
Amazon’s Music Download Site is Cheaper Than iTunes 78% of the Time - uladzislau
http://dealnews.com/features/Anyone-Who-Buys-Music-Online-from-the-iTunes-Music-Store-Is-an-Idiot/801384.html
======
brownbat
I have no idea how to even give Apple money for music without installing
iTunes, which always struck me as bloatware.

Building a device, a software music player, and a marketplace that all require
each other was a brilliant strategy to reap monopoly profits, but it might not
be the most pro-consumer strategy...

~~~
kaolinite
You either install iTunes or you use someone else. Apple aren't interested in
catering to 100 different music applications and 1000 different music devices
- either join the ecosystem and gain the advantages, or don't. That strategy
doesn't sit well with some people but for most consumers, it's the easiest way
to get songs on their phone reliably and in good quality. The same also goes
for films, TV shows, etc, with Apple TV.

I agree though, the iTunes software is pretty awful and even worse on Windows
I hear.

~~~
bane
> Apple aren't interested in catering to 100 different music applications and
> 1000 different music devices

They don't really have to. Put up a storefront on the web like every other
21st century company and let people download mp3s and flacs and they're good
to go.

A simple mp3->iDevice utility is all it would take to simplify importing onto
a device and even better you should just be able to cloudplay purchased iTunes
songs on your iDevice and/or download/push to the device directly.

iTunes serves almost no purpose in a modern world.

~~~
aroman
You're saying this as if Apple is some naive newcomer to the world of online
music.

> iTunes serves almost no purpose in a modern world.

Seriously? iTunes _invented_ modern online music distribution. It
singlehandedly heralded in the age of digital music distribution.

Just because you don't like the fact that you can't download music from them
without using their (very good, in my experience) music player doesn't mean
it's useless or their strategy is broken.

They know exactly what you've outlined, and they knew it long before you did.
Why don't they do it? Because it's antithetical to their business model.
Simple as that.

~~~
bane
> Because it's antithetical to their business model. Simple as that.

I agree. Their model is built around locking consumers into this artificial
and, these days, complete unnecessary workflow.

The next model Apple will have to go to is simple, the competitors are already
there: iTunes on the web, cloud stream to your iDevice. But even then this
will only work so long as iTunes continues to offer exclusive content that you
can't get elsewhere, and that's also rapidly diminshing . As a content
provider would _you_ like to be locked into one platform or show up on as many
as possible?

> iTunes invented modern online music distribution.

So? Their model is now, quite frankly and charitably, old fashioned. The
_only_ current purpose of which these days is to try and keep people from
fleeing to other, better, platforms.

~~~
aroman
> The only current purpose of which these days is to try and keep people from
> fleeing to other, better, platforms.

I can't refute this claim any more than you can back it up, so lets not waste
our fingers on an argument about it. I agree with everything else you said,
though.

~~~
bane
Honest question though, and not meant to be argumentative (you already know my
thinking on it). What does iTunes do for consumers that the other competing
methods (online storefront, stream cloud to device, etc.) don't?

~~~
threeseed
Provide a great experience.

Trying to explain to my parents how to get a music file from their browser
downloads folder into iTunes would be challenging to say the least. However
saying just click this button to Buy and it will be in your Recently Added
playlist is much easier.

~~~
wprl
Perhaps it's a matter of taste but I was thinking yesterday that the iTunes
app reminds of the old dial-in AOL.

------
lmg643
I've been buying Mp3s from amazon for years - and the amazon downloader loads
them to itunes seamlessly.

i started using amazon when itunes had a problem downloading MP3s properly - i
keep my mp3 library on a NAS drive and amazon would write the file to C:
before moving to the network, never seemed to have a problem. Itunes had a
problem with this for a year or so before it seemed to resolve. itunes support
was not helpful with this.

