Amazon’s digital music downloads don’t come with anything to protect filesharing. So why are record labels selling their albums here cheaper than on iTunes?
The #1 selling album on Amazon’s digital store right now is the soundtrack to a little-seen film (Away We Go ), by a too-seldom heard artist (Alexi Murdoch). So why’s it selling? At $6.99*, it’s a cheap investment for an album that currently holds a 4 ½ star rating.
The same album goes for $9.99 on iTunes.
Amazon seems to be working hard to get the price down on titles. This is encouraging for those of us who still like to purchase music but find a price point one penny shy of ten bucks to be ridiculous.
Albums currently selling well for five bills include Beastie Boys’ classic Paul’s Boutique , Owl City’s embarrassing Ocean Eyes and the indie-dad-approved Yo Gabba Gabba’s Music Is Awesome .
The disparity between pricing with iTunes is puzzling. Jay Z’s The Blueprint 3 is currently $5.00 on Amazon and $9.99 at iTunes. Same price difference for Tim McGraw, Flight Of The Conchords and Grizzly Bear.
On top of their low-price model, Amazon has been rolling out plenty of free albums over the past few months. Most of the titles are garbage, but it’s a dizzying selection of garbage nonetheless, with 144 titles at last count.
If you’re going to low-dough album, I’d suggest The Gaslight Anthem’s The ’59 Sound . Currently one of the best live acts in the world, they’re about to enter the studio to record what music-folks are whispering could be the album of 2010. At five bucks, this one’s a steal.
*This title was $1.99 when we first posted the article but jumped shortly thereafter.
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6 Comments... join the discussion!
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Amazon is awesome. Basically, iTunes exploded and had so much power that the music labels got scared and ran to find another plausible option. Amazon has been the next-best competitor and so they’re giving Amazon better deals to try to pry some of iTunes enthusiasts (along with iTunes’ negotiating power) away from the place. I’m not really tied to a store. I buy it where it’s cheapest amazon/itunes/noisetrade whatever. I just use iTunes & my iPod to organize it cause its convenient.
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A lot of the free music at Amazon has been in the Classical music genre, so if you like Classical, you will probably find more than junk music. Songs from The Nutcracker plus singles like Blue Danube, Ave Maria, Fur Elise, and others performed by some great artists! Freebies and the songs I purchase, I just automatically import into the iTunes software. I recommend everyone try Amazon’s downloads over iTunes.
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Tom-
Great post. In addition, I’d point out the article Lola wrote a few weeks back on Goods about all the free music downloads on Amazon. I was able to download about 100 songs–mostly world music–from Amazon without paying a cent.
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Funny you should post about this. I’ve been streaming the Gaslight album off of MySpace for months, but finally anted up and bought it after it got posted on Amazon for $5.
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I love Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw album, Taylor has great song and she is pretty too.`:.
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