Amazon MP3 Launches With £3 Albums!
Amazon has finally joined the digital download race in the UK with today’s launch of their Amazon MP3 service. From today, there will be millions of songs from chart hits to smooth classics available on the site, with some of the top MP3 albums available for only £3 and new singles for 59p!
The US retailer is somewhat late to the party, however, being beaten to market by both Play.com and 7digital, as well as offering MP3s at a lower bitrate, something that rival online retailer 7digital’s CEO Ben Drury was quick to remark upon…
“We’d like to congratulate Amazon UK for finally entering the MP3 market albeit a little late. We announced on September 16th that we were the first in Europe to achieve this. It’s great that general retailers like Amazon clearly recognise the importance of digital music for consumers and the MP3 universal music format which works on all devices.”
“7digital.com’s sole aim is to provide consumers with a first rate music delivery service because that’s what we are and what we know. Their MP3 downloads are only 256kps quality so they are not delivering the high quality 320kps MP3’s unlike 7digital.com.
“Amazon’s entry into the market is good news for the digital music consumer and will help accelerate the migration from physical format to digital. This is another victory for MP3 and another blow for iTunes - that doesn’t offer MP3s at all.”
Wow. Competition is supposed to be healthy. Ben sounds like he wants to bite someone.
Still, this £3 special offer for new releases are sure to attract shoppers a fair amount (if they don’t already dabble with dodgy Russian sites), but is the ‘all you can eat’ service offered by Nokia’s Comes With Music the new way to keep phones topped up with new tunes?
Tags: digital downloads, MP3