Amazon MP3 is a digital music store owned and operated by Amazon.com. Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007,^[1] in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) from the four major music labels (EMI, Universal, Warner Music, and Sony BMG), as well as many independents.^[1][2][3][4] All tracks are sold in 256 kilobits-per-second variable bitrate MP3 format without per-customer watermarking or DRM. Music can only be sold to customers in the United States. An operating system (OS) is a software that manages computer resources and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. ... Windows redirects here. ... Mac OS X (pronounced ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... An audio file format is a container format for storing audio data on a computer system. ... A website (alternatively, web site or Web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or more web servers, usually accessible via the Internet. ... Amazon. ... A software release is the distribution, whether public or private, of an initial or new and upgraded version of a computer software product. ... is the 268th day of the year (269th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... January 2008 was the first month of the current year. ... Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. ... For other uses, see EMI (disambiguation). ... Universal Music Group (UMG) is the largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry. ... Warner Music Group is one of the Big Four record labels. ... Bertelsmann is a transnational media corporation founded in 1835, based in G tersloh, Germany. ... Variable bitrate (VBR), or less commonly variable bit rate, is a term used in telecommunications and computing that relates to the bitrate used in sound or video encoding. ... For other uses, see MP3 (disambiguation). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Catalog availability

At launch, Amazon offered "over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists and over 20,000 labels, including EMI Music and Universal Music Group," to customers located in the United States only.^[1] In December 2007 Warner Music announced that it would offer its catalog on Amazon MP3^[2] and in January 2008, Sony BMG followed suit.^[3][4] The current catalog is over 5 million songs.^[5] The EMI Group is a major record label, based in Kensington in London, in the United Kingdom. ... Universal Music Group (UMG) is the largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry. ... Warner Music Group is one of the Big Four record labels. ... Bertelsmann is a transnational media corporation founded in 1835, based in G tersloh, Germany. ...

In January 2008, Amazon announced plans to roll Amazon MP3 out "internationally."^[6] Until February 2008, international users had been able to purchase music by entering a U.S. billing address for their credit cards. Amazon now limits international access by checking users' credit card issued country.

Downloader

Amazon MP3's catalog is accessible from the Amazon.com web site by searching for an artist or title name. To download purchased music, Amazon.com offers the Amazon MP3 Downloader which is optional for individual tracks and required for album purchases. The Downloader is available for Windows (XP or Vista), Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, and Linux (packages are provided for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE). It saves purchased music into a particular folder and can, at the user's discretion, add purchased tracks to the library in Windows Media Player (Windows only) or iTunes (Windows and Mac OS X only) automatically after download. Debian is a free operating system. ... For the Linux distribution, see Fedora (Linux distribution). ... openSUSE is a community project, sponsored by Novell, to develop and maintain a general purpose Linux distribution. ... Windows Media Player (WMP) is a digital media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices. ... This article is about the iTunes application. ...

Promotions

On February 1, 2008, Pepsi introduced a Pepsi Stuff promotion in partnership with Amazon MP3.^[7][8] Customers can exchange points offered on 4 billion Pepsi bottles for, among other prizes, MP3 downloads from Warner, EMI, and Sony BMG (though not Universal). is the 32nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... Pepsi Cola is a non-alcoholic carbonated beverage produced and manufactured by PepsiCo. ... Pepsi Stuff refers to a promotion launched by PepsiCo, first in North America and then around the world, in the 1990s and continuing into the 2000s featuring merchandise that could be purchased with Pepsi Points. ...

Rockstar Games' 2008 title Grand Theft Auto IV connects to Amazon MP3. Players can dial a special number on the main character's mobile phone while listening to a song on the radio. In the game, the character will receive a text message on his phone indicating the title and artist. Players can also sign up on Rockstar's web site to receive e-mail outside the game containing a link to buy marked songs from Amazon MP3.^[9] The Rockstar Games logo. ... Grand Theft Auto IV (also known as GTA IV and GTA 4) is an upcoming sandbox-style action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North. ...

Reaction

Initial reaction to Amazon MP3 was generally positive. The Unofficial Apple Weblog praised the lack of DRM especially given that track prices were cheaper than iTunes Plus songs at launch, but the reviewer considered the user experience better in iTunes than on the Amazon web site.^[10] Om Malik of GigaOM also praised the lack of DRM and the high bitrate but disliked the need to install another application to download albums. Overall, the reviewer said "…I think it makes sense for everyone to browse the Amazon store before hitting the 'buy' button on iTunes."^[11] The iTunes Store is an online business run by Apple Inc. ... Om Malik (born 1966 in New Delhi, India) is an Indian-American technology writer. ... GigaOM.com is a Web 2. ...

A study by Elliot Van Buskirk of Wired News's Listening Post blog investigated whether Amazon MP3 was watermarking tracks with personally identifiable information. Van Buskirk quoted an Amazon spokesperson as saying, "Amazon does not apply watermarks. Files are generally provided to us from the labels and some labels use watermarks to identify the retailer who sold the tracks (there is no information on the tracks that identifies the customer)." The study concluded that although tracks may be watermarked to indicate that they were purchased on Amazon MP3, there is no data to indicate which specific customer purchased a given MP3 file.^[12] Wired News, online at Wired. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... In information security and privacy, personally identifiable information or personally identifying information (PII) is any piece of information which can potentially be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person. ...

References