Amazon has now expanded its DRM-free MP3 store to Germany, and the service has launched today with 5 million tracks.
Full albums are priced competitively, with the 2000 most popular selling for under €5. The top selling album, Stadtaffe by Peter Fox, is currently selling for €4.89. The top paid download is Lady Gaga’s international hit “Poker Face,” which is selling for €0.97.
“We’re excited to provide our German customers with even more ways to discover and enjoy great music at the same destination where they can buy millions of CDs,” added Amazon EU retail VP Greg Greeley in a statement. “Amazon MP3 offers a vast selection of DRM-free a-la-carte music from major and independent labels, ready to enjoy in seconds with any hardware device in high-quality audio.”
According to the German music industry trade body Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BMI), digital album sales exploded in 2008, moving up to 3.9 million units, a 50 percent increase.
“Amazon’s emphasis on ease of use, consumer choice and satisfaction has won their brand a high level of popularity and credibility with music fans,” noted Bernd Dopp, chairman and CEO Warner Music Central and Eastern Europe. “Amazon MP3 is an exciting development in the evolution of this dynamic online retail experience. The platform now offers a compelling range of digital as well as physical formats from our world class roster of artists, while ensuring that the downloads bought can be played on any device.”
Result for: full albums
Amazon today has expanded their popular Amazon MP3 store to the UK, marking the first time the store had been available outside the US.
The store will be almost identical to its American counterpart and will sell DRM-free MP3 tracks and albums that can be played in any media player.
The launch of the site is missing many artists’ catalogs but Amazon says they will be adding music regularly.
Another interesting note is the pricing. Apple’s iTunes charges a fixed price of £0.79 per song but Amazon will charge between £0.59p and £0.80p “depending on the currency and popularity of the content.”
Full albums are steeply discounted and can sell for as low as £3 for major groups.
The large e-tailer expects to expand the store into other countries in the next year including Canada, France and Japan.
Result for: full albums
The RIAA has declared complete victory over the infamous Russian music download store AllofMP3 which was accused of selling tracks but not giving any of the proceeds to the artists or record labels.
At its peak, the site had 6 million users who legally downloaded songs and full albums for cheaper than 1/3 the price of iTunes or Amazon. The RIAA said however that the record labels and the artists were not seeing any of this money and filed complaints to get the WTO to shut the site down. In 2007, the site was shut down and the RIAA praised the decision. However, in October of that year, the site was acquitted of any charges and a district court in Moscow confirmed the innocent verdict after an appeal by the record industry group. Despite being innocent, the site shut down and no longer offers music.
It now appears that this week the RIAA dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit against AllofMP3 and claimed victory.
“The site is now defunct and out of business, the result of a successful anti-piracy initiative,” Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman said.
That may be true, but following the media AllofMP3 received, almost a dozen similar sites have sprung up and are currently fully operational. Even funnier, the founders of AllofMP3 have started a new site called Mp3Sparks which operates exactly the same as the now “defunct” AllofMP3 did.
Talking about the dropping of the lawsuit, John Crossman, representative of the site’s owner, MediaServices LLC says, “They [RIAA] never correctly commenced the proceeding in the first place…Maybe it was a rare triumph of good sense.”
