Amazon.Com Music Store Now Open, Selling DRM Free Music
By Jane • Sep 25th, 2007 • Category: Publishing News • •Amazon’s new music store is now open and offering over 2 million songs from artists like KT Tunstell, 50 Cent, and the Rolling Stones. Every song and album is in the MP3 format, the most universal format for digital music, and can be played on nearly every device on the market from the iPod to the BlackBerry. 
The songs are priced from 89 to 99 cents and encoded at 256 kilobits per second.
It will be interesting to see whether iTunes will meet these prices. When it announced this spring that iTunes would offer EMI’s catalog of music DRM* free, it was with a catch. The DRM free music would be offered at a higher price - $1.29 instead of $.99.
Hopefully the competitive pricing Amazon is offering will put pressure on iTunes to offer DRM without the premium pricetag.
Via Press Release.
*DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is a piece of computer code which ties the song or book to a single device. I.e., iTunes music can only be played on an iPod device or through iTunes.
Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. Jane also does not like to talk about herself in the third person, but apparently this is the way that this biography thing works (although in a true biography, someone else would be writing this blurb). Anyway, currently Jane loves urban fantasy authors Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews. She's really excited about this year's crop of historicals including Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady and Sherry Thomas' Private Arrangements and the upcoming Loretta Chase Her Scandalous Ways.
She's looking for a good contemporary author. Email her with a recommendation!
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Y’see what I mean about Apple? They’re EBIL I tell ya!
And because I’m a happy subscriber, another source of DRM-free music is eMusic. MP3. And now audio-books as well (beta). BUT you have to be on a subscription plan. AND it doesn’t have all the Top 40. But if you like Jazz, Ethnic, Electronic, (my particular favourites) have a browse through their list. You can cherry-pick individual songs. Works out to about 30-40 cents per track, from memory. And if you’re into Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, my that’s a rockin’ deal!