Amazon to Launch DRM-Free Music Store

[MacRumors]

The Washington Post reports that Amazon has announced that they will be launching a digital music store "later in 2007" which will offer "millions of songs, free of copy protection technology [DRM] that limits where consumers can play their music."

Like Apple, Amazon has licensed music from EMI but will be offering songs in MP3 format.

"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.

No word on pricing is available, but these DRM-free MP3s will play in Apple's iTunes and on the iPod.

Other record labels have not yet adopted this DRM-free strategy. Apple and EMI jointly announced in April that Apple's iTunes would begin selling DRM-free music from EMI beginning in May.

[cbud]

Better have bitrates >128 kbs...

[iSee]

Ahh, the dominoes are falling... DRM is dead...

[Ted13]

This is good on two fronts -- it will cause Apple to add DRM free music from the independent companies sooner rather than later, and it will put added pressure on the pro-DRM majors.

The writing is on the wall. It is also bad for Microsoft, as their brands of DRM become ever less relevant.

[bommai]

Originally Posted by cbud

Better have bitrates >128 kbs...

With MP3 they have to have a better bitrate than 256 kbps AAC. Also, I wonder if amazon will make it easy for people to just import the song into the iTunes library without any effort (including album art, etc).

[Cubert]

Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.

[stoid]

Originally Posted by iSee

Ahh, the dominoes are falling... DRM is dead...

On music anyway. I wonder how long it will take for movies to follow.

I see DRM being a subscription related constraint, whereas purchased material comes unencumbered.

[slughead]

anyone know the bitrate?

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Cubert

Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.

At 128kpbs, sure, but try it at 256kbps. There's practically no difference, except Mp3 plays even in Mp3 CD players and mpeg-4 audio (what you're calling "AAC") doesn't.

Mp3 isn't technically as good at the same bitrate, but with today's bandwidth and hard drive space, who the hell cares?

[CommodityFetish]

Originally Posted by Cubert

Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.

Yes! Stop with the MP3s already!!! AAC/.m4a is a far-superior non-proprietary format.

[2ndPath]

Originally Posted by Cubert

Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.

MP3 has more widespread player support.

[BenRoethig]

Originally Posted by 2ndPath

MP3 has more widespread player support.

As in all of them. ACC only plays on the iPod, Zune, and a couple others.

[blehpunk]

http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/0516/amazon.html

"Last month, EMI said it would offer songs by Coldplay, Madonna and a host of other stars for download without copy protection as part of a deal with Apple's iTunes website. EMI also said it would sell music without anti-piracy software over the internet soon."

um madonna isn't on EMI. is this just a flub?

[PlaceofDis]

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

As in all of them. ACC only plays on the iPod, Zune, and a couple others.

AAC could easily be added to any player though, they just choose not to.

MP3 has a horrible size/compression ratio than AAC and i can notice a difference between the two except at 320.

[Clive At Five]

Amazon is a worthy competitor...

But they've been selling music already, have they not?

If they haven't been able to best Apple before now, what says they will after they open up another carbon copy of the iTS? I think that the overall failure of competing music stores/players is due to the failure to bring something new to the table. And in the case of a squirting Zune, something useful.

3 days or 3 plays... ridiculous. Why even bother?

-Clive

[chibianh]

in the meantime, where is the DRM-free music on the iTMS? It is mid May already.

[Doctor Q]

Once again, Apple leads and others follow. But perhaps we should give consumers the real credit. It was their demands that led to the scaling back of DRM for music.

[ccunning]

So the writing is on the wall. Consumers will have the freedom we demanded. Now I'm curious. All things being equal, why would I want to purchase my music from one DRM free online music retailer over another? Why should I give Amazon my money over iTunes (or vice versa)? How are they going to compete form my business? Hopefully it will be in the arena of improved customer service/convenience.

[nagromme]

I'd rather have MP4/AAC quality than MP3, but the spread of DRM-free options is still a good thing!

