Amazon Launches Public Beta of DRM-Free Music Store

[RidleyGriff]

What do you call selling individual tracks on amazon, if not "selling out"; "hypocritical", "two faced" or just old fashioned "lying". Why do people think musicians aren't like the rest of the music industry, out to get what they can.

In Radiohead's defense, they are only available as album-only downloads in amazon's store. Not allowing an artist to dictate songs as album-only has up until now been my main philosophical quibble with iTunes -- but I see Apple's point as well (if the label's want to bundle one single with an entire album of mediocre product, so people have to pay $9.99 to get the single they want, why wouldn't one-hit wonder artists follow suit? At the end of the day, Radiohead should trust their fans to either get what they're doing -- and buy the entire album experience, as it was written and intended -- or not).

AppleInsider reported yesterday that this "Public Beta" will only run through January.

 

[Loge]

AppleInsider reported yesterday that this "Public Beta" will only run through January.

Fits in with Universal's stated intention that the sale of DRM-free music was merely a "trial".

 

[Chris Welch]

Or, perhaps then it will simply be out of beta status?

 

[RidleyGriff]

Or, perhaps then it will simply be out of beta status?

I think the larger idea is that they can change whatever terms -- pricing, DRM, etc -- that they feel like at the end of the beta.

Apple's response here is going to be the most interesting part of the whole back and forth. I'd wager most people don't care about mp3 vs. AAC, 128 vs. 256, or DRM-free vs. DRM -- they just want to know what's the cheapest, and if it plays on their devices (namely, their iPods and their computers).

I doubt Apple would have signed deals that would prevent them from dropping their prices in order to remain competitive with such a move by a third party; what happens when Apple -- who recently put themselves in a position to pay out as much as $75 million just for the good P.R. with the iPhone rebates -- decides they don't really mind losing another $25 million by lowering iTunes prices to 79 cents, maintaining iTunes' dominance by once again making it the loss leader it was in its early years?

Or even better, does Apple think that iPods have reached such a level of cultural saturation that they have truly become a platform unto themselves, and are happy with content providers selling iPod-compatible content from all kinds of sources ("software"), knowing that each sale further entrenches the iPod hardware?

 

[A Pittarelli]

competition is good for any market, people are just scared not to be on the winning side.

 

[clevin]

lol, why people even worry about "after beta"? the song you buy today won't expire after "beta".

if anybody is so worry about apple's profit, just donate his/her salary to apple.

 

[milo]

And then I realized, how absurd is it to be paying the same price for a download when the same Amazon store sells the same CD, with artwork, liner notes, built-in backup, lossless compression, free shipping. Even at Amazon's market-competitive prices, downloads are still not an interesting proposition compared to buying the CD, unless either you want to buy on a song-by-song basis or you just have to have it RIGHT NOW.

As you said, it's absurd WHEN that is the case. But it's often not the case, I just bought an album that was a third the price for the download as for the CD.

CD's don't use lossless compression, they are an uncompressed format. And they don't have "built in backup", if your CD gets scratched you have no backup.

1) mp3 is inferior sonically to aac. So, you are getting a product that doesn't sound as good, not that anybody is going to notice on their earbuds.

Not true. Mp3 is inferior sonically to aac AT THE SAME BITRATE. The 256k aac's will be better than the 256k mp3's, but the 128k aac's won't. In the cases where iTunes doesn't offer the pricier version, the mp3 version will sound better. And there are many many that only come in 128.

Can you give an example of a $5.99 album that iTunes is selling for $9.99 (or higher)?

I haven't seen one yet, but the first thing I looked for was 6.99 on amazon versus 9.99 on iTunes.

In Radiohead's defense, they are only available as album-only downloads in amazon's store.

Are you sure about that? I see at least some tracks sold individually.

 

[phytonix]

In my personal listening tests, 128kbps MP3 sounds pretty bad, 192 is passable. I've heard some issues in 256 in particular passages of some songs that high bitrate may not resolve.

192 kps VBR MP3 encoded by LAME sounds better than 128kps AAC on iTunes for me.

 

[citi]

Amazon and the like sell songs at a loss! Amazon makes it's money elsewhere. Once you're hooked the prices go up! Apple has never sold anything at a loss. Apple is in the business to make money, they don't play the loss leader role. This pisses the record companies off and they want them out of the game.

