Amazon’s MP3 (beta)

Amazon.com has launched their MP3 music store in public beta this morning. AmazonMP3 features MP3 tracks that are DRM free and will play on any computer and on any device that can handle MP3s (including, of course, the iPod). AmazonMP3 has over 2 million songs from 180,000 artists. Most tracks are $.99 cents, and the top 100 tracks are $.89 cents. Many albums are between $8.99 and $9.99. In my searching though, I found little sense in the pricing, as the album English Settlement from XTC was $8.99, but all of their other albums were $11.99 – $12.99.

I think AmazonMP3 will be a huge success. It gets right what most of the other downloadable music stores get wrong – (semi) decent pricing, easy access (any browser, any platform), and no DRM.

I think Apple finally has some competition.

Category: Digital Music