The Interface

The Amazon MP3 store’s interface closely resembles that of the rest of the site. Featured content appears right in the middle of the page, with a search bar on the top and genres and pricing options on a sidebar on the left. While Amazon’s store does not have the same unified visual appeal as the iTS, it does have a few nice visual goodies: when scrolling through the featured albums section, the site uses a fun motion blur effect to simulate flipping quickly through the records. Of course this doesn’t compare to iTunes’ Cover Flow feature, but it makes the browser-based shopping experience more enjoyable.

The Selection

The main area where music shoppers may find fault is in Amazon’s selection. The store currently offers 2 million tracks available for download, compared to 6 million on the iTunes Store. However, there is one notable exception where the Amazon store triumphs in terms of selection: Radiohead, a popular (and my personal favorite) band, has been included in their catalog. Radiohead, who have long abstained from selling their songs digitally through iTunes, have made them available through Amazon, a gesture that is sure to please many fans. However, beyond that detail the iTS triumphs. While Amazon’s store includes music from “Big Four” labels EMI and Universal (as well as 12,000 other labels), it lacks other major players like Sony BMG and Warner, whose catalogs are offered on iTunes. So while it seems counterintuitive, more obscure artists have equal presence on Amazon and iTunes, but iTunes has dominance when it comes to more mainstream popular musicians. This isn’t to say, of course, that Amazon’s catalog won’t expand. It is only a matter of time before the Amazon store grows to be comparable in size to iTunes.

Pricing

Here is where Amazon is the big winner. The normal price of their songs – 99 cents – matches that of the standard iTunes pricing, but Amazon also offers the top 100 tracks at a discounted 89 cents apiece. It is also worth noting that all of Amazon’s downloads are free of DRM, but the modest selection of songs that are offered DRM-free through iTunes sell for $1.29. So a song on Amazon is up to 40 cents less than a song on iTunes.

Amazon vs. iTunes

Also, while iTunes consistently offers full albums for $10 or more, Amazon’s prices rarely pass the $10 mark, and many are as low as $5. Although the price difference between Amazon and iTunes is often not dramatic, Amazon’s discounts definitely give it the upper hand.

The Downloading Experience

iTunes has the advantage of being a unified store and music manager, meaning you can purchase a song, download it, and listen to it, all without switching between applications. Amazon’s store doesn’t have this luxury, instead requiring you to download and install a lightweight “download manager” app (both Mac and PC compatible). But buying a song through the Amazon store is still a fairly simple process. If you already have an account on Amazon, you don’t have to do a thing to configure the store; it will automatically use the credit card information you have provided in the past. All you need to do is click the Buy Now link next to any song or album, and the download manager will automatically pop open. During my testing, the songs downloaded at a very satisfying rate. And the download manager can automatically load the songs into your iTunes library. While iTunes wins for simplicity of downloading, Amazon comes about as close as any online store can.

The Songs

Amazon’s songs come encoded at 256 kbps (VBR), which is high enough quality to please all but the most hardcore audiophiles. They also come loaded with high-resolution album artwork very comparable to what iTunes provides. And finally, and most importantly, Amazon’s tracks are 100% DRM free. I’ve been bringing this up throughout the course of the article, so I feel some explanation is required. DRM, which stands for “digital rights management”, is a system that distributors such as iTunes use to discourage piracy of the content they distribute. While this is a commendable motive, the way they go about doing it often cripples what can and cannot be done with the music. For example, when you buy a DRM-encoded song on iTunes, you can only put it on iPods (no other MP3 players allowed), and store it on a limited number of computers. There is also a cap on the number of times you can burn playlists with DRM-encoded songs onto CDs. In the past, most major record labels have been strong proponents of DRM, but recently it has been meeting strong criticism. In May, Apple began offering tracks from the major label EMI without DRM, but at the increased price of $1.29 per song. Amazon’s store, which offers many DRM-free big-label tracks at reasonable prices, is a major step forward in the downfall of DRM.

Final Thoughts

At this point in time, the only thing that is holding Amazon store back from being an iTunes killer is the selection and the lack of integration with a music player. iTunes has three times as many tracks, and it is impossible to argue that it could suffer serious losses as a result of Amazon’s new store, for the simple reason that there are so many artists not yet available through Amazon. iTunes is also REALLY convenient. It’s right there in your music player and you don’t have to go to a website to get more music.

But this is not the only reason that Amazon’s store poses little threat to Apple. Currently, Apple only encodes its tracks with DRM because of its contractual obligations with the labels whose music it distributes. In other words, DRM isn’t Apple’s idea, and in fact Apple CEO Steve Jobs has publicly opposed the restrictive measures. So with the tide turning so thoroughly against DRM, it seems very likely that it will soon become a thing of the past. And when it does, the playing field will level greatly, with Apple being able to offer the same quality and lack of restriction as the new Amazon store currently has. While Amazon’s new music store is a great innovation today, it is an even bigger step in providing an overall improvement in the quality of digital music downloads. If you’re a music lover, you should be very happy right about now.

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