Amazon Hits iTunes Again With $0.99 Lady Gaga Album, Qualifies for Cloud Drive Storage Upgrade

Ivan P said:

AAC is a lossy format, regardless of who sells it or what encodes it. FLAC, Apple Lossless (ALAC), AIFF, etc (I believe WAV is too), are examples of lossless audio formats. AAC, MP3, etc, are lossy. Best way to tell - if the files are, say, 4MB or 5MB for a 3-minute song, it's in a lossy format. If they're more along the lines of 30MB-40MB for the same song, then it's lossless. The online stores steer towards lossy files because, one, they take up less space (therefore not putting as big a strain on your connection - a 70MB album compared to a 700MB one), and because they're more likely to be supported by other players (for example, iPods don't support FLAC or WAV). In the end, in most cases the noticeable difference in quality between a lossless file and a lossy one (say, an AAC file encoded at 320kbps), is negligible.

(Btw not all this post was aimed at you, the rant at the end was more a guide for people that may not understand the difference )

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I agree 100 percent. And I knew all of that - just didn't feel like pointing it all out. But thank you for doing it so I didn't have to

JoeG4 said:

At 99 cents, it's still a ripoff.

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LOL. It's pathetic that Lady Goo-Goo is at the top of the entertainment field. It says a lot about society.

Its interesting that the media wants a horse race

I would argue that neither Apple nor Amazon for that matter are all that concerned about each others business models; it's just normal competition.

What is interesting to me is that Amazon could be creating a fork of Android that plays to Amazon's content strengths, potentially eliminating Google from the equation and fully capturing advertising revenue from its partner stores, while selling volumes of branded devices. With Amazon's Kindle base, and customer loyalty, Amazon could actually pull off a serious competitor to both the existing and fractured Android market and Apple's model.

This would require Amazon to provide apps comparable to Google's, though I can see developers jumping at the chance to generate cash through an Amazon bundle (Skyhook?) included with the hardware.

Either way, a win for Amazon that most probably will impact the Android market more so than Apple's, and puts them squarely in the same arena with WebOS, and Windows7 as late but potent entries in the market.

Frozone said:

Yeah, I figured that's what might be happening. Either way, horrible first impression.

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True. I somehow doubt this would happen with iTunes. Having said that, I VERY rarely buy anything from iTunes because, frankly, I don't like supporting market strangleholds.

rorschach said:

Yes, "hipsters" may not like it because it's popular...but the music certainly ATTEMPTS to be "EDGY" and "DIFFERENT" (whether it actually is or not is another debate.)

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Well that's the thing....it just reeks of effort (and of old dirty Madonna wardrobe).

Intarweb said:

I can't stand any of her music but you can't deny her musical talent and her complete adoration and humble nature she has with all her fans. The hate on her is unnecessary and ignorant.

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Very well said. I am forced to hear her due to having a 10 year old daughter, I don't love her music but it isn't hate worthy, there is plenty more out there worse. That said, I certainly have tremendous respect for her.

AppleScruff1 said:

LOL. It's pathetic that Lady Goo-Goo is at the top of the entertainment field. It says a lot about society.

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Daveoc64 said:

Don't see what the problem is with that. Amazon UK has a deal EVERY WEEK where one album is £3.99

This week it's "Born This Way".

Amazon UK and Amazon US are very separate.

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Some people get upset when they have to pay 6 times as much as someone else for stuff. Others just use methods that do not discriminate against them.

Azadre said:

I retract my statement that Amazon wins. This still has not downloaded.

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Exactly, they should have said you can buy it for 99 cents, but good luck downloading it! I've had mine trying for an hour and a half... thanks Amazon! You had to know that this was going to be a huge promotion, why not prepare for it?

Round 2, FIGHT!

Glad to see the competition making good on their promises!

sbrhwkp3 said:

It's worse because it's got an act to go along with it.

I don't like any modern popular music. It's all machine processed garbage.

The real musicianship lies outside of the top 100 billboards.

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lmao wtf are you talking about?
what do you mean by machine processed garbage? do you mean using digital consoles? digital audio work stations? computers?
They may be exact sound for sound copies of something produced in the 60s or 70s but now adays its quite a tale to tell the difference between them, granted the producer is good. but really who cares? music is music....

Kaibelf said:

That's assuming that, literally, ALL of those gazillion people (or even anything more than a minuscule number of them) are both AWARE of Amazon's service and interested in using it. I can bet solid money that about 99% of those online purchases will be through iTunes or ordering/purchasing the physical disc. She doesn't need an Amazon coupon to move units, when this release has been pushed as a big release for the past 6 months already.

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Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for Gaga and I have no doubt in my mind that she will debut at #1, with or without help.

But, making the album 99 cents on its release day will definitely help it. Anyone heading to Amazon (and many are) to buy Gaga's album will see that it already at #1 for 99 cents. So it will further make her move units.

At the end of each year Amazon does discount bestsellers to $1.99, but these are releases that are a few weeks or months old. Different story than discounting the album on its release date.

Good for her, no artist nowadays eats from the proceeds of album sales anyway, that is so 90s. Everyone tours and I know she just concluded a successful monster tour. Albums are merely a vehicle for promoting tours.

For 0.99 figured I'd buy it before the kids spent $12 on iTunes.

So far, a half hour later only 3 songs have managed to make it into my Amazon Cloud account. Not very impressive.

ZMacintosh said:

lol to all the artist bashing....i think the tone/tune would be different if iTunes had this album for 99¢

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LOL +1

People that look at this as a Lady Gaga issue don't get the real picture.

