Amazon kicks iTunes in the butt

I'm trialling Vodafone's MusicStation with my Samsung F700. £1.99 ($4) a week for unlimited music downloads.

Rob (#8),

I agree whole-heartedly on your comments re: eMusic.

Further, eMusic bests Amazon and iTunes by having no time threshold at all. No matter how long the song is, it's still just one download.

I don't know what the cutoff time is (I think it may be 7 minutes), but after that threshold Amazon simply bumps the price of the track up, whereas iTunes doesn't sell it at all, making it album only. I have found exceptions to the rule above on both sites, but it seems to hold true a lot of the time.

I prefer Amazon's approach. Ideally, it would still be 99 cents no matter how long it is, but I can see the idea of crossing some sort of time threshold. In Amazon's case they stil let you buy the song, it just costs a little more. In iTunes case they don't let you buy it at all.

This may have to do with Jobs not wanting any price other than 99 cents. However, while that made things easy when the iTunes store was opened in 2003, it makes less sense now. After all, iTunes already introduced a second price for DRM-free songs (they've since changed it).

As for the album price, I've seen plenty of examples where Amazon or iTunes has a lower price an any given alum. My advice would always be to check both stores before buying (assuming iTunes has it DRM free, otherwise I'd go with Amazon).

I can't wait to see one year of data on downloads aggregated for itunes vs amazon... I really think itunes is still going to beat amazon no matter what because starbucks is going to start offering instant downloads via free wifi connections in store on songs currently playing... do you know how many starbucks there are and how many continue to be birthed daily (over 20 new stores per day around the world and that is a conservative estimate)

Amazon is the only major service I can't use and I live in a US territory and use US dollars as currency (Puerto Rico). I was able to download for the first few days the service started working then it stopped, saying that new geographic restrictions did not allow Amazon to sell to me! Its a stupid restriction and even if they remove it I may not use the service for a good long while.

While I agree whole-heartedly that Amazon beats iTunes when the same music is available on both, I've found that 4 out of 5 times Amazon doesn't offer what I'm looking for. Also, eMusic has them both beat for user experience because you can easily mark stuff for later, surf for new music horizontally, and because (most important part) if you buy a song and then want the album they don't charge you twice. You can download the same song over and over again - no cost.

I agree. Unbox still sucks as a movie download service, though. Here's hoping Amazon can make their movie download service more like their MP3 download service.

Dario highlights that Amazon online downloads only apply to the US and not us Europeans.

Elsewhere it has been commented that Amazon often has album only downloads so Omar's selective comparison may be one-sided. And let's not forget that Apple offers digital booklets with many album purchases as well as videos.

I rely on Amazon to keep iTunes up to the mark in terms of not abusing its majority-share of the online download market. Somehow, judging from Amazon's own best sellers lists of digital music players, it isn't doing all that well at present. Quite telling, don't you think?

@scobleizer,

Check out my comparison from September

http://abhishek.tiwari.com/2007/09/26/089-on-am...

This is available for Us and for the other countries? :-)

Damn, beat me to it Al.

Proper link http://www.shahine.com/omar/AmazonVsITunes.aspx

Edit your link please. It currently reads
http://http//www.shahine.com/omar/AmazonVsITune...