Amazon opens beta of DRM-free music store. Are you buying?

Not that we didn't know it was coming, but Amazon opened up their DRM-free music store to the public in beta today. The 2-million song catalog doesn't rival other online stores in terms of breadth, but there's none of that DRM stuff to deal with like there is in iTunes, Zune Marketplace and such. To be fair, iTunes does offer some DRM-free tunes but those can cost more. In contract, Amazon MP3 is selling the same quality (256 kbps) music without DRM for less: expect to pay 89- or 99-cents per tune with half of the catalog at the lower price. Anybody buying?

For consumers new to this DRM or Digital Rights Management world we live in: the Amazon music can be transferred and used on practically any digital audio or MP3 player. DRM-protected tunes typically are locked down to a device or set of devices, thus restricting your freedom to listen to purchased music on the device of your choice. Purchases from the Amazon music store can be played on an iPod, computer and in many cases, a phone.

Comments

[Tax Man]

Oh, but the real news is that I don't have to use some proprietary funnel that only runs on Windows on a PC to buy and download the songs. Just go to their website and download direct to your device from the browser. I immediately tried from my HTC Advantage with Opera over AT&T network and succeeded in buying an 89 cent song and downloading it directly to the microdrive on the Advantage. See here for more euphoria on this topic.... http://urltea.com/1ky1

[Thedot]

YOU BETCHA!
I've been waiting for this for a long time.
No Apple DRM, No MS DRM, No lock in.
It's about time.

[John in Norway]

I've just been to the Amazon site (have to use co.uk) and unless they have it on a secret page, I couldn't find anything about it.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Tax Man: nice post and great use of mobile tech!
Thedot: I'm with you on that. You might not find every song or album that you want, but the lack of DRM combined with the price savings is compelling. I give it a few weeks before another big music player adds their music to the store.
John: looks like U.S. only for now.

[Scotty]

256Kbps MP3 is not the same quality as 256Kbps AAC. It is roughly the same quality as 128Kbps AAC-P (the default DRM iTunes format) but is twice the file size.

I'll admit it was amusing to download one directly to my iPhone from Amazon using wget though. :-)

[Dale]

Yeah, 2 million songs - but apparently not the good stuff. A lot of artists are not to be found. And if you do find songs by the big famous ones, it's usually rip-off karaoke versions. The big stars (and their labels) are still going to want DRM to protect their music.

That said, I would definitely like to see this DRM stuff go away. Apple, Napster, Rhapsody, et al should realize that if someone is willing to pay for songs themselves, why would they pirate them? Any song you buy ought to be playable on any player. Suppose you happen to have a certain brand of smartphone but the only music download service compatible with that phone doesn't have a particular song you want? Etc. etc.

Furthermore, I think the pricing structure ought to be more flexible, rather than all-songs-99-cents or whatever. Some CD's you buy are so old-school (maybe from the 80's) that they're only $6.98 at your local Best Buy. So then if you buy each song of that album from the internet, it's still 99 cents a song? Why? Why not have some songs 10 cents, others 50 cents, others (like hot new releases) 99 cents? Why not more flexibility? And why not offer songs downloadable at full CD quality, maybe for a few cents more? Well, that's my two cents!

[Xavier]

I think this will shake some things up. The pricing scheme is much better than iTunes, but the interface isn't that pretty.
I tested it out and while there's room for improvement, it's a great start. It'll be interesting to see how Apple responds.