“Last week, various news outlets picked up the story that the world’s top online retailer, Amazon.com, is planning its own digital download service to complement its CD sales. Details are sketchy, but music industry executives believe that the Amazon service will be based on Microsoft Windows Media Player (WMP) technology and that it may offer some new twists, such as an Amazon-branded digital player provided free to monthly music subscribers,” Carl Howe of Blackfriars Communications writes for The Conumer Electronincs Stock Blog. “The reaction was predictable: Watch out Apple, a new Internet-savvy competitor is about to join the party and capture a chunk of the growing digital download business.”
“But is all the hype about an Amazon product justified? Many other major brands have taken on Apple and are failing. For example, Wal-Mart, the largest and most important physical distributor of CDs in the US market, has offered digital downloads for years and has had almost no impact on the market. Napster, the brand that launched the digital download revolution (the illegal, file sharing revolution), is also struggling to make a profit. Massive, global brands like McDonald’s have offered free downloads that relied on Microsoft music solutions, and they have all been complete and utter flops,” Howe writes. “Let’s examine the three pieces of the digital download puzzle that make Amazon unlikely to make much headway, even with its consumer-friendly brand.”
Full article here.
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