Apr

23

Why Nobody Will Care About Amazon’s DRM-Free Music Service

April 23, 2007 |

Via ArsTechnica: Amazon is readying its own music download service with DRM-free music:

According to a report
in the UK’s Times Online, Amazon has approached “all the music
majors in the past fortnight” in order to launch its MP3 store in May
but may have some trouble meeting its own deadline. Apple plans to start selling

DRM-free music from EMI in May through its own music store, which could
be the cause for Amazon’s rush. The report speculates that if the Internet
giant is successful in launching on time, it may initially launch with unprotected
music from EMI as well.

I think there are a couple of reasons why this is not going to put much of a dent into Apple’s iTunes:

1) the integration of iTunes and iPod is what has driven customers to Apple. This stuff doesn’t have to be very easy, it has to be completely idiot proof to appeal to the mass market and so far, by controlling the complete chain, only Apple has managed this.
2) the large mass of consumers doesn’t yet care about DRM - this might change, but for now, most people don’t even know what DRM is
3) I don’t think consumers identify the Amazon brand with downloading music. People use Amazon to get stuff shipped to their doors. Amazon is not a high-tech brand to most people.

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