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Amazon never ceases to amaze me. Their MP3 store is the bomb - if you haven't been there, you should go there now. [pimpage] There's a widget on the lower right hand corner of this page that has several of my favorite songs listed, with a link that will take you to the Amazon MP3 store, where if you buy stuff, I'll get a few cents.[/pimpage].

The MP3s are (of course) DRM free, and excellent quality, and ten cents cheaper than iTunes. There is still a lot of musical space that's not overlapped, though, so don't cancel your iTunes account just yet! The purchase and download experience is fairly painless, and if you enable one-click purchasing, it's downright dangerous. At eighty-nine cents per track, they're approaching the level where "piracy" won't pay, for anyone. Considering the costs of bandwidth vs. classical physical distribution, I think the sweet spot will be about 25 cents per song.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don't think the RIAA/Music Industry see themselves as being "in trouble" - even though I think they are. I think they see digitization as an opportunity to increase their profit margin massively. It's so much less expensive to produce and ship digital files without the accompanying physicalities that if they can retain the same pricing structure (or similar), their profits will skyrocket.

But there's room here for the long tail to wag. If we make good directories that allow "anyone" to register their music (think iTunes - if you can afford to record, you can probably afford to get your music on iTunes via CDBaby) then we approach what I see as the ideal environment for musical creativity - hundreds of artists making $100k a year, instead of a few making $10m a year. There will still be those that make "big bucks" because their music hits the internet "buzz", but there will be many more that develop a small, devoted following that will buy new releases. Then there will be those whose music doesn't speak to enough people to make a living, but certainly support a hobbyist. And some people (let's face it) just suck out loud. But the point is, we'll be approaching music as a community, as a conversation, rather than as consumers who can only really chose from the crap presented on the plate.

The agreements that Amazon has with the IP owners (Record Labels) are extremely beneficial to Amazon as they affect competition with iTunes. iTunes has a stranglehold on the digital distribution market, and the Record Labels have realized the dangerous territory they're negotiating - Amazon's deals are a means of limiting the power that iTunes can wield against the Labels. But we benefit, and I think, in the long run, the Labels are going to find themselves in a price war - with themselves, if they try and keep iTunes under control.

Anyway, we get decent prices out of it, and both Amazon and iTunes are kicking ass and taking names. Load up that iPod or iRiver or what have you and listen up. Music is good for you.