That is 100% not true. I have a friend that works specifically in the Itunes and Itunes Store Programming Dept. and they don't make any money off of itunes music sales (i did not say movies and tv shows) The only reason they created itunes store was to SELL MORE IPODS. That is it.

 

[jettredmont]

I think Amazon's costs are lower. Amazon can afford to sell songs atr lower price and still make money. They don't need a better deal.

Amazon already has in place a huge infrastructure of computers and networking and this is paid for with books and other items. If they ran the new MP3 store at break even cost it would be a big net plus to them because likely people while at Amazon would find other things to buy. It's the same reason Best Buy sells CDs - just to get people to come into the store. They don't need to make money on the CDs.

iTunes does not have much else to sell. It's purpose it just to make the iPod easy to use. What iTunes needs it it is to compete is offer some exclusive content. They need to sign their own bands, produce their own shows

I think you have the situation reversed here. While Amazon does have other products to sell for a profit, the MP3 store is segregated enough that it is unlikely to drive such sales (in the short term with the current design). If the MP3 business is not able to make a profit long-term, and more of a profit than the other areas of the business, it will not survive. At Best Buy, you can't get to the CDs without walking through several other departments first. At Amazon you can go in, buy a few MP3 albums, and leave without even realizing that it's the same store that wants to sell you a book and a toaster.

Apple makes its money on iPods. The iTMS has been called a slim-profit business entity, which exists not to sell music per se, but to drive iPod (and apple-tv, etc) sales. It has done this smashingly well. Apple could well take a loss for every song sold, and still end up sitting pretty because those song sales pushed customers to iPod sales.

 

[HTrig]

Here's a solution. Delete the watermark from the "comments" section of the file in iTunes. Or: Buy some CD-RW's. Burn the songs to a CD-RW and rip them back into iTunes completely free and clear. Repeat as many times as needed with different songs and albums with the same CD-RW since it's rewritable.

hell you dont even have to do that just right click select convert to mp3 and its done

 

[redfirebird08]

hell you dont even have to do that just right click select convert to mp3 and its done

That can cause a loss in quality, unless you convert to WAV and then back to mp3.

 

[milo]

That can cause a loss in quality, unless you convert to WAV and then back to mp3.

That will still have a loss in quality. Any time you convert to a lossy format (including coming from a lossy format) you lose more quality.

 

[jettredmont]

That can cause a loss in quality, unless you convert to WAV and then back to mp3.

Really. The saving to WAV or PCM (CD audio) is not necessary. You do not lose any more (or less) quality going directly from MP3 -> AAC.

On the other hand, for better or worse, MP3 -> AAC does preserve all the ID3 tags, whereas going to WAV or PCM does not. If you are expecting the process to clear out the "Comments" section, then a direct MP3 -> AAC conversion process will likely not do that. On the other hand, going to WAV first means you have to re-enter all the other ID3 tags (title, artist, album, etc), which is a hell of a lot more work than just clearing out the "Comments" tag.

Also, note that certain watermark systems are designed to survive lossy conversions. So, depending on the watermark used, this may or may not actually work to remove it. Finally, please, don't call the "ID3 Comment" tag a watermark. It is a comment. A watermark is a non-intrusive "branding" of the media which is not easily seperable from the branded media. Watermarks have been used effectively in images for many years, and are far more sophisticated than, for instance, just plopping something into an EXIF comment tag!

 

[iSlicer]

Available OUTSIDE US?

Well, I have been trying to purchase music, and I DON'T live in the states. I click on the music I wish to purchase, I then must select a payment option and I choose the credit card that I ALWAYS use and have used for 2 years on amazon. Then I go to a screen where I must enter a shipping address. WHY? anyway, it only contains US states, and so I cannot enter my correct information.

Are they shooting themselves before they even get started. The process requires too many steps.

