Thursday, May 17, 2007

Competition Alert: Amazon Music Service

Music Service From AmazonTakes On iTunes
By ETHAN SMITH and VAUHINI VARA, May 17, 2007; WSJ

The music-download service Amazon.com Inc. announced yesterday represents the latest attempt by a digital retailer to meet one of the biggest challenges facing the industry: how to sell music that consumers can play on a wide variety of devices, including Apple Inc.'s dominant iPod.
For now, the easiest way to sell music to create such a flexible consumer experience is to deliver music in a format, such as MP3, that doesn't include copy-protection software, known as digital rights management, or DRM. Music sold through Apple's iTunes store historically has come with DRM, meaning it can be played only on an iPod; likewise, music sold on most other services is incompatible with the iPod.
Bill Carr, Amazon's vice president of digital media, says that consumers find that arrangement "confusing and off-putting," and Amazon's store will only sell music that comes without copy protection, meaning it can be played on whatever digital device the consumer chooses...read more: here