Posted in News by Generator on Monday 12th of January 2009
Popular online entertainment retailer Amazon recently launched a download service in an apparent attempt to rival Apple's iTunes store.
Industry experts have predicted that the launch of Amazon MP3 could spark a price war in 2009 between online music vendors, as digital download sites compete to entice customers by offering the cheapest singles and albums.
For example, Amazon MP3 is selling big title popular albums, such as the latest LPs by The Killers and The Ting Tings for just £3, compared to £8.99 on Apple's iTunes music store. Single tracks can be purchased at 59p on Amazon MP3, 20p cheaper than the same tracks from Apple's download service.
Music tracks sold through the Amazon online store are in the universal MP3 format and free from copy protection software, which means songs can be played on any music device, including Apple iPods. Purchased tracks are automatically added to a user's iTunes or Windows Media Player library for easy synching to iPods, mobile phones and MP3 players or for copying to CD.
More than three million songs from all of the major record labels are available for download from the Amazon store, although some groups signed to independent labels, such as Domino (including huge acts such as Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand), do not currently appear.
Amazon is the latest online retailer to launch a music download service. In 2008, Play.com started selling digital downloads from a wide range of artists, while Tesco's online store also sells albums and singles, and has imminent plans to make all of its tracks available in the universal MP3 format. 7digital was the first online retailer in the UK to offer songs from all the major labels as MP3 files, while Apple sells some songs free from digital rights-management software encryption through iTunes.
Have your say! - Have you used the Amazon MP3 site? Would you switch from Itunes? Will it threaten the market dominance of Itunes? Is this healthy competition offering great value to music fans or unneccesary pressure on an industry facing up to effects of widespread mp3 piracy? Do you pay for downloads?
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My worry about this type of 'price war' is the impact on independent labels and the artists on those labels. Sites selling downloads take a percentage of the price the music is sold for - therefore when they cut their prices the label and artist make less as a result, but can't do anything about it. iTunes has already devalued music to an extent by setting their prices too low and everybody else has followed in order to compete. A price war is only going to devalue the music further and while these huge organisations can afford to make a tiny profit per download because of the volumes they sell, not all of those providing the music will be able to continue.
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