Amazon to sell DRM-free MP3 Downloads

[jackofallgeeks]

This may be worth noting. I'll keep my eyes open and let you know what comes of it. It comes down to competitive pricing, I think: iTunes is already offering DRM-free songs at a higher quality and correspondingly higher price -- generally, most people donm't care if the track is 128kbps or 320kbps, so whatever they say we're paying extra for DRM-free music. I think that Amazon could get away with lower-bitrate songs at a lower cost and beat out iTunes. Or they could play the same game and see how much people can be pressed for; the problem is, if it's no better for me to buy DRM-free from Amazon than from iTunes, why would I switch from the service I'm already using?

Comments

[quix.livejournal.com]

I use RealPlayer on my PDA, so the iTunes/Quicktime-codec doesn't work for me, and plus I have a large fondness for the MP3-codec. If this pans out, they'll have a customer from me, quick/fast/and in a hurry.

[naughtjennifer.livejournal.com]

I'm with quix on this one.

iTunes and the iTunes proprietary format and so on and so forth, in my opinion, are simply not worth the hassle. I used them before, and I really, truly, honestly, enjoyed them. Since that time, however, multiple problems have arisen, Apple's been about as bad as everyone else with the whole DRM thing, and, as quix pointed out, there's the sheer matter of compatibility. Any way you slice it, mp3s work with more things. Unless you're already committed to Apple products anyway, in which case the whole matter is a non-issue.