September 25, 2007 10:20 AM
Music Download Service Gets More Legit
The music downloading industry has been receiving quite an attention lately. No less than two major IT players have announced the opening of each of their own music download site. These music download sites thought are not your previously popular "not so legit" mp3 downloading site. But both of these music downloading sites are legitimate, paid and are the authorize music files from your favorite musical artists.
So, which new downloading sites am I talking about? Amazon's MP3 and Starbucks music store.
Amazon MP3 Downloads Site
Amazon's music download store, called AmazonMP3 has officially launched today in beta. Offering 2 million songs by almost 180,000 artists from over 20,000 major independent labels is selling MP3 for 89 cents. With the AmazonMP3, users can download high quality music tracks which are DRM free. This means, the MP3 can be played using any brands of media players. You are also free to burn those MP3 tracks on CDs or transfer it into your digital media player then transfer it in your hard drive later on, without violating any copyright rules. The AmazonMp3 tracks can also be easily downloaded into iTunes and Windows Media Player.
Starbucks Music Store
Starbucks is kicking off its entry into the music download business by giving away 50 million free digital music. This is part of the publicity promo for its upcoming wireless music download site which is tied with Apple's iTunes service. Whereas Amazon allows per MP3 track buying of MP3s, Starbucks on the other hand will make available digitally free music on a per album basis. With a retail price of $10 up depending on the artists, Starbucks music download site may not be that appealing to customers. But Starbucks is known for cooking up publicity stunts to promote its products. So expect announcements coming from Starbucks as soon as its music store becomes available in October.
So which are you going to patronize? The highly respectable and reliable web commerce service of Amazon or Apple's untested music store? Although Starbucks' offerings seems to be a more organized platform, the price of its MP3 album is kind of stiff is leading me towards getting my MP3 fix from Amazon instead. Nonetheless, both services are a good start towards responding to the continued legal suits filed by musicians and artists towards violation of copyrights in the distribution of their work.
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