Amazon's MP3s Not Affecting iTunes

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According to NPD, Amazon.com’s music service is growing but not at iTune’s expense. Obviously it won’t stay that way forever, there are only so many people out there buying music. Eventually someone is going to have to steal market share from someone else, right?

This is "a healthy indication that the digital music customer pool can expand into new consumer groups who have not yet joined the iTunes community," Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD said in a statement.
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I don't expect Amazon to de-throne iTunes, but they'll definitely make a large dent at some point.

On a sidenote, I highly recommend using Amazon for MP3s. They're encoded at 256 Kbps and they've always got deals going. Also, the Amazon downloader automatically adds them to iTunes if you want.
 
Maybe if Amazon would include mentioning digital downloads in their tri-weekly spam they send me in my email, more people would know about it.
 
I actually never used itunes, and never owned an ipod. I just recently bought a cheap-ass sansa clip and used amazon to download my first couple mp3 albums. It worked as expected. The higher quality bit rate and non-protected files I think what finally convinced me, but being a noob maybe that wasn't a big deal with ipods/itunes? in any case, I'm happy with amazon mp3s...
 
I've switched -- more or less. I'll download a track/album from iTunes only if Amazon doesn't have it.

The jury's still very much out on whether iTunes Plus's 256kbps Apple AAC-encoded files are more transparent than Amazon's LAME 3.97-encoded 256kbps files, so generally speaking, I "trust" the LAME encoder more highly than I do Apple's less-than-stellar AAC encoder despite the fact that I could likely never A/B the two under any circumstance. Ergo, iTunes doesn't really offer me much of anything any more. Hey, sorry Apple.

I'm still waiting for Amazon FLAC before I quit buying most of my CDs, though.
 
I switched to Amazon the first time I bought a protected file from iTunes and figured out I couldn't use it in Audiosurf. Glad I did!
 
How are the Amazon downloads? Are they in MP3 format?

Sick of iTunes' .M4P format and their DRM. I've already used up my 5 authorized PCs which were actually the same PC being upgraded over the past 3 years. Bah!
 
SPARTAN VI said:
How are the Amazon downloads? Are they in MP3 format?
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They are. Nearly all of them are encoded using the LGPL LAME MP3 encoder (v3.97) with the -V0 switch, which results in variable bit rate files averaging between 220 and 250kbps. Amazon's done everything right here.

Some of Amazon's MP3 may have audio fingerprints, but the information embedded in those fingerprints isn't anything to worry about.

SPARTAN VI said:
Sick of iTunes' .M4P format and their DRM.
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Yeah, FairPlay's a drag, but it's really not that difficult to strip it out losslessly. I do it regardless of whether or not I really need to.
 
Amazon MP3 product and price is great.

The web site sucks potatoes though. Half the time search lists pages of incorrect results with the correct results buried in the middle some where.

I HATE the search.

But this is where I'm buying all my music for my iPod right now.

Apple needs to get rid of ALL it's DRM, and a subscription service would not hurt.
 
Want to try AmazonMP3 free?

Go buy a six-pack of a Pepsi Product. Keep the caps.

Go to www.pepsistuff.com, and enter the codes from the caps.

For every 5 'points', you get a free MP3 download.

12-pack cans are not as good a deal. You only get 2 points per 12-pack. With the 6 pack bottles, you get one PER bottle. 6 points vs. 2 for the same amount of product (the bottles are 24oz) and the Bottles are generally cheaper if the 12-packs are not on sale.

Now, if only the cat would stop stealing the damned caps before I can enter the codes :)

I've received about 8 free MP3's this way.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
Sick of iTunes' .M4P format and their DRM. I've already used up my 5 authorized PCs which were actually the same PC being upgraded over the past 3 years. Bah!
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My friend, be glad I read this thread.

I JUST found out that you can do a master reset of your authorized PC's. Google it our look around in your account in iTunes. I had a laptop crash and I thought I was going to be out 1 authorized computer, not so.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
I've already used up my 5 authorized PCs which were actually the same PC being upgraded over the past 3 years. Bah!
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You can deauthorize and reset all five of your authorizations just by entering your password in a form. I believe the link to do this is under "store" in the iTunes menu bar. Pretty easy.

On topic, I think Amazon's service is better overall since they are allowed access to more non-DRM tracks than Apple is. That also said, all I download are audiobooks and podcasts. I still prefer buying my music on CD and ripping them myself.
 
Whoops, I see that mdameron already came to your rescue. Too bad there is no "delete post" button here. :)
 
I think they're probably pretty different markets. iTunes is for apple folk, while Amazon is tapping pretty much everyone else (and some iPod users, I'm sure).

I wouldn't buy form either of them, unless they were lossless (and quite a bit cheaper than CDs)
 
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