by Playfuls Staff |
17th February 2006
Here we go again..! After we’ve seen a few dozen companies, from Creative to Samsung and Sony, boasting that they’ve created an MP3 Player that would surely become the iPod killer, now it seems that the iTunes hunting seasons has just opened. [more]
Following in the footsteps of some major companies, like Yahoo, Real Networks and Napster (the new version, in which all the music is legal), it’s now the turn of Amazon.com to put its name on the waiting list of those who dream of demolishing the iTunes. Or are things a bit different in this case? There’s been some information going around singe August last year that the great guru of e-commerce was preparing to launch a digital music store and now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, who’s informing us that Amazon is in talks with Sony, Warner, EMI ands Universal, the subject resurfaces once more.
But this time, with a new flavour. According to what the paper says, it seems that Amazon.com has understood that a digital music store is nothing without a player to promote it, and that is now very seriously considering the idea of working together with Samsung or Microsoft for developing such a piece of equipment.
After all, Amazon.com hasn’t confirmed, nor has it denied the information, and everything could be just a maneuver carried out by the music labels in order to put some pressure on Steve Jobs regarding the issue of raising the prices for the iTunes.
Let’s presume, for the sake of the argument, that Amazon really intends to open this music download store. Does Apple really have anything to be worried about? The answer is no, because as long as Amazon.com will sell its music only to subscribers (as Yahoo and all the others do), it won’t be anything but another service in the crowd. But what if Amazon chooses some other way of selling music? In order to really be a threat to the supremacy of the iTunes, the first rule would be to come up with a price below the 99 cents asked by Apple’s store, at least until it convinces its users to try out the company’s services. And since the music studios are convinced that Apple is not charging nearly enough, it’s not very likely that they’ll offer Amazon.com a better deal.
And from a user’s point of view, to buy more expensive music from a new store is really not a very attractive option.
So Amazon.com should really think things through before going into the digital music download business, because it’s tough (if not impossible) to bring down Apple from where it is right now.