 

[dmarkman]

comparison itms and amazon for Pink Floyd Dark side of the Moon

price for the Dark side of the Moon $7.99 (iTunes Plus)
price for the Dark side of the Moon $7.99 (Amazon)
as you can see it's the same

 

[synth3tik]

WOW it has been 12 hours and still no word from Amazon. So they took my money and don't let me download. great

 

[dmarkman]

WOW it has been 12 hours and still no word from Amazon. So they took my money and don't let me download. great

you have to download "Amazon MP3 Downloader"
when you bought your song(s) you should see on your desktop
the file with azx extension
open that file with "Amazon MP3 Downloader" and it will start your download
good luck

 

[redfirebird08]

price for the Dark side of the Moon $7.99 (iTunes Plus)
price for the Dark side of the Moon $7.99 (Amazon)
as you can see it's the same

In my state, after tax it's:

iTunes: $8.65
Amazon: $7.99

Really. The saving to WAV or PCM (CD audio) is not necessary. You do not lose any more (or less) quality going directly from MP3 -> AAC.

On the other hand, for better or worse, MP3 -> AAC does preserve all the ID3 tags, whereas going to WAV or PCM does not. If you are expecting the process to clear out the "Comments" section, then a direct MP3 -> AAC conversion process will likely not do that. On the other hand, going to WAV first means you have to re-enter all the other ID3 tags (title, artist, album, etc), which is a hell of a lot more work than just clearing out the "Comments" tag.

Yes, you do lose quality when you convert between lossy formats directly. I know because I've tried it. I wanted two copies of the same song so I made a copy of it from AAC to AAC and it sounded like total crap. Deleted that one, converted to WAV and back to AAC and it sounded the same as the original. And, from what I can tell, iTunes keeps the tags when you convert to WAV. The only thing I have ever lost when converting to WAV is the album art. Big whoop, just copy and paste from the original if you need to.

 

[Maccus Aurelius]

Are you sure about that? I see at least some tracks sold individually.

Maybe the tracks that were on a various artists album, but stuff like OK Computer, The Bends, Amnesiac, Kid A and so forth are album only, per radiohead's wishes.

 

[jettredmont]

Yes, you do lose quality when you convert between lossy formats directly. I know because I've tried it. I wanted two copies of the same song so I made a copy of it from AAC to AAC and it sounded like total crap. Deleted that one, converted to WAV and back to AAC and it sounded the same as the original. And, from what I can tell, iTunes keeps the tags when you convert to WAV. The only thing I have ever lost when converting to WAV is the album art. Big whoop, just copy and paste from the original if you need to.

Sounds like you hit a bug that time. There is no reason saving the WAV file would affect the quality of the output AAC. I've done AAC->AAC and MP3->AAC conversions here with the expected results (no significant noticeable degradation unless I repeat the process a few times). If you've seen a difference between a direct conversion and a save-in-the-middle conversion, I hope you've reported this to Apple.

As for losing the tags, I was confusing burning to CD-R (which is what I thought you were talking about above) with WAV conversion. Honestly, I've never converted a file to WAV format, as there is no point to it unless you want a "lossless" snapshot of how your player decoded the lossy file that day.

I'm still a little confused as to why you'd decide the way to get "two copies" of a song was to convert it to a different encoding ... you can just "reveal in finder" and duplicate the file to make a 100% lossless copy. The only conceivable reasons for re-encoding something are:

1. To see how many generations of re-encoding it takes before you start hearing the differences (long story, but that's why I did the above)
2. To get your music files in a different encoding, quality be damned (for instance, because you have WMA files that iTunes can play/convert but won't sync to the iPod, or, again as I had one time, you find that your 4th gen iPod has a critical defect which causes an iPod crash when certain bitrates of monaural MP3 were played, and so you shifted to a less-crashy bitrate).
3. I suppose another reason would be to try to "remove" some unknown watermarking system in some unproven manner, as here.

In any case, if you really did the above and got poor results on the direct conversion, you must have had a buggy version of iTunes. If that still happens, please report it to Apple.

 

[celavato]

I agree. If Apple had their way, the whole iTunes Music Store would be DRM free. In time, it will get there. I do, however, think that they will need to address the gap in price between non-DRM tracks at iTunes and Amazon. There's no reason they should be charging 30 cents PLUS TAX higher than Amazon. The tax issue is a biggie for me. We should not be getting taxed on Internet downloads. Amazon doesn't even charge tax on physical products when they ship them, which I would think are more taxable than downloads. iTunes needs to get rid of tax and lower their iTunes Plus price to compete with Amazon.

