Amazon’s Digital Download Store and Universal
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 Billboard ran a story Monday on the long rumored Amazon digital music download store. Most of the details are still kind of sketchy at this point, but here’s what we know,
The store will open in May, according to sources. Amazon has yet to confirm this.
Universal will be using the platform to test selling DRM-free downloads, starting with it’s Classical music selections, “conceivably including titles by Andrea Bocelli.” Sources are also claiming that Universal will be testing the DRM-free waters in other genres too.
Amazon changed it’s initial plans to push protected Mp3’s on their own player, after seeing the problems that Microsoft’s Zune had last year with it’s locked in digital music model.
It is still unclear just what will be available on the Amazon store. Most of the labels are taking a wait and see approach when it comes to releasing unprotected digital downloads. Will EMI’s catalog be available? What about all the independents that make up the eMusic store? At least one indie label wants a higher price point for better quality downloads.
What byte-rate will Amazon be making available for download? Looks like 128 and 256, but this is still unclear. At what price? Don’t know yet.
The good news out of all of this, obviously, is that Amazon is going the DRM-free route, and Universal is at least trying it out, although it seems maybe a little difficult to make a judgment on DRM based on the Classical music collection. To make any kind of halfway decent judgment on this, you have to open up at least parts of your popular music collection. Maybe they will. At least it’s one more step in the right direction.