“Last month, Amazon rolled out a promotion highlighting 69-cent new release tracks in its MP3 download store, an apparent effort to draw market share from Apple in the digital download market that has long been dominated by the iTunes Store,” Eric Slivka reports for MacRumors. “The pricing significantly undercuts Apple’s own pricing, which typically comes in at $1.29 for popular new tracks.”
Slivka reports, “Amazon has made another push today with a ‘Daily Deal’ offering the new Lady Gaga album, ‘Born This Way,’ for only $0.99 through the Amazon MP3 Store. The special price is available for today only and compares to the $11.99 price point for the standard album in the iTunes Store, where an expanded edition is also available for $15.99.”
Read more in the full article here.
Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” via Amazon ($0.99, today only) here.
Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way (Bonus Track Version)” via Apple’s iTunes Store ($15.99) here.
MacDailyNews Take: At least with iTunes Store, you actually get the downloads. Amazon must be getting slammed as their Mac OS X MP3 Downloader downloads nothing and alternates between repeatedly saying “Download failed. Retry download; if problem persists contact customer service” and “Can’t connect. Please contact customer service.” For those who value their time, this could end up costing more than the $15 you’re “saving.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Well, I took the bait on this one. I will never buy music from Amazon again. I’m glad this was just a $.99 lesson (plus what the cost of fill-in tracks cost from iTunes — $1.29 x 2?).
I was prompted to first save this purchase to my cloud drive. I declined this as I wasn’t sure how all that worked yet. I was then prompted to download some MP3 downloader app that negotiates the downloads and places the music in my iTunes folders.
That was yesterday. I kept getting download errors on certain tracks. So I kept re-running that damned program over and over. I tried in NC before my trip to Phoenix. Got all tracks but six. I managed to get two more downloaded via Wifi on the airplane. And I got two more to download from my hotel room. I had two tracks left, and I was already swearing “Never again!”.
I am now getting “download no longer available” errors on the last two tracks. Appears too much time has gone by between purchase and download. No s**t, Amazon!
As always, Apple and iTunes don’t appear to have anything to worry about .. LOL
So um, how might Lady gaga feel about this? Its gotta suck a little bit to hear your album is being given away for 99¢.
This actually worked to iTunes’ benefit.
I bought the album, figuring 99 cents would never be missed. I wasn’t able to download it at all this morning. I’ve since lost interest in Lady Gaga or amazon cloud or any digital download from Amazon. I know from experience that Apple would never have let this happen.
Better luck next time, Amazon.
I just love her music, she is the best and because i have real online employment which is writing articles for real company’s with real pay checks. I always try to get jobs writing about her.