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Amazon to Launch DRM-Free Music Store

The Washington Post reports that Amazon has announced that they will be launching a digital music store "later in 2007" which will offer "millions of songs, free of copy protection technology [DRM] that limits where consumers can play their music."

Like Apple, Amazon has licensed music from EMI but will be offering songs in MP3 format.

"Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO.


No word on pricing is available, but these DRM-free MP3s will play in Apple's iTunes and on the iPod.

Other record labels have not yet adopted this DRM-free strategy. Apple and EMI jointly announced in April that Apple's iTunes would begin selling DRM-free music from EMI beginning in May.

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62 months ago
Better have bitrates >128 kbs...
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
62 months ago
Ahh, the dominoes are falling... DRM is dead...
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62 months ago
This is good on two fronts -- it will cause Apple to add DRM free music from the independent companies sooner rather than later, and it will put added pressure on the pro-DRM majors.

The writing is on the wall. It is also bad for Microsoft, as their brands of DRM become ever less relevant.
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62 months ago

Better have bitrates >128 kbs...


With MP3 they have to have a better bitrate than 256 kbps AAC. Also, I wonder if amazon will make it easy for people to just import the song into the iTunes library without any effort (including album art, etc).
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62 months ago
Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.
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62 months ago

Ahh, the dominoes are falling... DRM is dead...


On music anyway. I wonder how long it will take for movies to follow.

I see DRM being a subscription related constraint, whereas purchased material comes unencumbered.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
62 months ago
anyone know the bitrate?

EDIT:

Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.


At 128kpbs, sure, but try it at 256kbps. There's practically no difference, except Mp3 plays even in Mp3 CD players and mpeg-4 audio (what you're calling "AAC") doesn't.

Mp3 isn't technically as good at the same bitrate, but with today's bandwidth and hard drive space, who the hell cares?
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62 months ago

Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.


Yes! Stop with the MP3s already!!! AAC/.m4a is a far-superior non-proprietary format.
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62 months ago

Amazon is so dumb - mp3's??? Encode a song in mp3 and then in AAC at the same bitrate and see which one sounds better. The difference is noticeable to even the most tone deaf.


MP3 has more widespread player support.
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62 months ago

MP3 has more widespread player support.


As in all of them. ACC only plays on the iPod, Zune, and a couple others.
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