Posted on January 19th, 2010

I rather get my CDs at music stores. I like walking-in without an album picked in mind; go through all CDs looking for new, rare, or just some random band that I never heard before. I enjoy the experience of discovering music, and figuring out how I never heard of some bands that have been out for so long; wondering why some bands broke up, and why some bands never came out with a sophomore release. Unfortunately it’s becoming harder and harder for music stores to compete with the low prices offered by the digital market. Each year the Mp3 market takes another bite at CD sales. It’s a surprise CDs are still around…

Background

Itunes has been leading Mp3 sales for a long time. Last year only, they managed to sell 25% of all Mp3 sales in the United States. iTunes continues to grow as Apple continues to heavily invest on advertisements for iPods, Iphone and MacBooks. There are rumors that in the near future, iTunes could even become a TV channel. And that’s to no surprise since they continue to add more and more videos, songs, and applications to their store. However, being a leader in the music market also means that they are the first to make mistakes, and some of this mistakes has held several users from experimenting iTunes.

One of the main mistakes iTunes made was to protect their songs with the controversial Digital Rights Management (DRM) which limits users from copying their music over to a limit amount of electronics (mp3 players, CDs, DVDs…). Their objective was to slow down music piracy and retain users from sharing their music with friends and family. The insertion of DRM into tracks was for a while a total chaos, as both listeners and music artists weren’t pleased with Apple’s decision. It got to a point where artists were posting links and teaching users on how to remove DRM protection from their songs. Itunes lost some market as users turned to other places to buy their music, but they still held the larger part of music sales.

While iTunes was battling mp3 piracy, which now floods the internet from hub to hub, Amazon.com, a giant on online sales, was slowly building their Mp3 Store. It started slow and the interface was messy for new users, but at the same time familiar for those who had been shopping on amazon long before digital goods were available. The greatest feature of Amazon Mp3 when it was launched in 2007 was the fact that none of their Mp3 files were DRM protected. Users were free to buy and do whatever they pleased with their songs. Not only Amazon’s songs were DRM free, several of their tracks were much cheaper than iTunes’ protected files, and iTunes Plus files. (A service that was later introduced by Apple, in which Mp3 users pay a higher value for DRM free songs.)

Amazon Mp3 only sold 8% of online music sales in 2009, a number that does not compare with the 25% sold by Apple. However, it is important to notice that Amazon has only been selling Mp3 files since 2007, which means that Amazon finally realized the there’s some serious money involved with the sales of digital goods.

As I lean towards the digital market, there are several things that I consider before I shop. Here’s the run down on both services that you should consider before making your next purchase.

Prices

Of course that I need to have a great user experience when I shop, but despite of my experience I am still looking to get the best deal.

Amazon prices are often lower than iTunes. Individual tracks are often the same price on both stores, ranging from 89 to 99 cents for most popular music. However, Amazon also offers great deals for people that decide to purchase the entire album. A lot of times you save over $4 if you purchase the entire album on Amazon. They also offer the Amazon Daily Deal that sells entire albums for ridiculous prices ranging from $1.99 to $3.99.

Take for instance that the Vampire Weekend’s new album is on sale on amazon Daily Deal for $3.99, while the same album costs $9.99 on iTunes.

Amount of Music

Both (and yet seperatly) Amazon and iTunes hold over 10 million songs on their catalog. They both add new songs, and albums every day. However, iTunes offers a greater amount of music related content than Amazon. Besides songs, iTunes also offers over 40,000 music videos and 1,000,000 podcasts. Chances are that if you don’t find the music you are looking on Amazon, you will find it on iTunes.

Free Music

Both services offer a limited amount of free tracks. iTunes (for logged in users only) offers a few free tracks every week. Amazon offers free tracks at random. For example, Amazon had several free Christmas compilations over the holidays.

Music Recommendations

Both Amazon and iTunes offer music recommendations, whether it’s through user’s reviews or the by the kind of music you have purchased before. iTunes has a big head start on this area because iTunes is also a popular mp3 player. a player which keeps track of everything you play. It knows what you play more often, and what you never play. That makes easier for the iTunes Store to identify you likes and dislikes. Itunes also let’s you use their “Genius” service to let you know about other similar artists and/or songs as you listen to your music. A great feature that Amazon doesn’t offer, because they don’t have an mp3 player. Amazon’s recommendations are based on your previous shopping experience, user reviews and music that other users have acquired.

Mp3 Quality and Format

iTunes has used the AAC format, successor to the MP3 format. It’s supposedly better than MP3, but that’s a whole other article. iTunes DRM songs are encoded at 128 kbit/s which is the so called “CD quality”. iTunes DRM free songs are encoded at 256 kbit/s. Amazon sells MP3 files, instead of AAC files, and all their songs are encoded at 256 kbit/s.

What does 128 kbit/s and 256 kbit/s means? For the average user it doesn’t mean much. The numbers reflect on the quality of the encoding, which occasional users won’t notice. Serious listeners will want to have higher quality encoding. The only big difference at this point is that AAC format is not compatible with all Mp3 players.

Usability

Usability is a big word in web development, and every one is concerned about it. It has to do with the user experience. In this case how easy it’s to find the music you want. Itunes offers a simple design, with straight forward links, only giving you so much music at once. It has a browser interface with several sub categories giving you the option to narrow down to a sub genre of a genre. It works great when you know what you are looking for, but it’s not as useful when you are just trying to see what’s out there. Amazon’s interface is exactly the opposite; it bombards the user with thousands of options. There are literally hundreds of links to click on each page. It can be overwhelming for new users, but at the same time very useful for users that have shopped on Amazon before. The ability to see and listen to other CDs while reading details of a certain album on the same page, makes the task of finding new music faster.

Customer Service

I cannot speak about iTunes customer service because I haven’t really had any issues using their system. Which I guess it’s a good thing. I did however had a few issues with Amazon Mp3 system, mostly browser related issues, and user related issues (which means I screwed up). Amazon has a great… wait.. an Awesome customer service. They solved my problems in no time, and willingly offered the downloads I missed again.

Conclusion

I have always been reluctant to buy songs on iTunes because I am always switching computers, or formatting them. I also like to know that I can put my music wherever I want to, as many times as I want to… after all, I bought it. The price and the DRM free songs are also another reason why I turned to Amazon Mp3 services. I appreciated the step taken by Amazon to free music from their rights, even though we still pay for them.

I clearly lean towards Amazon services, but iTunes definitely got their heads in the game way before Amazon. They have a lot to offer for serious and casual listeners alike, and they continually improve their services. Whether you buy it at Amazon, iTunes or directly from the artists… do buy it! Especially from indie artists that pour their lives into making exciting and compelling music that makes you move.