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Wednesday, September 26, 2007 12:00 AM

Amazon's MP3 store: Better than iTunes

For the first time, there's real competition to Apple's online music shop.

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  • Wednesday, September 26, 2007 04:07 PM

    I am about as big an Apple fan as they come…

    But I'd definitely go to Amazon first from now on. Non-DRM trumps DRM every time, and Amazon has done a great job of making the customer experience just as smooth as it is on iTunes, for Windows and Mac users alike. If the record companies are in trouble, it's because they give the customer two flawed buying options: entire physical CDs for obscenely high prices ($17 is crazy for 40 minutes of music), or the online indvidual tracks and sub-$10 album prices that customers want, but you'll always have to ask permission if you want to use it. I believe that most people are law-abiding and they'd pay for albums online if they were priced reasonably and lacked the condescending, oppressive DRM that assumes the customer is a criminal. Amazon does this.

    It's a great next step for online music sales because successful competition against DRMed iTunes and a profitable non-DRM operation might help push all the record labels towards selling their music without DRM.

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