Plus - amazon has no conversion issues. i sometimes speed up songs for running
using audacity, and you need to convert mp4s to mp3s before you can do this.
with amazon - no conversion required.

not to mention that it is cheaper, sometimes 5.49 vs 9.99 for an album.

and now you can use the amazon cloudplayer from any computer. and they were
giving away a special on cloud storage so i uploaded a copy of my old MP3s to
amazon.

~~~
decklin
If you open an MP3, speed it up in Audacity, and save it as an MP3, you are
still re-encoding it and decreasing quality, which is what I assume you mean
by "conversion".

After any processing step, you should save to a lossless format to avoid this.
You can start with whatever format you want (AAC from iTunes and MP3 from
Amazon are pretty indistinguishable in subjective quality.)

Better yet, use a portable player that can change playback speed on the fly
while decoding. (many "DJ" apps, a hardware player than can run Rockbox, etc.)

~~~
anigbrowl
Realistically, he's not going to notice the marginal quality loss when he's
jogging.

------
iyulaev
Is anyone else bothered by the lack of lossless audio availability on Amazon
and other music distributors? This has been a stumbling point for me. Why
doesn't Amazon offer FLAC or similar? I can't imagine the bandwidth and
storage requirements are beyond what they can (inexpensively) handle.

For this reason I've been really excited about bandcamp. That and it makes it
really easy for (actually) independent artists to distribute their music.

~~~
zanny
mp3s are good enough for most people. I'm included in that group - I don't
perceive the difference between 128kbps mp3s, 96kbps opus, 320kbps mp3s, or
flac (though below 128kbps mp3 I hear the difference). At least on my
integrated sound cards (I got a creative x-fi card once to see if I noticed
the difference on $120 speakers, I didn't). I also only really get $30 - 60
speakers that carry 25w and have some reasonable quality to them, but I'm not
an audiophile.

So my entire collection varies from 128kbps mp3s to vbr mp3s and a few flac
files in there, but whenever I download something off bandcamp I get the
vorbis 128kbps versions because I can't hear the difference.

Amazon should at least make flac a non-default download option. Everyone
having lossy copies of music isn't good for the long term preservation of said
music.

~~~
freerobby
You will notice the difference if you ever want to move your music to a better
format in the future (due to transcoding losses). With FLAC you would not have
this problem.

~~~
zanny
This is true, I do eventually want to move it to opus if they ever resolve the
random seek issues with the codec since it gets better compression ratios and
more importantly is open.

But I also figure my 60gb of mp3s would be at least 400gb or more as flac,
though given how cheap storage space is that may not be an issue. I guess I
should start trying to collect flac music after all!

------
koudi
Amazon's Music is also essentially unavailable outside US (currently ~8
countries compared to ~120).

------
bgilroy26
Probably relevant: Amazon's "$10" albums are $9.49 whereas iTunes "$10" albums
are 9.99

From the article, the average savings is $1.08, so I think those 50c make up a
large part of the population of savings.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Those 50c saving bring the average DOWN since they're below the average
savings of $1.08. On average, Amazon is an even better deal than just a 50c
cheaper album.

------
codex
Amazon has to compete on price because they don't own the device. They never
recovered from the iPod disrupting their CD business. Actually, I don't think
they know how to compete on anything else. Their entire MO is avoiding
competition with other tech companies by entering business too unattractive
for the power players. For example, digital media (books, music, movies) is a
terrible business, because bits are the essence of commodity.

~~~
dirkgently
> They never recovered from the iPod disrupting their CD business.

What? Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't Amazon sell few more things than
just audio CDs? Also, isn't it 2013, or is it just me?

~~~
mwfunk
It's just you, it's not 2013.

------
mark_l_watson
I switched from iTunes to Amazon for music years ago, mostly on price.

One thing I don't like: Amazon has local music players for PC, iPad, iPhone,
and Android -- but not for OSX. On my MacBook air I need to use the web
interface which fails if I am offline. I suppose I could use the downloader
and put them in iTunes.

I do like the idea of buying music, audible books, and Kindle books and always
having them available. I think Amazon is miles ahead of Apple iTunes and
Google Play.

------
hclee
Here in Korean market, streaming service dominates. Many iPhone users have not
even used iTunes. Why? $5/month music service gives you access to most K pops.
Thats it. $5/month subscription for most musics. Depending on market
conditions, a little lower priced downloading seems pointless But I use iTunes
(iradio) as i have U.S. Account.

