Today Amazon opened the beta door to their new music store amazonmp3beta and as the name suggests, everything is available in mp3 format. In comparison Apple’s iTunes format is AAC for all those millions of iPods.
Amazon MP3 offers the top 100 songs for 89 cents each and the top 100 albums for $8.99, with most albums priced from $5.99 to $9.99.
However I believe the breaking point will be what is available.
Search for U2 and you get:
Not a lot of music (actually none) from my favorite band. I have literally everything they have produced on my iPod already but is a clear sign they will have no music from many popular bands. It will be difficult to overcome at first.
With a lot of independents lining up it proves Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail theory again. Amazon’s advanced systems and reputation will permit them to sell a lot of music…but they are also selling against themselves with their highly successful CD music store available online for years. I’m interested to see how they compete against Walmart.
The benefit for all those iTunes users…buy a song from Amazon and it will be placed in your iTunes directory automatically. Nice touch.
Tags: Amazon, music store, music download, The Long Tail, trends