Amazon Goes DRM Free - First Take

Michael Gartenberg | May 16, 2007, 09:57 AM

News this morning that Amazon is getting into the music store business offering DRM free downloads. Very interesting. The fact that Amazon is offering DRM free songs and offering them in MP3 format is important but won't necessarily change the game for vendors offering music players that compete with iPod. It's also not clear what the catalog will look like beyond the current announced EMI offering.

If Amazon can offer a greater catalog than Apple at a lower price point or higher quality bit rates, we might begin to see iPod users begin to use the Amazon offering over iTunes but unless there's a marked differentiation, it's not likely that iPod users would go to Amazon over iTunes, especially given the iTunes eco system of music, TV shows, movies and games. Owners of other music players will likely be the target audience initially, especially given Amazon's support for the more ubiquitous MP3 file format, as opposed to the AAC format Apple offers.