Please, Amazon, Save Us From iTunes
Amazon says it's going to launch an online music store sometime this year and we say it's about time. We've been putting up with iTunes forever now while secretly hoping that someone in town would come up with a competitor. Microsoft has something, but, c'mon, a Microsoft music store? Obviously no. If they'd ever done a thing online we'd have been on the lookout for Starbucks launching a store, but their inexperience in online retail seems to have prevented the coffee maker from inflicting an easy listening media hub upon the world so far. And, oh yeah, Real has something already as well, but we've never tried it. That leaves Amazon, but for no reason at all we kinda figured they'd do it wrong. From what we've read so far they're doing it right.
"Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, in a statement.
Finally! MPfucking3s! Nerds, we know this isn't your file format of choice, but, for portability's sake, it is ours. The Business Journal concludes:
Amazon didn't say how much it plans to charge for each song (Apple's iTunes charges about 99 cents for each song) or when the service will be launched.
Ok, unfair comparison. Apple sells DRM-free songs now, but they're not 99 cents and there are very few actually available. They cost like a buck thirty or something? If you're going to compare apples to Apple that's the price you need to look at, unfortunately. Anyway, we see this as great news and are going to start looking into how far along they are. As we've seen over and over (and over and over) in the past, announcing an online music store and actually opening one for business are two entirely different things.
