Tue Sep 25, 2007 2:34 pm

The biggest threat here is enough fragmentation from one service to the next that record companies gain greater leverage back over the market and use that to push prices much higher. It's a completely boneheaded move, but one that they're sure to undertake. I don't really believe that Apple having a long-term stranglehold on the digital download market is a good thing (like any monopoly, eventually the end users will suffer.) However, in the short term during the transition to physical to completely digital delivery they've been an excellent stabilising & thought provoking force in the industry.

In the end, if the iTunes store loses its business to another bigger vendor the direct impact on Apple will be minor. Loss of control might eventually effect their production of bright idea products, but with their recent embracing of overly expensive ringtones however, I think it's time for things to get shaken up again by someone else. Remember rip.mix.burn? They don't. It would have been simple to just allow users to add their own ringtones NOT purchased with iTunes to the iPhone and slap the face of the industry again. At this point, they've lost interest in stirring things up. They have to protect the status quo to continue gathering massive amounts of revenue from products relating to music sales and from the exposure it's gained them.

Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:36 pm

It's good to see a real alternative. Is this the first one to support Macs besides iTunes? And does it work on any web-capable system (e.g., Linux), or just OS X and Windows?

The prices are especially good when you compare them to Apple's DRM-free tracks, which cost $0.30 more than the DRM'd ones.

The design leaves a bit to be desired. I was browsing and searching through their catalog and was very impressed by the selection.....until I realized that I'd somehow been siphoned off to their CD store and most of what I was looking at was NOT available in download form. If I were interested in buying CDs, I would've gone there in the first place! An in-browser preview player would be nice, too.

Most tracks and albums I saw were cheaper than on iTunes, and with no DRM, it's very appealing. I haven't bought anything from them yet, but I'm sure I will. I haven't bought much from iTunes because I just hate DRM.

I don't want or expect this to bring down iTunes, but the bottom line is that it's good to have options, and it's good to NOT have DRM.

Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:04 pm

	Sir Harry Flashman wrote:
	When I do buy CDs, or DVDs, I usually get them at Amazon. Other things as well such as books and small electronics.

You might want to check other sources. For DVDs, it's hard to find many online "discount" sources that are consistently MORE expensive than Amazon. (Buy.com often is.) Amazon sure beats buying DVDs at most retail stores, but their prices are generally higher than DVD Planet (formerly Digital Eyes) and Deep Discount, both of which offer free shipping. DVD Planet also offers coupons, once you're on their email list--$5 off $50, $7 off $80, $10 off $125. Sometimes (especially for pre-orders), Family Video is cheapest. I've ordered only a few DVDs from Amazon in the last few years, mainly pre-orders. Conversely, I've bought nearly 2,000 DVDs from those other sources (and the Amazon Marketplace, where other people and firms sell through Amazon.)

Books are often cheaper at buy.com than at Amazon, with the same free shipping for orders over $25 policy. One of the few attractions Amazon has for me anymore is their "4-for-3" series, where one buys four items (CDs, books, DVDs, and some others) and the cheapest is free. This applies to only a small subset of the products they sell and it can be hard to find them, but it's often worth checking.

Mon Oct 01, 2007 3:55 pm

I like the new Amazon.com download store. I am mostly a single track buyer and almost never buy entire digital albums (I prefer regular CDs for that). That said, I find Amazon to have an ample supply of the latest tracks as well as some well worn classics that I may end up buying a track at a time there instead of at iTunes. Plus I like the fact that there is no DRM connected to the MP3s available from Amazon and that they work in my iTunes, iPod and a real cheap off-brand MP3 player I bought several months ago.