If Amazon is serious about music downloads

3 comments

1. Eric Wahlforss » Blog Archive » Amazon should buy eMusic and last.fm! says:

   May 17, 2007 at 10:49 pm

   […] Agreed. […]

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2. 

   Frank Hecker says:

   May 17, 2007 at 11:03 pm

   (I guess my first comment got caught in the spam filter, so I’ll post again without links.)

   Rumors of Amazon acquiring eMusic were rife a couple of months ago, but are now deemed dead, at least for now. Hypebot had a lot of coverage of this (search for “amazon” and “emusic”) and I posted a lot about this on Swindleeeee.com as well (check out the “amazon” category). The net net as far as I’m concerned is that the eMusic subscription model wouldn’t fit well into Amazon’s current model, and Amazon could duplicate most if not all of eMusic’s features on its own.

   In my opinion Amazon opening up a digital download store is all about integrated sales of digital tracks/albums and CDs, leveraging Amazon’s existing music recommendation features, and cross-selling MP3 devices. I don’t think Amazon will threaten Apple and the iTunes Store in the near term, but it could definitely eclipse eMusic as the number 2 service.

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3. 

   Frank Hecker says:

   May 17, 2007 at 11:06 pm

   One more comment: Paul Lamere of Sun had a great post on Amazon back in January on his “Duke Listens!” blog, from his perspective as someone doing research on music discovery, metadata, etc. Well worth checking out.

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