Amazon.com gets onto MP3 music bandwagon

Amazon.com Inc. has launched Public Beta of Amazon MP3, a digital music store, signaling competition for Apple Inc.’s iTunes, and eMusic, the two big players in the digital music downloads business.

While iTunes predominantly uses a proprietary DRM (digital rights management) for its music downloads, eMusic offers music downloads in the MP3 format, without DRM protection. Downloads without DRM come without copy restrictions and controls, and can be played on any audio device supporting the popular MP3 format.

Amazon MP3 has over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels, the company said in a statement. The downloaded files can be played on any audio device, Amazon said on Tuesday.

Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents, the company said. Songs on Amazon MP3 are encoded at 256 kilobits per second, which gives customers high audio quality at a manageable file size, according to Amazon.com.

Most large music labels have shied away from MP3 downloads, which is the reason why eMusic sells mainly music from independent labels. To make headway in this market, Amazon.com will have to introduce music guides and expert reviews to help users choose good quality music. The term independent labels has often come to mean amateurish music generated by out-of-garage operations, a problem many users encounter currently on eMusic.

Only Universal Music Group and EMI Music Publishing, among the big labels, are currently offering music at the Amazon.com store.

Amazon.com announced in May that it would open an online digital music store later this year, and also said that the music would be free of DRM controls. The company also invested in August in a music download firm called Amie Street Inc.

The MP3 music can be downloaded from Amazon here.

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eMusic’s foray into audiobooks may help aspiring writers
Finding gold on the Net is a long shot

eMusic’s foray into audiobooks may help aspiring writers

eMusic’s entry into the audiobooks market may help aspiring writers get an audience, though most of the top book publishing houses may stay away from the digital download site.

Starting September 18, audiobooks will be available from eMusic at a price of US$9.99, which is lower than the price for audiobooks at competitor Audible Inc. The music download site will likely try to further offer bargain prices on its audiobooks as it has done with its music downloads.

As eMusic uses the MP3 format and does not support DRM (digital rights management), it will very probably not have support from most of the big publishing companies, a problem that it faced with most of the large music labels, which shied away from offering their music on its site.

eMusic’s strategy around MP3 and DRM did not hurt the company. It is now the second largest vendor of online music downloads after Apple’s iTunes. That was because eMusic focused on small labels and aspiring musicians who were ready to trade DRM for an opportunity to feature on a popular site. Its low price also attracted a large number of users.

Apple Computer Inc. and Audible Inc., which is a large online site for downloading audiobooks, both use DRM technology. The DRM in downloads from iTunes blocks their use in devices other than the iPOD or iPhone.

Opposed for ideological reasons by a large section of Internet users, DRM is also found to be cumbersome by many who would like to rip CDs as often as they need to, and play the downloads on a variety of devices. Music companies, in particular, are seen to be using the online download route to curb the misuse of purchased music. Some of these restrictions are a far cry from the freedom still available to users to rip and mix, and copy to various devices tracks from traditional music CDs.

eMusic may hence be planning a re-run of its strategy with music. They are likely to aim at smaller publishers or aspiring authors some of whom may to start with just focus on audiobooks, rather than more expensive print editions of their books. eMusic has emerged as a filter for people looking for music, and now audiobooks, beyond what is sold by the big brands.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, while promoting lesser known artists, and now authors, eMusic will have to do a much better job than it is doing now in selecting talent, making its recommendations, and generally playing as a mentor to its customers.

eMusic will offer more than a thousand audiobooks from major audiobook publishers including Blackstone Audio, Hachette, Naxos Audiobooks, Penguin and Random House, with hundreds more to be added each week, it said in a statement. Subscribers will find regular reviews of the books by critics from top newspapers and magazines, it added.

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Finding gold on the Net is a long shot

Finding gold on the Net is a long shot

Do a search for “reggae” on YouTube and you find a large number of videos put up by aspiring musicians hoping for their place in the sun. Try a search for “Fado”, and you will of course find some clips from the celebrated Portuguese singer Amalia Rodrigues, but you will also find a number of amateur groups playing their own rendition of these songs.

Video sharing sites like YouTube, blog hosting sites like Blogger and WordPress, are a great opportunity for people to unleash their creativity and be heard or read. In a sense, it is “The Long Tail” unleashed, as the cost of putting your stuff out on the Internet has crashed dramatically, and the theoretical reach multiplied.

The Long Tail is the title of an article in October, 2004 in Wired Magazine by its editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, who later wrote a book by the same title.

The gist of the theory as explained by Anderson in his blog is that as the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare, he adds.

Video sharing, blogging sites, and other web sites dispensing entertainment have indeed made it possible for a lot of people, who believe they are creative, to go out and try to make an impact, at a very little cost. Publishing and distributing the content of this blog would have been close to impossible for me say five years ago when we were still tied to the economics of the print world.

But one upshot of the Long Tail is that apart from a few good upcoming musicians or writers or photographers or poets that are visible on the Internet, there are thousands of wannabes with little or no talent. This leads to a whole lot of clutter competing for our attention on the Internet. To find gold on the Internet you have to be as patient as panning for gold in an ocean.

Great, but as yet unknown talent, may also go unnoticed in the deafening contest for our attention. To be noticed and rewarded, the aspiring artist or writer may have to either advertise extensively, spending a lot of money, or yes, go up to one of the record labels or publishing houses, and hope they will sign a contract with him.

To get a break through the Internet, a musician still depends to a large extent on getting backed by the big brands, or some of the mid-range brands that have emerged. If you are a blogger, your chances are far higher if you are hosted, for example, by one of the top publications like BusinessWeek or CNet or Computerworld.

There is one possible way out for wannabes whose pluck more than make up for their lack of funds. Look out for new gatekeepers, that will filter out the chaos and the rubbish that abounds on the Net, and will, in fact, be your new age mentors and guides.

I am talking about folks like eMusic who offer Long Tail music on their web-site. These are the kind of companies that can do people on the Internet as well as upstart artists and writers a favor, by building a list of recommendations for the confused user.

But before they can emerge as effective gatekeepers to the Internet, these folks will have to build their own brands, and their credibility as mentors. eMusic has certainly built a solid brand, made all the more strong by AT&T offering downloads from eMusic on mobile phones. But it still has a long way to go to become a comprehensive source of advice on what music to buy.

Reviews by other users of the site are nice to read sometimes, but they don’t carry the same credibility as eMusic giving a recommendation on a musician, and giving a detailed explanation and reasons for the recommendation. eMusic does it for some of its music, but not all. For the rest you are generally groping in the dark, basing your buy-or-dump decision entirely on the few seconds preview eMusic offers.

If new and credible gatekeepers don’t emerge fast enough to help us find our way through the burst of creativity on the Internet, it will be an opportunity for the big brands again, whether the record labels or publishing houses, to act as arbiters of quality and good taste. After all, these are the brands we have traditionally used and trusted in some measure. But these established brands, with their focus on big hits, will certainly snuff out the creativity of the smaller guys on the net.