~~~
vannevar
Streaming is going to dominate the US market, too. Between Netflix and
Spotify, iTunes is in serious trouble. It's not clear to me that Apple has a
viable response---iTV seems to be in limbo, and iTunes Match seems like window
dressing. Apple bought some time for the old music publishing model but that
time is running out.

~~~
rsynnott
To an extent, iTunes has done what it needed to do; it helped make iPods and
then iPhones viable. By all reports, it's pretty low-margin (for a while, it
was apparently negative margin), and was more about selling the devices than
anything else.

------
eikenberry
People are paying for the convenience and ease of use of these services.
Amazon because everyone knows it and it has good search capability.
Apple/iTunes due to the nice integrated experience apple provides, from store
to device.

Apple provides the superior service and thus can command the higher price.

~~~
angrycoder
I don't know how Apple has the 'integrated experience' advantage. When I buy
mp3's on Amazon I can download them to my PC, leave them in the cloud and
stream them over the web, or download/stream them to any iOS or Android device
using their cloud app. Apple gives me similar features, but only if I stay in
the iOS/OSX ecosystem.

Last year, amazon put the mp3's for around 70% of the cd's I bought from them
over the past 15 years into their cloud for free. When apple removed DRM from
the iTunes store, they wanted me to pay over $300 to unlock my collection.

Amazon also lets me upload my own collection into their cloud and gives me the
same streaming and download capacity across any device just as if I had bought
the songs from them.

I don't see how Apple wins on price, features, or experience.

~~~
testbro
In a phrase: "does this just go into my iTunes then?". A large majority of
Apple's customers presumably doesn't care about anything you mention, given by
the simplicity of the iTunes model: you get music from the same place you
listen to it and you put it on your iPod from there too.

The strategy of "few things, well executed" seems to be working fairly well
too.

------
myko
I used Amazon's Music for a long time on Android before switching to Google
Music. Their stuff was generally a lot cheaper, and still is - but their
Android apps are terrible across the board, so I made the switch.

------
wanderr
Has anyone noticed that thanks to AutoRip, you can often more cheaply get MP3s
by buying the physical CD than you could by buying the MP3s directly?

------
gnicholas
This may be true, but iTunes gift cards can often be had at a discount—I just
picked up $100 in GC for $80. I've not seen the same for Amazon GCs, although
there used to be small-dollar promotions back when Amazon was ramping up the
business.

~~~
roryokane
The article mentions this iTunes gift card strategy, in the paragraph starting
with “But if a shopper insists on buying music from iTunes exclusively…”

------
JosephHatfield
I stopped buying music over a year ago after signing up for Spotify, and after
copying over 500 CDs to AAC format files recently, I'm not sure I'll be buying
much music after this.

------
denzil_correa
IMO, the difference here is that Apple has iTunes - a music player on all of
its iOS devices. Amazon only sells the music but lacks a software like iTunes.

~~~
officemonkey
Amazon MP3 downloader moves all your purchased tunes into iTunes for your
enjoyment.

Of course, nothing prevents you from using the music on any other player.

BTW, what are the other players out there? Anybody using Winamp? Songbird?

~~~
nightpool
A lot of less technical music geeks prefer winamp, but as a more technical
user I really love Foobar2000. doesn't have any of the flashy UI of other
player, but the UX is really top notch once you learn your way around it. My
favorite part is how it adheres to the pythonic principle of "Explicit is
better then implicit" in playback. You have your library and your playlist,
and you play things my adding them to your playlist from your library. Dead
simple, and easy to do plenty of complicated stuff with. Also it has a huge
plugin community, and can even cater to every audiophile whim, if you swing
that way.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Urgh: windows. What do the OSX geeks who don't much like iTunes use?

~~~
rikkus
Cog is decent enough. It's no foobar2000 though

------
wprl
Beatport is more expensive ~100% of the time but has better music.

------
epa
"Your margin is my opportunity" -Jeff Bezos

------
rismay
You sure it's not 78% of the time it's cheaper every time?