Apple has to charge tax because it has a physical presence in every state--mostly because of its stores. Amazon only has to charge tax in WA and a few other less populous states where it has operations.

 

[redfirebird08]

Sounds like you hit a bug that time. There is no reason saving the WAV file would affect the quality of the output AAC. I've done AAC->AAC and MP3->AAC conversions here with the expected results (no significant noticeable degradation unless I repeat the process a few times). If you've seen a difference between a direct conversion and a save-in-the-middle conversion, I hope you've reported this to Apple.

As for losing the tags, I was confusing burning to CD-R (which is what I thought you were talking about above) with WAV conversion. Honestly, I've never converted a file to WAV format, as there is no point to it unless you want a "lossless" snapshot of how your player decoded the lossy file that day.

I'm still a little confused as to why you'd decide the way to get "two copies" of a song was to convert it to a different encoding ... you can just "reveal in finder" and duplicate the file to make a 100% lossless copy. The only conceivable reasons for re-encoding something are:

1. To see how many generations of re-encoding it takes before you start hearing the differences (long story, but that's why I did the above)
2. To get your music files in a different encoding, quality be damned (for instance, because you have WMA files that iTunes can play/convert but won't sync to the iPod, or, again as I had one time, you find that your 4th gen iPod has a critical defect which causes an iPod crash when certain bitrates of monaural MP3 were played, and so you shifted to a less-crashy bitrate).
3. I suppose another reason would be to try to "remove" some unknown watermarking system in some unproven manner, as here.

In any case, if you really did the above and got poor results on the direct conversion, you must have had a buggy version of iTunes. If that still happens, please report it to Apple.

Let's just say I didn't think of regular old copy and paste in Windows Explorer at the time. This was about a year ago and I was using iTunes on a Dell PC before I got my Macbook recently, and tried to stay within iTunes. Common sense certainly says to just use copy and paste, but it never came to mind for some reason. LOL. At any rate, converting to WAV or using copy/paste in Finder or Windows Explorer would certainly work to get a lossless copy. Next time I try something like that (unlikely, but it could occur), I'll remember to just look for it in Finder and do a much quicker direct copy and paste of the file.

 

[doobi18]

i think this is a good thing, a bit of stronger competition will make itunes ultimately better & cheaper

 

[goosnarrggh]

I have several thoughts on this:

1) mp3 is inferior sonically to aac. So, you are getting a product that doesn't sound as good, not that anybody is going to notice on their earbuds.

And, since Amazon is intentionally positioning itself as a player-neutral store, it makes good business sense to standardize on a file format which is compatible with the widest possible range of media players.

2) Although Amazon lists the rate as 256kps, the album I just bought was variable, with the lowest rate being 204kps for one song, and the highest being 245kps. The DRM songs I have bought on iTMS have been true 256kps.

Don't forget that that 204kbps was an average rate for the whole song. In fact, the bitrate varied throughout the entire duration of the song. 256kbps VBR really only imposes an upper cap on the bitrate - the encoder is free to throttle it down during intervals where it determines that it can reproduce sufficiently close to the same waveform using fewer bits. In theory, with an ideally tuned encoder, a VBR file with a maximum bitrate of X and a given codec (MP3 vs AAC for example), should end up sounding exactly the same as a fixed rate file with the same bitrate X and the same codec. The only difference theoretically should be that the VBR file might be smaller.

Anyway, the DRM songs you've bought on iTunes have all been at 128kbps AAC.

By any metric, that's inferior to 200kbps+ VBR MP3.

The DRM-free songs you've bought from iTunes have been at 256kbps AAC, and are almost certain to be superior to 256kbps VBR MP3. (But you're right, most listeners probably won't be able to tell the difference with iPod earbuds.)

3) The fiasco with Universal was about them wanting to be able to charge more for some music. What happened to that? You can buy the 12 song Amy Winehouse album for $8.99.

The tracks on Amazon have flexible pricing - that is, certain songs might cost more than others. Whether this is used for good or evil is yet to be seen.

Apple's policy was to always charge the same amount per track no matter what. If it was unfeasible to do so (for example if a single track took up a significant chunk of the whole album) then Apple's policy was to not sell that track separately at all, but rather to require the customer to purchase it along with the entire album.

Apple has always supported variable pricing at the whole-album level.