Not too suprising. IMO, the main reason Itunes is popular is because it's bundled with every Ipod sold. It's like the "default" music store for tons of people, kind of like how Internet Explorer is so popular.

It's not like MP3 listeners care much about quality anyway, if they did they wouldn't be listening to MP3s. :P

I'd really like Amazon MP3s to be available here in the UK. I've never really got into iTunes purchasing, as I don't like the idea of DRM possibly biting me in the ass a few years down the line. I have been buying tracks from the smaller DRM-free vendors, like Play.com and TuneTribe, but their selection isn't exactly huge.

I still like buying music on CD, where at least I know I have a lossless copy sitting somewhere gathering dust.

Am I weird??

I have said it before and I'll say it again - Apple has a choke-hold on the Music Industry. This company has actually created a hardware product platform that is worth more to the customer than the content itself. This is a complete flip from the hey-day of the Walkman. With Apple's proprietary DRM, Music Industry has to goto iTunes or "face the music" with DRM-free MP3 (which are compatible with iPods.)

Thus the DRM that the Music Industry has been in bed with from inception has now reared its ugly head on itself (a double-edge sword as you can say).

Apple controls the music now, not the Music Industry (Rip, Mix, Burn).

Advertising? ( I haven't seen any)

I think if amazon did some advertising then it would probably help change those numbers a lot...

I immediately switched to amazon as soon as it was released. I would only buy from itunes sparingly and i would quickly convert them to mp3. Yes, I know i lost quality in the song, but the fact that i can put it in any mp3 player, play it in any software media player is paramount. Which is why I love amazon. Anything you download from amazon requires zero effort and automatically imports into Itunes or Windows Media Player.

Plus their songs are cheaper.

I do evangelize to all my friends and none of them have heard of it before. If amazon advertised this, they would significantly increase their marketshare. My guess is part of the deal to put the songs in mp3 format is to not advertise. :P

I buy from Amazon occassionally. iTunes is better with it's integrated and dedicated focus on music. I still buy a fair amount of stuff (not just music) from Amazon, but their interface just sucks in most cases, and other vendors are much, much better in helping you find or analyze choices in specialized areas, not to mention being less cluttered. If Amazon had a simple and dedicated interface for finding, buying, saving, and archiving music while integrating with software and hardware music players, they'd be, well, a player. But until they do, iTunes rules the roost.

I totally hear you on that copy gathering dust. I keep hearing the digital movie downloads will replace DVD but I just don't see it yet. I don't mind if I loose a 99cent song I got on iTunes, but if I loose the movie I paid 7 dollar for because my hard-drive dies and I can't get it back, I'll be ticked.

I like having the DVD (and now BRD) in my hand. I can loan it to reletives, hang it on the wall, cover it in peanut butter and eat it. None of those I can do with a digital downloaded movie.

I hardley ever use my Time Warner (5.99 a movie) download. Maybe I'm cheap, but 6 dolars is to much to pay for a movie rental that goes away in 48 hours.

That's a problem with being a late entrant to a fad/craze, you get crumbs.

I'm going to hazard that most early ipod adopters already have a large collection of tunes that pre-date Amazon's mp3 service and don't really see the need in buying it again. They also don't see an issue with DRM...yet.

The only real issue I have is it really hard to redownload content. Bought something and my browser screwed up on the download process and had to go through this big hassle. The only way I found to redownload content was to either purchase it again(easiest) or the insane process of contacting customer service and them reactivating the link so you can redownload the file.

The Amazon store is only one piece of the puzzle in order to get people to switch from the iTunes store. This news really doesn't surprise me.

iTunes is a library, a player management tool, a podcast downloader, and a store. If somebody would roll the Amazon store into an application similar to iTunes, we might have something there.

Is there an API that the Amarok project could use? How about an iTunes-ish tool from Sandisk that pulls from the Amazon store?

It's still early in the game for Amazon. I'm curious to see what happens.

-SF

It probably has something to do with idiots who own ipods not knowing that you can get music elsewhere and play on said ipods. Amazon needs to let them know there are alternatives. I bought an ipod for my idiot daughter (making me an idiot too), everything that comes with it seems to imply that iTunes is the only place you can get music for it.