Amazon’s Music Download Site is Cheaper Than iTunes 78% of the Time

[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.

[notatoad]

It's a pro-consumer strategy for a specific set of consumers. if you're the sort of person who wants to choose a music player, buy your music elsewhere.

there's a very large market for whom "what music player should i use" is not a question they ever want to have to ask themselves. Apple does an excellent job of making sure they never have to.

[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.)

[tomrod]

That's a great solution. I run into an issue with Linux -- Itunes support is slipshod with WINE. Beyond moving to Windows or OSX, any suggestions?

[gav]

I too prefer buying from Amazon, for mostly the same reasons. I had assumed that it was saving me money too, so I checked the last 8 albums I bought:

   Amazon | iTunes
    6.99  | 6.99
    9.49  | 9.99
    7.99  | 7.99
    5.00* | 7.99
    5.00* | 7.99
    7.99  | 7.99
    5.99  | 7.99
    7.99  | 7.99

* Part of their X albums for $5 promotion.

So it seems that iTunes is a lot more price competitive than I thought.

[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.

[Daiz]

Count me in. It's absolutely ridiculous that CDs, which have existed for over 30 years already, still offer higher quality audio than you can generally buy digitally. It's a sad truth in general that if you want high quality digital media, you'll either have to buy and rip physical products yourself or resort to piracy - this is true for both audio and video, especially the latter - hell, with video you can barely even BUY anything digitally since it's all either streaming or files DRM up the bum (both of which are ultimately just renting).

In case of music, the Bandcamp model should really be the default - one price allows you to get the product in whatever common format you want, be that lossless FLAC or just bog-standard MP3. It would definitely make me buy a helluva lot more music than I currently do. (Though sadly most of the music I listen to would probably still be completely unavailable to me legally thanks to the wonders of region locking, which is another one of those damn things that makes digital media way worse than what it could potentially be.)

[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.

[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.

[jonknee]

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

Considering they have large market share in both physical and digital music I would say they recovered just fine. Amazon has also sold a lot of iPods.

[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?

[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.

[mrich]

Spotify is very popular in Europe, I really wonder why people still buy albums when you can get access to a huge catalogue for a relatively small monthly fee. Of course some albums are not available but I guess it will improve over time.

[bsdetector]

It's also trivial to automatically rip streamed tracks (with song, artist, album info). It took about 5 min each to scrape info from rhapsody, rdio, spotify, etc or there are existing tools to do this.

These people on "hacker" news concerned over price aren't very good hackers or are too milk-toast to be hackers. Maybe y'all need a few "how to rip music in Go" posts?

Even with Amazon you are still throwing your money away buying music at $1/song.

[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.

[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.

[RobAtticus]

Do you mean specifically for iOS? Amazon has a mp3 app for Android and has its cloud player that works on other devices as well.

[InclinedPlane]

"Amazon cloudplayer" can play MP3s you've purchased on your phone, on the web, or on a windows/mac client. It can also be used to purchase new songs or as a media player of other music (from any source) on your pc or phone.

[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?

[chromejs10]

Amazon does have an iOS app as well as Android and PC.

[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?