Today, Amazon announced the opening of it’s digital music store, which will be the fine purveyors of high quality 256kbps DRM free mp3’s. This means that the general public can now buy high quality, fully legal music, which can be played on any commercially available digital music player, burned to a CD, copied, moved, or whatever else you care to do with it.
Albums will range from $5.99 to $9.99, with the Top 100 albums going for a paltry (when compared to the exorbitant prices of CDs) $8.99. Individual songs go for 89c to 99c, with the Top 100 songs going for 89c.
The reason that I’m excited about this is the twofold. Fold number one being that people are finally realising that DRM only hurts people who buy music legally. It does not and will never prevent piracy. The second fold being that the same people are finally realising that the reason people illegally copy music is because the artificially inflated price of €20 for an album is just plain crazy.
Unfortunately, the store is only available in the US at the moment, but if all goes well, I can’t see why the wouldn’t roll out a worldwide store soon.
Check out Engadget’s article here, and Amazon’s brand spanking new store here.
-Dave.
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