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I Love Amazon
Whenever I want to buy something, I go to the Amazon search field in my Firefox browser and look there first. Why? Because I like the experience of buying on Amazon. We've been buying from Amazon for over ten years and it's almost always been a great experience. It seems like there's a box arriving from Amazon in our house almost every day.
Today I love Amazon even more because they are launching a digital music store that will ONLY contain DRM free mp3s. I already buy most of my music from Amazon in CD form. I'd rather buy it in DRM free mp3 form, but until now, I haven't had that option. Now I do. Thanks Amazon. You made my day.
May 16, 2007 Venture Capital and Technology | Comments (10)
Comments
this made my day and MOG's day too. i cannot wait to integrate on MOG "buy non-drm mp3" links throughout our site via an amazon affiliate program. right now, we link to Amazon for CDs and iTunes for tracks. Moggers need this new "wide open" choice.
Posted by: david hyman | May 16, 2007 1:15:38 PM
That is fantastic news! I hope amazon will not restrict this new mp3 download store to the US and a few other countries like iTunes does.
Big step forward in the right direction by Amazon, they are going to build a lot of trust and loyalty in their brand this way.
Posted by: Pranav Chavda | May 16, 2007 4:00:09 PM
I think the whole issue of DRM is a red herring. What people really want is free music, not DRM free music. For more discussion of this issue check out http://ad-supported-music.blogspot.com/2007/04/drm-free-dollar-higher.html
Posted by: Marc Cohen | May 16, 2007 4:10:11 PM
I ran the numbers a few weeks ago and discovered that since March of '97, I've spent well into 5 figures on Amazon. It fulfills many purposes for me, Christmas shopping, product research, feeding my book and DVD addictions, and now I get to add music. I'm both happy and tremendously nervous for my fragile budget.
Posted by: Doug | May 16, 2007 6:46:37 PM
I agree 100% - Amazon is where I look first online to buy just about everything including a Breville the other day ;) Amazon Prime already had me hooked, but now this will get me looking at Amazon instead of iTunes for music.
Posted by: Merrick | May 17, 2007 2:22:46 AM
I do love Amazon, but I hate their marketplace and the way you are never quite sure you are buying directly from Amazon, if I want to buy from that kind of home retailer I would be buying off ebay. I also love where they are going with their services especially ec2 & s3, it really helps lower the bar for skunkworks projects.
Posted by: James McCarthy | May 17, 2007 8:20:52 AM
I agree Fred...Amazon gets more of my digital music business going forward, that would have gone to iTunes.
It does make me think of how eMusic will fare though.
Posted by: Michael Parekh | May 17, 2007 8:40:41 AM
I'm withholding excitement until we see how Amazon implements this -- anyone else notice how Amazon has never transitioned to digital in any non-book-oriented manner?
Amazon's first digital music foray had them selling Liquid Audio tracks, they've threatened for years to move aside their Audible partnership for digital spoken-word (hasn't happened) and movie downloads vis-a-vis TiVO requires a lot of self-assembly to make it work right.
Three areas where Amazon appears to have "done digital right" are (i) "Inside-the-Book," (ii) S3 and (iii) the web services that help affiliates more tightly integrate Amazon's metadata/etc., but Amazon's ability to "sell digital widgets" has never taken off, which is odd considering how they "retail so well," not sure what the digital barrier has been.
The non-DRM'd approach is the best news here, and we will likely endure a less-than-perfect experience (relative to what, file-sharing?) to get pristine copies of free-and-clear music, but I don't assume it will be well-executed, based on historical efforts (or lack of) to "get digital," so we'll see how they execute.
Posted by: Chris | May 17, 2007 8:51:27 AM
My son and I are constantly commenting on the short time between a new protection scheme and a published crack. Sometimes the crack is available before the software is issued.
Like an alarm system decal on a car's window -- the huge expense of new software anti-copy programs can probably be effectively substituted by a statement that one exists.
Real crooks will ignore warnings, all others will still follow their conscience. kudos to anyone that recognizes reality.
Posted by: Allan Wallace | May 20, 2007 6:39:45 PM
I'd love Amazon even more if they had a search form that let me find the most discounted items... Thankfully PriceCutReview.com does that for me ;)
Posted by: dave | Jun 2, 2007 7:15:20 AM
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