The online leading book store, Amazon has plans to take on the iPod and iTunes by launching their own Amazon branded portable music players and subscription based music service in the near future, likely as near as the summer. Even though iTunes accounts for 83% of the music download market, Amazon's
own 55 million potential client base and brand recognition may help it create some serious competition. One thing iTunes still lacks is subscription based services, which Amazon hopes will help them succeed. They are already discussing projects with some top global music companies about their planned service.
Unlike Napster, Yahoo, Microsoft and other providers that rely on WMA-DRM compatible 3rd party players to play music purchased from their services, Amazon plans will use Apple's approach by using their own proprietary DRM technology in their players such that their players will only work with its music service and vice versa. This also means that consumers will know what can play their music and obviously what music can be put on an Amazon branded player.
Unfortunately, if Amazon's music service and players turn out very successful, they could end up killing off independent music services, since their music will not play on an Amazon's proprietary player. For the consumers, this means one more online store to take into account when purchasing a music player, since like the Apple iPod and Sony's Walkman series, none will play each other's music.
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According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is discussing projects with some of the top global music companies, with the goal of offering Amazon-branded music players and a music download subscription service. The service could be available as early as this summer, barring any unexpected difficulties in negotiations with key music distributors, including Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group; Sony BMG and Bertelsmann AG; Warner Music Group; and EMI Group, according to the report. |
In a way, it is nice to see the major online book store preparing to enter the digital music market as a potentially good competitor to iTunes, however their plans to launch a player that is only compatible with its service is clearly showing just how bad DRM is being abused when it comes to locking in consumers. For example, imagine if each retail music store decided to start selling their own non-standard CDs that can only be played with their own store brand's players and vice versa, well this is exactly what DRM is doing and just one of the major problems DRM is causing to the digital music download market.
Feel free to discuss about digital music services on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues.
Source: internetnews.com
