[infoshare] Amazon set to launch online music store
- From: "Luis Guerra" <blindsingle@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "InfoShare" <InfoShare@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:59:30 -0400
Amazon set to launch online music store
Dan Sabbagh
Amazon.com, the internet retailer, wants to launch an online music store
next month to challenge Apple and is working on plans to sell music with
reduced
protection against copyright infringement.
The internet giant has approached all the music majors in the past fortnight
and said that it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May as it tries to
follow Apple in shaking up the music industry.
However, it remains unclear if Amazon will meet its deadline. The internet
retailer has been trying, unsuccessfully, over 18 months to break into the
market
dominated by Apple iTunes, which has a share of about 80 per cent.
Selling music without copy protection is controversial, because it makes
digitally downloaded songs easier to copy. At the beginning of the month EMI
broke
ranks and signed an agreement with Apple to provide unprotected songs for a
higher price.
If Amazon's MP3 service does launch as planned, music is most likely to come
from EMI and independent labels. Speculation that Vivendi's Universal Music
was already signed up to test classical MP3 downloads is understood to be
wide of the mark.
Amazon's efforts have been held back by various problems. It originally
wanted to launch its own music player to rival the iPod in tandem with the
store
and held discussions with manufacturers, but these failed to develop
successfully.
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