Price war Amazon launches 69-cent MP3 store for top-selling tunes | Hacker News Reader

Price war Amazon launches 69-cent MP3 store for top-selling tunes

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18 pointsjakewalker26 comments

Seems to me that iTunes captured the market because of the amazing integration with music devices and not the price point. Until someone beats them at that, I think things will continue as they are.

I'm not an Apple fanboy by any means, but nobody else has produced a device that makes it so easy to find, buy, and listen to music on the go.

Amazon's Cloud Player is a good start, since it eliminates having to load the music on to the device, but the player still needs some polish.

I buy music almost exclusively through Amazon now solely because of the DRM nonsense iTunes puts on its files. I have several albums that, when I try to play them on my media computer through iTunes home sharing, gives me the "This album is not authorized to play on this computer. Please deactivate one of your authorized computers to add it to this one." Problem is, that 2 of the authorized computers are in the scrap heap now, and the other ones I still use.

Whatever convenience buying music directly through my iPhone would offer is more than canceled out by this inconvenience. I'll admit that I'm not the kind of music consumer that buys single mp3s though — full album or nothing for me — so I'm biased in that way.

maybe "deauthorize all" and re-auth the computers you still use

I'm sure there's a quick fix for the iTunes purchased albums I still have, but the long-term solution is definitely to avoid purchasing from iTunes. For me, at least.

As the iTunes Music Store hasn't used DRM since January 2009, no long-term solution is necessary. Just don't travel back in time and you'll be fine. :)

I'm writing this from 2007!

Anyway, thanks for the responses. I was embarrassingly unaware of the changes. Though maybe the moral of the story is that DRM is a good way to lose a customer who won't come back under any circumstances if there's an equal service available without it.

The iTunes Music Store hasn't been using DRM for a long time. You can also upgrade your music with DRM to non-DRM. versions but it will cost you money. (This is exactly the reason why I didn't buy any music with DRM. I don't know how you could ever do that.)

Here is how you can deauthorize all computers associated with your iTunes account (the third list of instructions): http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1420

It's a bit hidden but it's easy to do.

Apple no longer applies DRM at all in their music store.

It still does in the video store though.

I would buy way, WAY more iTunes video if I could re-compress the video to any format I want, and share it with friends. (I realize that the latter is highly undesirable to content holders, but video has always been highly social among my friends, with frequent sharing of DVDs and such.)

Amazon is positioning themselves pretty well as the iTunes of Android, though. Most phones have Amazon MP3 preinstalled and the buying experience is basically as smooth as you'd like. It is like iTunes, but better, cause you don't ever have to use iTunes.

What if amazon simply made a good itunes clone with simple export to ipod etc.? Many established businesses can be attacked by offering the same, only better or cheaper. Or isnt it as obvious as i think?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...

Not exactly an iTunes competetor. Maybe they're purposefully avoiding competeing directly with iTunes by offering a completely different type of expirence.

Seems to me that iTunes captured the market because of the amazing integration with music devices and not the price point.

Completely agree with this, but I would two more factors -- a relevant selection from the outset, and the reliability and legitimacy of iTMS.

Am I the only one that hates the way iTunes interfaces with my iPhone? iTunes is probably the single most unpleasant thing about owning an iPhone. The iPhone works like a dream as long as I NEVER need to connect it to my PC. Every time I need to connect it for updating, backup, restore, add new music (Usually that I've bought from another service[Amazon]) it's a miserable experience.

If there was a way to use my iPad and iPhone without ever needed to connect to a desktop computer I'd feel like I won a million bucks.

iTunes is not a great piece of software, but it does some pretty nice things for you. Backups of your phone, store integration, fairly powerful play list manager, syncing. All in one place.

Over the air updates are nice I guess, but how would I backup and restore 30Gb of data to my phone over the air?

Do you think Antitrust pressures will force Apple to accept competing services for the iOS? (Amazon Cloud Player on the iPhone/iPod/iPad)

It's about time.

Now let's see the same trend in eBook pricing. Completely inflated for the moment.

Tough for them to do anything about that because of agency pricing imposed by all the major publishers (even Random House recently got on board). Not sure why that's not collusion, but there you go.

Separately, with free cloud locker storage and now lower prices, should anyone be buying songs from iTunes anymore?

Yeah, let the authors sidestep the publishers as time goes on. They'll incur less overhead (dozens of unnecessary salaries that don't exist), keep more money and sell their product cheaper. The publishers will have to fall into line and sell the product at a price more in line with its value.

The problem is, that is often throwing out the baby with the bathwater: editors. I think self-publishing will only take off after editors begin going freelance.

I think you're ignoring the fact that there's much more to publishers than just printing a physical copy of a book and shipping it to shelves. There's marketing, editing, screening, etc. Think what looking for books would be like if there was no quality screening or editing and you had to wade through an online catalog of thousands of books of crap just to have the off chance of happening to see a quality book.

Oh, sure, that's a valuable service. But it's definitely one that's bloated by way more salaries in the current model than are really needed.

Moreover, this is the internet age. People develop direct relationships with people who write things they like. You don't need a publisher to tell you that you'll want to read, say, Paul Graham's book.

This only affects all the popular crap and cloud locker storage is not available in Europe.

Maybe Amazon can have a publishing label that hires freelance editors. Amazon already handles a large portion of the publishing role, which is marketing.

I think both are losing out to the subscription services and streaming. They should consider buying up one of these companies that offer huge selection for a low price each month.

I wonder why they settled on '69'.

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