iTunes vs Amazon

Amazon's MP3 store has the potential to become a big hit. MP3's with no DRM, cheaper per song and album price, and a large and growing selection means that iTunes is going to have some big competition. Apple has dominated the market to this point, but they're going to have to move quickly to keep up. Amazon even has an application to add your downloaded music to iTunes or Windows Media Player. Apple will be forced to keep up to compete and the winner in all of this will be the consumer.

Single Album: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, With Feeling

• iTunes: 11.99
• Amazon: 8.99

Double Album: Pink Floyd - The Wall

• iTunes: 16.99
• Amazon: 8.99

Single: Feist - 1234

• iTunes: .99
• Amazon: .89

The MP3 files are watermarked, but contain only that the song was purchased from Amazon.

A spokesperson for Amazon confirmed my theory that the unprotected MP3s it started selling today contain watermarks that identify the songs to a certain extent. According to an Amazon spokesperson, the watermark only contains data indicating that the MP3 was purchased at Amazon (in other words, there's nothing in the file that indicates who purchased it):

"Amazon does not apply watermarks. Files are generally provided to us from the labels and some labels use watermarks to identify the retailer who sold the tracks (there is no information on the tracks that identifies the customer)."

Since Amazon itself does not apply the watermarks, and labels presumably supply only one MP3 copy of any given song, there's no way for a label to directly identify and sue an individual if, say, someone were to steal that person's iPod and share its songs all over the internets.

Treating the customer as a customer and not as a lawbreaker is refreshing.