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How Steve Jobs Created Amazon”s DRM Free MP3 Store

Posted: December 31st, 1969 | Author: | Filed under: iPhone, Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment »

How Steve Jobs Created Amazon's DRM Free MP3 Store

Picture of IrvinBasically, we all have Steve Jobs to thank for creating the nice DRM free environment over at Amazon.

Basically he has irritated the record companies so much that they are willing to do anything to give someone else the competitive advantage over the iTunes music store.

The reason they will all give it to Amazon and not to Apple is because they are not Apple. I don't know where this is all going, but it doesn't look good for Apple.

What still worries me is that they will probably give us the music DRM free, at prices lower than the prices at the iTMS for a while, and then jerk the prices up once they have buried the iTMS. I wonder if Apple will continue in its proprietary track and stop Amazon from updating their software when a user purchase songs from them. Right now it is pretty seamless. Also their suggestions are dead on. I'd suspect that more and more music will appear on the Amazon site, and that it will be the only music store that has any chance of dethroning Apple as the no. 1 download location for songs.

Apple is being forced to allow record companies to change the prices they charge for music. If they don't Amazon will completely destroy them. I mean, they are charging $8.99 for many popular albums at 256kbps quality, and the end user has no pain as far as getting it into their iTunes software and therefore onto their iPod or iPhone. I hope Apple does the right thing and changes their pricing strategy, giving the record companies a bigger cut of the sales, or a piece of their iPod action, and does not do the wrong thing and try to lock their players into the iTunes music store / iTunes system. Such a move would surely make room for other media players to take over and Apple would probably be doomed.

I would have you know that I do not like the record companies, I think their behavior is more like organized crime than a legitimate business, but Apple has to think about their future, and I do like downloading music that is DRM free, and that means Steve has to eat a little crow to get the support of the record companies back to survive.