file in a special format: .amz. This is a document for the Amazon MP3 Downloader application. (In case you’re wondering, the contents are some binary data, which may just be ciphertext of some sort, encoded in base64.)
The reason they do this is so that it can download the MP3s into a subfolder of your Music folder, rather than your usual Downloads folder (normally your Desktop). That’s good, but it has two downsides:
- You need a Windows or Mac OS X PC to download MP3s from Amazon, even though the MP3s themselves will play anywhere.
- If your browser is set not to auto-open files, or doesn’t trust the Amazon MP3 Downloader, then you may be sitting there for a moment wondering why the Downloader is not doing anything.
My suggestion to Amazon would be to switch to a custom URL scheme, rather than a custom file format. I don’t know about Windows, but this would certainly make it much easier on the Mac, since the custom URL scheme will always work. (It won’t help the non-Mac non-Windows users, though, since you still need the Amazon MP3 Downloader to handle the custom URL.)
September 29th, 2007 at 22:51:11
If I remember correctly, the .amz files are only if you want to download an entire album at a time. You get a regular MP3 file when you purchase and download individual tracks, as far as I know. (Haven’t tried it yet, though, so not 100% sure.)
September 30th, 2007 at 00:29:08
Nope, you get a .amz file for individual songs, too. I haven’t bought an album yet.
September 30th, 2007 at 00:36:29
Ah, that sucks. Then I guess it’s not as open as I thought it was — it’s pretty much limited to Mac and Windows, then, which is kinda lame, given that being available to Linux users would be the principal benefit of delivering MP3 downloads via a website rather than custom software à la iTunes.
Another thing that I didn’t realize that will seriously hamper my buying from Amazon: the unavailability of a “Complete My Album” feature. I really like being able to purchase just one track off an album from iTunes, and then being able to go back and purchase a few more tracks, and then finally purchasing the entire album using Complete My Album. I’ll have to be absolutely sure I want a whole album (without having downloaded any other tracks) before I download it off Amazon.
September 30th, 2007 at 01:27:36
Apple doesn’t have the option of getting the labels to let them lower prices — they can’t even get the labels to let them put most songs in iTunes Plus (even tracks that are somehow sold DRM-free at Amazon).
What’s happening here is pretty transparent: The labels want to beat Apple. They don’t like Apple because Apple generally doesn’t agree with their screw-over-the-customer tactics. They know that Amazon is an absolute whore that will sell anything you let it (and I say this with love — Amazon is my favorite Web store). So the labels want to give Amazon every advantage possible and try to help it topple Apple. Then later, the labels can change the terms, knowing full well that Amazon won’t put up a fight and hopefully Apple will be too weakened.
It’s a shame, because the Amazon MP3 Store is something I would really like to see, but I can’t imagine it’s anything but a Trojan Horse.
September 30th, 2007 at 05:09:03
There is a link to download a MP3, not an .amz file, for individual songs. I’ve bought individual songs from the Amazon MP3 store and didn’t download or install the Amazon Downloader. It just downloaded the MP3 to my regular browser downloads folder.
September 30th, 2007 at 18:26:27
@Charles: Perhaps it’s a setting à la iTunes Plus, where if you want to purchase albums, you must use the Amazon Downloader for individual songs as well?
@Chuck: I think it *is* transparent that the labels trying to topple Apple, but I’m not sure if they’ll be able to raise the prices afterward. If everyone migrates to Amazon MP3, it’s because of the great prices, no DRM, and high quality of the files. If Amazon becomes number one, and iTunes number two, and then the labels jack up the prices for Amazon again, everyone will stop downloading from Amazon precisely because the advantages that it offerred evaporated.
October 8th, 2007 at 20:56:32
Agreed. I like the non-DRM stance that Amazon is taking and this is a good step to challenging the iTunes monolith.
October 17th, 2007 at 19:16:22
The contents of the .amz file are obfuscated… by encrypting with a static key (included in the music downloader) and base64’d. The unobfuscated result is a simple XML file that describes metadata about the song as well as the download URL.
March 3rd, 2009 at 18:10:57
wil rox: Interesting story. However:
It’s for these reasons that I’ve hidden your comment from public view. I’ll summarize for future readers the email thread you pasted: You were a third-party seller on Amazon until someone bought something from you, then claimed a refund and refused to return the item.
My suggestions: