Starting today, Warner Music songs are now available on the Amazon MP3 music store, in DRM-free formats and at prices competitive to what iTunes charges. According to Reuters, Amazon has now reached “deals with music labels Universal Music Group, part of Vivendi, and EMI. The remaining major recording group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, has yet to offer its songs for the service.” Sony BMG, you guys are very, very old dorks.
Customers “can feel confident” their songs will play on whatever music device they buy in 2008, said Pete Baltaxe, Amazon’s director of digital music.
“We’re very pleased with where we are,” Baltaxe said of customer adoption of the music service, though he would not provide data on downloads to date or site traffic.
U.S. album sales were down 14 percent in late November from a year earlier, according to Nielsen SoundScan data, as a growing number of fans buy individual songs online or use free file-sharing.
Digital music revenue has been growing in the double-digit percentages, but the total take is not enough to make up for the shortfall in compact disc sales.
“Amazon adds Warner Music tunes to download service” [Reuters]
(Photo: Getty)
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I love the Amazon Music Store!
I’ll never pay for DMR music. Paying for the trouble and incapacity of listening on many devices? Nah.
Ooo, some great additions. Yay for Amazon downloads!
Sony’s waiting for Amazon to offer the MP3s with Rootkits before signing up.
I haven’t bought music in a long time, but my next buys will be from Amazon if possible.
I adore Amazon’s MP3 store, I use it all the time. I’m so sick of proprietary formats/”PlaysForSure but not really.” Imagine that — I get to download the music I buy in MP3 format, play it anywhere I want and it’s mine to keep!
I’ll buy when they start offering lossless formats; screw paying for mp3s.
Wooooo! Ever since I switched to Amazon I’ve been happy about it but I’ve also been missing some of my favorite artists – this fills the gap a bit.
I love the Amazon music store. Even better is that it directly downloads to iTunes.
Nice!
Anyone who has bought from them know what bitrate they use? I’m not so snobby as to require lossless formats, but I do at least want 160kb/s, preferably more.
@kc2idf: According to some of the songs I’ve clicked on in, it shows as 256 kbps
@chouchou: Yeah, that gosh darn DMR…
I’d like to find a way to ensure that whoever I give money to for music doesn’t contribute the RAAI.
This is definitely good news. I can only assume Amazon is using the same consumer-friendly approach on their Kindle e-bookreader, right?
Oh…I see. Maybe those two departments just haven’t synced with each other yet or something?
I’ve completely dumped iTunes altogether. It is such a bloated program now, and the DRM drove me CRAZY *cough*thankshymn*cough*. My second generation Zune and Amazon MP3 store get along really well now, thanks very much