arstechnica.com— Amazon is rumored to be readying its own music store for launch next month, which will reportedly sell unprotected MP3s in hopes of cutting into the iTunes Store's market share.
Apr 23, 2007View in Crawl 4
@mjsteinbaughActually, AAC doesn't require royalty payments on distributed music. Apple has to pay a (smaller than mp3) fee on their encoders and decoders, but not for the music they sell.Since Amazon is just distributing the music, they wouldn't have to pay anything.
why would they do that? lossless files are around 40% smaller (while holding the exact same information) and can contain things like tags and album art.
Yeah, I love having my albums take up 400 MB each (FLAC). Personally, I can't usually distinguish between FLAC and 128 kbps MP3, and I definitely can't distinguish between FLAC and 256 kbps MP3 or 128 kbps OGG (which is higher quality, I believe).
This is great, if Amazon becomes successful maybe more online music stores will go towards the DRM-free route. Hopefully this is another step for iTunes to also offer the DRM-free tracks for the regular .99 price instead of another 30 cents more.
I hope that Amazon's thousand-pound-elephant status will influence other music retailers to take notice. It seems like market pressure is the best hope of eliminating DRM.
zip22Apr 24, 2007
i wonder if the will (or can) use lame. are there any restrictions to lame for commercial purposes?
2gooderApr 24, 2007
@mjsteinbaughActually, AAC doesn't require royalty payments on distributed music. Apple has to pay a (smaller than mp3) fee on their encoders and decoders, but not for the music they sell.Since Amazon is just distributing the music, they wouldn't have to pay anything.
zip22Apr 24, 2007
why would they do that? lossless files are around 40% smaller (while holding the exact same information) and can contain things like tags and album art.
noamsmlApr 24, 2007
Yeah, I love having my albums take up 400 MB each (FLAC). Personally, I can't usually distinguish between FLAC and 128 kbps MP3, and I definitely can't distinguish between FLAC and 256 kbps MP3 or 128 kbps OGG (which is higher quality, I believe).
belegdaeApr 24, 2007
Yea, i agree! who's with us?
sodadeApr 24, 2007
The price is the real issue here. I will not pay a buck for a f**king song. Period.
tehmuff1nm4nApr 26, 2007
This is great, if Amazon becomes successful maybe more online music stores will go towards the DRM-free route. Hopefully this is another step for iTunes to also offer the DRM-free tracks for the regular .99 price instead of another 30 cents more.
jjrulesMay 2, 2007
I hope that Amazon's thousand-pound-elephant status will influence other music retailers to take notice. It seems like market pressure is the best hope of eliminating DRM.