Steve Jobs and Shawn Fanning must be anxious about Jeff Bezos's next move.
Apple's 'rip, mix, burn' idea resonated with music fans who got a taste of Napster, and the power of peer-to-peer that Fanning had evoked.
Amazon obviously believed in the 'Music Like Water' analogy of Gerd Leonard and David Kusek, who have advocated in their book The Future of Music, that music would one day be ubiquitous and unlocked. Not necessarily free, but priced differently, just like tap water, basic bottled water, value added carbonated water or even premium stuff like Evian.
The news that Amazon will indeed sell DRM-free music will put this theory to the test. As many have wondered, it shifts the marketing battle between Big Record Labels vs P2P, to iTunes and Amazon. Not that it's going to be easy to dethrone iTunes -which is also readying to sell unlocked music from EMI.
It's not just the pricing, but the music quality, and the 'carbonation' factor that will matter. Oh, and the hardware. iTunes is, after all, the marketing arm of the iPod --or vice versa. Amazon has the loyal customers, Apple has the raving fans. Marketers always wish they could have the best of both.
I'll put my money on customer loyalty, because that's where the long tail of music will be played out.
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