[Doctor Q]

Originally Posted by ccunning

Why should I give Amazon my money over iTunes (or vice versa)? How are they going to compete form my business? Hopefully it will be in the arena of improved customer service/convenience.

Add to that the question of their catalogs. Will there be many artists/songs in one company's catalog that aren't in the other's?

[ASP272]

Um . . . Where is Amazon going to get MILLIONS of DRM-Free songs if only EMI has agreed to sell DRM free music so far? Sure this will put some pressure on the other labels, but who is to say they'll bend or break? I'm sure EMI probably has millions of songs they've recorded over the years, but that isn't all that much when you consider the major artists on all the other labels. This is definitely a positive, and I am no nay-sayer, but don't jump for joy just yet.

[tk421]

Originally Posted by ccunning

So the writing is on the wall. Consumers will have the freedom we demanded. Now I'm curious. All things being equal, why would I want to purchase my music from one DRM free online music retailer over another? Why should I give Amazon my money over iTunes (or vice versa)? How are they going to compete form my business? Hopefully it will be in the arena of improved customer service/convenience.

Which is great for us consumers.

I could see Amazon offering free downloads with other purchases. For a little while they offered free video content with some purchases, but since it wasn't Mac compatible I never used it.

And iTunes recently had a bunch of really good albums for $7.99. I imagine they'd keep doing stuff like that.

[shamino]

Originally Posted by slughead

Mp3 isn't technically as good at the same bitrate, but with today's bandwidth and hard drive space, who the hell cares?

I care. My desktop Mac's hard drive has plenty of space, by my iPod is a 4GB nano. At 128K, I can put about 850 songs on it. At 256K, only half as many. That is something I care about.

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

As in all of them. ACC only plays on the iPod, Zune, and a couple others.

In the car stereo market, quite a bit more. The last time I thumbed through Crutchfield's catalog, about 1/3 of the aftermarket car stereos sold will play unprotected AAC files (usually from CD, but a few from USB or SD memory cards.) This is up significantly from a few months ago, when there were less than 10 models offering this.

[alywa]

This is an excellent development. DRM is useless to prevent piracy, and is simply annoying to the end user, keeping many people out of the online music / video loop.

Apple lead the way (cracking open the door via the EMI announcement), and now Amazon is busting the door wide open. It won't take long for Walmart, Google, Yahoo, Best Buy, etc to follow suit.

Ultimately this is good for all players, especially apple. Apple makes the best hardware / software system for portable music, and this opens the door for people who didn't want to be "trapped" into the iTMS. This also introduces real competition selling virtually identical products... this will lower prices / increase "special offers", etc.

The nice thing? Windows Media never really took hold, keeping MS out of yet another monopoly situation.

[baleensavage]

Originally Posted by ASP272

Um . . . Where is Amazon going to get MILLIONS of DRM-Free songs if only EMI has agreed to sell DRM free music so far?

Nearly all of the indie labels already sell their music DRM-free at eMusic already. iTunes has never had an excuse for selling the indie stuff with DRM.

Most likely Amazon just has EMI and the indies on there right now, though it is possible that they have some hush-hush deal with one of the the other big three. If that is the case it probably means variable pricing with higher prices for new releases which is what the labels have been pushing Apple to do for quite some time.

I for one will be psyched if DRM dies a slow painful death. It does absolutely nothing to stop piracy. If people want to pirate music they can just rip it from a CD. What it does instead is make it a pain in the butt for those of us who actually want to get our music legitimately.

[Cubert]

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

As in all of them. ACC only plays on the iPod, Zune, and a couple others.

Not true at all. The vast majority of audio players out there play aac/mp4.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/mpeg4/


Also, tonight I will try encoding a song in aac at 256 and in mp3 at 256 and see if there is a difference. I have compared 128 vs. 128 and 192 vs. 192 and aac always sounds much better.