Amazon vs iTunes
p2p news / p2pnet: Amazon is getting ready to join the ranks of companies bent on cashing in on music downloans, albeit that a corporate online music market doesn’t yet exist to any significant degree.
Amazon is in advanced talks with the Big Four Organized Music labels about another rental service, "with a range of features designed to set it apart," says the Wall Street Journal.
"Among them: Amazon-branded portable music players, designed and built for the retailer, and a subscription service that would deeply discount and preload those devices with songs, not unlike mobile phones that are included with subscription plans as part of the deal.
"Music executives privately welcome Amazon’s plans, which they see as one of the only credible challenges to Apple’s hegemony in both digital music and portable players. Now the question is whether Amazon’s massive customer base is enough to offset a long delay in entering the online music business."
Apple’s iTunes is far more of a promo vehicle for iPod than a genuine service and moreover, compared to what’s happening in the world of independent online music, where literally billions of songs move computer-to-computer every month, Apple’s iTunes sales which, says the company, are approaching the one billion mark after its 2003 start, don’t amount to a hill of beans.
And as long as the Big Four continue to use their various ‘trade’ associations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in their bizarre marketing scheme through which they’re trying to sue customers into buying product, those hundreds of millions of potential buyers will remain far out of reach.
Be that as it may, "The service could be launched as soon as this summer, according to people familiar with the matter," says the story. "Amazon declined to discuss the service, and hasn’t finalized deals to license content from major music companies: Vivendi Universal SA’s Universal Music Group; Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG; Warner Music Group Corp.; and EMI Group PLC."
Among likely partners for a subsidized hardware offering is Samsung Electronics, "whose flair for stylish design is raising hopes among music executives that the initiative could create a strong alternative to iPod," says the WSJ, going on:
"Amazon has been busy building technology for digital downloads. Amazon says it has hired 3,000 people companywide, including many software-development engineers who presumably are working on digital content initiatives, over the past year. That is more than Google and Yahoo, which hired 2,659 and 2,185 people companywide, respectively, last year."
Also See:
Wall Street Journal – Amazon Plans Music Service To Rival iPod, February 16, 2006
