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General discussion

Amazon to join the Digital Music Revolution

Feb 16, 2006 2:55AM PST

Slashdot posted an article today about Amazon's venture into the Digital Music biz, possibly intending to dethrone the iPod. Now I am NO Mac enthusiast by any means, however, Apple has built en EMPIRE of the CLEAN, BASIC, simplicity of everything they touch. Even if it does cost 5 times its PC counterpart, every product from Apple is a beauty to behold. And I am not speaking esthetically either. Everything about their products is beautiful. Performance, Feature Set, Ease of Use, and overall presentation are trademarks of Apple?s Products. The iPod is the Pinnacle of ALL of these features. It is Easy to use, clean, elegant, uncluttered and simple. Everything that Amazon is not. Amazon sells plenty, but there is NOTHING elegant about how they do it. That site is one of the most cluttered, messy, busy, ad-infested, NON User Friendly experiences I have ever embarked upon. I hardly see Amazon taking on iTunes and the almighty Pod and being even remotely successful. They are sure to make a very small splash, and be added to the other waves of non-descript players in the Digital Music seas, forever doomed to wash ashore on the island of greatness that is the iPod.

Discussion is locked

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Consumers keep losing
Feb 16, 2006 7:12AM PST

The real problem in all this is the utter lack of any kind of standards.

The iPod only plays .mov and .m4v movie files.

Most of these new "PlaysForSure" mp3 players are tied to Microsoft's WMV

Apple didn't want to license out their fairplay DRM so now everyone else is lining up with MS. You would have thought that Apple learned their lesson when they handed the OS victory to MS by not playing nice in that arena.

However these companies wants to implement DRM is their business. I don't care. But I would like to be able to take my home made video and convert it to ONE format that all media players can play. MPEG4...h264...Whatever!!! I don't care which one. Someone just decide and let me know!!!

Is that asking too much?

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Amen
Feb 16, 2006 11:16AM PST

I totally agree. The one thing that utterly drives me insane is the fact that there is not a standard.

However, my solution has been to just use whichever one is convenient for me. I know I may lose an audience member or two...but, I cannot deal with all the fuss.

Windows users have to get a program to play QuickTime files whether its QuickTime Alternative or the real QuickTime. Mac users have to get Windows Media Player or MS's plugins for QuickTime (which I have read breaks the thing). Linux users have to download and install ALL the codecs, so...

For me, I just use WMV, it works for me. If the content is THAT important, the listener will come to your site and get it and watch it on their computer (or at least, I would)

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We'll see
Feb 16, 2006 10:48AM PST

I saw that too. It is interesting, but it is too early to say anything until there are more details about the hardware and service. We shall see...

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New Store Layout
Feb 16, 2006 11:10AM PST

They could simply make a separate store for their music store and if they are going to make a music store, that would be their best bet at success.

They could then open up the store so the Songbird player, Windows Media Player and other players alike could easily allow the purchase of music from their store.

Regarding the Songbird player, I love the look and feel of it. I agree though that it needs a "1 account" model if you'll excuse the lack of better term. However, I think that the problem they are having is what I mentioned in the previous paragraph...the openess of music stores.