First?

Whoopee

Steve Jobs?...Steve? Jobs?....What the?

So presumably this presages one of the announcements at MacWorld?

Fantastic!
Bravo!

But the press release is a little snarky.

The top 100 bestselling songs are 89 cents, unless marked otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100 bestselling albums are $8.99 or less

Seems they are really trying to make you think the prices are low. But there are plenty of older albums and songs on the '100 best-selling' lists. I would expect to get Sgt. Pepper's for cheap. I imagine I won't get a recent release for $8.99. Those prices are notably absent in the release.

i believe we're experiencing the second renaissance of music freedom ... this time without the dirty hippies.

Goodbye iTunes! Nice to know you.

This is actually almost exciting, but there has to be a catch. Like a watermark or something in the file.

awesome i might actually start buying music

@Murph1908: I think top 100 bestselling songs would be like the iTunes Top 100, so recent bestsellers not alltime

Oh, this is so going to annoy Darth Jobs.

I dont care if its free, I am sold on steve Jobs. Long Live Apple!

Amazon accomplishes what egomaniac Steve couldn't.. yay. And the funny part is, Amazon probably pulled this off instead of Apple purely BECAUSE of Jobs. I'm sure he's coldly staring at someone in Cupertino.

Well being the Apple is super secretive, and the big label companies are super money hungry, I think we might be seeing iTunes go completely DRM free on Macworld… who knows…

It probably helps that Amazon.com has been selling these labels CD in their store for years. They were already forkin' out the loot to the labels, so why not add mp3 downloads? Not much labor involved, no shipping costs and no gas needed from Iraq. It's good for the enviroment... haha

Hmmm.. so Sony is allowing it's music collection to be DRM free. I wonder if Blu-ray will be far behind... no.. I thought not.

Still, any reason to not use iTunes is a good thing.

@DickNervous: It's up to the labels—Warner isn't watermarking their music for instance. But Amazon (and any other store) just puts up what the labels give them.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear the end of DRM at the iTunes store come this Tuesday.

This makes me more likely to buy digital music, but I still prefer the CD over digital, I hate paying for something I can't hold in my hand, you know? Also, I like to rip in Loss less to listen to it, and you can't download lossless through their store (can you?). Either way, I prefer to have a physical copy I can take with me for years and years and years :D.

This is definitely a step forward though, DRM's only hurt the honest people because it's still so easy to pirate music... or so I've heard... :P

I bought a song a couple days ago from Amazon to test out the service. I have to say my favorite part was it automatically putting the song in iTunes. If Apple doesn't announce a change to DRM-free Mp3's at Macworld, I will be switching to Amazon the next day.

@asten77: No, its precisely beacuse of Steve Jobs and that he record labels were terrified with the power the iTMS had in the industry

It may be that Apple is holding off until Tuesday to announce its fully DRM-free and higher quality (256Kbps AAC) music store... but don't be surprised if this doesn't happen, as it's widely believed that the music labels are actively trying to reduce Apple's dominance in the music download market, which is why they're happy to give their DRM-free music to a relatively minor player like Amazon.

Are iTunes non-DRM tracks still in AAC? I would purchase music at Amazon simply because they are MP3 and not Apple's obscure format.

Either way, having non-DRM tracks at Amazon, iTunes, and possibly other retailers is a good thing. 99 cents was always too much for a digital track. I think we will see 40-50 cents within the next two years.

@madoublet:

AAC is not "Apple's obscure format."

Wikipedia: [en.wikipedia.org]

AAC is actually the successor to MP3. It's just that Apple chose it as the default format for iTunes, because it is superior to MP3

Don't speak on a topic if you don't know all of the details.

This is one of the most exciting news about anti-DRM I've ever heard, I think I will now crap my pants, then dance, in that exact order.

AAC is not "Apple's obscure format". It was not developed by Apple, simply adopted by them.

"AAC was developed by the MPEG group that includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony and Nokia-companies that have also been involved in the development of audio codecs such as MP3 and AC3 (also known as Dolby Digital)." Source: [www.apple.com]

The funny thing is, after a year of anemic sales, the record label execs will realize that they missed the boat once again. They will realize that it's not just the no DRM that will spur sales. Amazon is only serving 20% of the market. The other 80% is controlled by Jobs. So basically, they made a deal to sell a better product to a smaller market? Hummm, where did these jackoffs get their MBA, through the mail? I'm sure they THINK that iTunes users will somehow go over to Amazon, download their MP3s, then play around with setting it up so that can play it through their iTunes and iPods. Well, I'm here to tell you, that ain't gonna happen to the majority of iPod users. They fail to realize that iPods have market domination over other DAPs BECAUSE of their integration to iTunes and ease of use. How would buying from Amazon do that for them?

If Jobs doesn't announce the same no DRM music next week for iTunes, I think the record execs will eventually come around because they will see that sales at Amazon will remain slow.

You know what? If you're really happy about this, you have to give props to Stevie J. If it wasn't for his iron-clad grip on giving us music through the intertubes, there's no way the music companies would've been so pissed off at the way they were being manhandled that they would strip DRM to get around it.

Without iTunes, without their proprietary format, without their deathlock on the online music industry, we don't get this for years to come, if ever.

So thank you, Steve.

/PC User
//knows how to give credit where it's due.

Noobs: What flavor of crack are you smoking?

80%? 20%? The recording industries give a fuck what brand music player the customer uses? Can you provide some facts to back-up your statements?
Seriously, kick the crack habit it's hampering your thought process.

Comparing Amazon and Apple iTunes is not a simple task, as they are radically different companies. Amazon will only see a small percentage of their profits come from MP3 sales (though I'm sure they will grow over time). They have no proprietary hardware of their own to sell. They don't make computers. They don't design operating systems. Amazon's single primary product is their marketplace and the grid computer behind it.
(Apple's tried to do grid computing but doesn't seem to realize yet that large-scale grid computing requires cheap hardware, not bloody expensive hardware).

Recording companies want money. As much as they can get. They got seriously ass-raped by Steve Jobs and would rather go someplace where there's not one man who wants to control the entire digital music industry.

Hint: it is a good thing to not have lock-in to one product for purchasing and playing digital music. Need I remind you about the original Apple iPod battery fiasco?

Although Amazon has made itself a new friend (me), I still have to say that Steve Jobs and iTunes really forced everyone to see there was a way to deliver music and tv shows in an easy to use package. The labels finally had to bite the bullet and realize that they were wasting money trying to establish this unnecessary DRM ideal and just sell the music over the internet in the EXACT same fashion they sold records, tapes and CD's in the real world.

They had to realize that CD sales COMBINED WITH MP3 downloads would make for viable revenue streams. Personally I would like to see a broader "international" initiative towards music that way we could purchase music no matter what country it was made in.

@Jeff the Riffer: If you don't know at this point that iPods are 70-80% of the DAP market I can't help you...

On the juicy subject of DRM, here is a short video with an explanation of why the record labels' quest for control is utterly ridiculous; and why we will very likely see some quick impeachments this year - the proponents of DRM will eat it, in 2008, no doubt.

[www.youtube.com]

Help me Lord, I so don't care about the back & forth on who's digital music player is best. I just want to listen to my music. I just migrated to a MAC from many years of working on Windows based platforms. I love the MAC but have many hours and $$ tied up in Windows Media files and have a Zune player...... I just want port my music and use my player. I'll accept that iPod is better; whatever. I want my music back, and this doesn't seem to be unreasonable. No help in sight???