Everybody is entitled to their own taste of music, artists etc., so why bash her
if her music or antics aren't your cup of tea? Same for any artist.

Very simple , don't listen to what you don't like. Next!

As for the price, so what?

It's a promo price that can be looked at as paid advertising. They are advertising their cloud business and use a promo to attract people to the ad. (Yes, the 99 cts. album is an ad)

Whatever amount of cloud sign ups they get from this promo pays for whatever the 99 cents gave away. Crap shoot? Most likely not. More a long term investment.

Amazon is not scared of itunes. They do what they do and from a timing standpoint they do not know what Apple does when and just wanted to promote their service with a hot new album.

IMO , most likely that the promo decision was made months ago, instead of Amazon waiting for Apple to (insert bodily function sound)

Lady Gaga is crap on a platter.

Anything I purchase and try to download isn't working. It's just locked up "waiting".

btw

HAHAHA this is awesome. GAGA is everywhere. paws up!

Scott6666 said:

For 0.99 figured I'd buy it before the kids spent $12 on iTunes.

So far, a half hour later only 3 songs have managed to make it into my Amazon Cloud account. Not very impressive.

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Similar situation here, 8 songs made it on very quickly. Not seeing progress since then.

jamesryanbell said:

Anything I purchase and try to download isn't working. It's just locked up "waiting".

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me too - it's been trying to download it for 30 minutes now. this after downloading various players and downloaders and installers... certainly not intuitive like an apple service.

Why is Amazon "nervous"? Their music cloud or even mp3 sales are not their real bread-and-butter but rather side businesses. The success or failure of Amazon's music cloud isn't going to make much of an impact on Amazon's bottom line. They're kicking Apple's ass in e-book sales, the iPad has not seemed to slow down Kindle sales at all, and other portions of Amazon has nothing to do with Apple. This isn't Amazing being nervous, but rather Amazon advertising a new service.

So far though I've used music.google.com and I must say I'm very impressed. I loaded an application that monitors my music folders and anytime I throw a music file in those folders it's automatically uploaded to the cloud so I can access all my music anywhere I have a web browser. So far so good, Google!

At least you guys have some songs... all I got was the damn PDF...

Still locked up WITHOUT a single kb of music transferred. Just sitting there "waiting" like it has been for ten minutes. That's jacked up.

jamesryanbell said:

Still locked up WITHOUT a single kb of music transferred. Just sitting there "waiting" like it has been for ten minutes. That's jacked up.

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Plan to keep waiting. I've managed to get 10 songs downloaded now, but it's taken a while. I've restarted the downloader a few times and that seemed to help?

droz said:

Amazon is scared ****less about Apple's imminent release of iCloud. They know darn well that iCloud will blow Amazon cloud storage away so they are trying to get as many people on board as possible before the announcement. Good luck with that.

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I'm a bit shocked at how many negatives this comment got. Anybody with half a brain can see that Amazon's Cloud Storage and Google Music Beta were attempts by two companies scrambling to be first to market before Apple dropped the next bomb on them with iCloud. For all I know, iCloud may suck, but it seems Amazon and Google are nervous enough about it.

Amazon is doing a good job of marketing their Cloud Storage and they are probably leaps and bounds ahead of Google right now -- but with all this scrambling it makes me even more curious what their own corporate funding digging has turned up about Apple's iCloud plans.

I am reminded of the Motorola Xoom launch which went to great lengths to beat the iPad 2 to market without Flash (still only poorly-running beta flash) and without 4g (still waiting) and with a beta-like Honeycomb (just updated to 3.1 last weekend to fix those issues).

Being first has its advantages, but I wonder if these two services launched early enough to steal away enough of the iTunes market. There was time when Microsoft got lazy and would squash the competition by pre-announcing an MS feature or product that did exactly what their first-to-market competitor did. In those cases the first-to-market competitor typically had a full-featured product with all its ducks in a row. Amazon and Google have decided to give the finger to the music labels and go on their own in hopes of being "first to market".

Despite this, I notice that Apple does not pre-announce anything. They play their cards very close to the vest. The competition seems to be clamoring to find out whatever Apple is going to do next so they can copy it and release a beta version first. But ultimately, you would think the one who is proactively planning their next move would do better than the ones who are reactively stumbling to get their first. Time will tell, but I suspect we will be hearing many many comments from Jobs in the future that sound like his iPad 2 "first to ship in volume" on a dual-core tablet. Being first is going to be harder and harder for Apple has folks will do anything and sacrifice anything to get there before them -- even if it means releasing something that is incomplete.

Kaibelf said:

Musician, –noun
1. a person who makes music a profession, especially as a performer of music.

She writes all of her own songs. She sings live every time. She's a classically trained pianist and dancer. She endlessly tours, appears, and promotes her songs and brand. She plays instruments on stage. It's pretty safe to say that, regardless of if you buy the albums or listen to it on the radio, she's about 1000x the musician that most "artists" out there are. Who exactly do YOU listen to that you call a "musician?" That's why she made $90m last year and has fans lining up to get a photo with her (which she spend hours accommodating for people), and why you're here acting like YOU are too good for HER. Just sayin'.

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Although I'm not a Gaga fan, I like some of songs that she's written for other artists, but I definitely agree with you. She only had to go that route, just like many artists, because today's generation doesn't care for piano and jazz and old school music, so the only way to get her music out there was to create a controversial image of herself, and whether you agree with what she's doing or not, she must be doing something right... I remember Eminem's line in "Sing for the moment" he says: "It's F*&%ed up ain't, how we can come from practically nothing, to being able to have any F$&*in' thing that we wanted..."

She's definitely succeeded at that