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Amazon Taking Aim at iTunes |
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Written by Michael Salsbury
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007 |
Amazon.com has
taken a step toward displacing Apple's iTunes. They've launched a
beta of Amazon mp3 a site which features over 2
million songs from over 180,000 artists representing some 20,000
major and independent labels. While this is probably a paltry
offering compared to iTunes, Amazon MP3 has an advantage over iTunes in one important area. Unlike iTunes, which
is charging more for DRM-free music, ALL of the music available on
Amazon MP3 is available without DRM by default. Each song is
encoded as a 256kbps MP3 file, which can be played on the iPod the Creative Zen Sandisk Sansa the Windows PC or
the Apple Macintosh.
Amazon Unbox which is Amazon's online video
store, has been around longer than iTunes has in the video
marketplace. Amazon Unbox content can be downloaded directly to
your TiVo without going to your PC to purchase
or authorize it. It can also be downloaded to a personal computer
if you don't have a TiVo.
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