Amazon Signs Big Name to Its Download Service

The download part of the music industry is pretty much divided, but somewhat monopolistic. I know that sounds weird, but it's pretty much comparable to the situation Yahoo! and Google have going on between them, when it comes to covering the Internet services that each provides.

The top dog is, of course, Apple's iTunes store and somewhere in the back, where the light is fuzzy and weak, Amazon starts making a name for itself. At the moment, it doesn't look like much of a push from behind that should worry the industry leader, but nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction from the Seattle based e-commerce company.

Amazon.com has signed on Warner Music Group Corp to its music download service and the songs began being available as of Thursday on the Amazon MP3 service. What the September launched service from Amazon does more than the iTunes store is that its songs are sold for all the portable media players, not just for the iPod. Oh, yeah, that and that the songs are actually cheaper than the 99 cents standard imposed by Apple. One million tracks of the almost three is a full 89 cents and you will soon get to purchase them by using regular Amazon.com gift cards.

Artists signed with Warner Music are, among others, Red Hot Chilly Peppers and Linkin Park and their tracks are now, you know it, downloadable via the service I've mentioned above. According to Reuters, "Customers 'can feel confident' their songs will play on whatever music device they buy in 2008", said Pete Baltaxe, Amazon's director of digital music. "We're very pleased with where we are", Baltaxe said of customer adoption of the music service, though he would not provide data on downloads to date or site traffic.