As noted by the Los Angeles Times, Amazon has taken Apple's iTunes Store head-on in the digital music marketplace with its new feature of 69-cent on popular new release tracks. The new, lower price marks a substantial discount from iTunes, which typically charges $1.29 for current hits.
The Seattle online company is now pricing select top-selling tunes for 69 cents, down from 89 cents previously. Many of the songs in Amazon's 69-cent store sell for $1.29 on iTunes, including Katy Perry's "E.T.", Jennifer Lopez's "On the Floor" and Lady Gaga's "Born This Way."
The report notes that Amazon has been stuck at about 10% of the digital music download market for several years, finding itself unable to eat further into Apple's dominant position with iTunes.
Apple initially used a standard $0.99 price point for iTunes Store music content, but shifted to a tiered pricing model in April 2009, with much of the store's content remaining at the original $0.99 price point but certain popular content bumped up to $1.29 while older back catalog material in some cases dropped to $0.69. Amazon and Wal-Mart quickly followed suit with their own tiered pricing models.
Apple's shift to tiered pricing was made at the request of major record labels seeking more control over content pricing and was part of the negotiations that led Apple to be able to offer its entire iTunes Store music catalog free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
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Top Rated Comments
(View all)You like lossy compression? How 1990's of you.
iTunes is lossy too :rolleyes:Edit: And glad to see someone downrated me for stating a fact. Real mature.
First people complain about not having choices or prices being too high. Now there are more options and pricing is lower.
Wow. Just wow.
Well those addicted to Apple can still pay more for their songs. Enjoy. I won't stop you. Just like those that want to pay more for ebooks.
Personally - I'll shop it around and pay the best price whoever is selling it.
Can you name a few more? I have only seen Sony support AAC on their PMP devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#Hardware
I don't understand why people still call AAC a "proprietary Apple format" in 2011. It's not even from Apple.
Screenshots in Mac OS X are saved as 32-bit PNGs, yet I've never heard anyone call PNG an "Apple format".
Come on! We all know that the TRUE Apple fans on here will gladly pay $1.29 or even 2-3x that to support Steve Jobs' organ transplant fund. They wouldn't go to Amazon even if they were giving away that music for free. :D
Criticism of fanboyism and the habits of consumers is one thing, but it's pretty awful to make fun of the needs of someone who needed such an extreme procedure due to advanced cancer. Very very trashy. :mad: