Amazon to Begin International Rollout of MP3s in 2008

[Nate the great]

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 27, 2008--Amazon.com today announced that in 2008 the company will begin an international rollout of Amazon MP3, Amazon's DRM-free MP3 digital music store. Amazon MP3 is the only retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as over 33,000 independent labels.

Launched on Amazon.com in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers Earth's Biggest Selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Every song and album in the Amazon MP3 music download store is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software and is encoded at 256 kbps to deliver high audio quality. Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any music management application, such as iTunes(R) or Windows Media Player(TM); and burn songs to CDs for personal use.

from here

So, does anyone want to guess how long until Amazon takes Kindle worldwide?

[TallMomof2]

Probably once the supply of screens is greater and Amazon makes deals with cell phone carriers then the Kindle will be available outside the US.

Personally, I'm very happy with Amazon's DRM free MP3s. I've spent more $ at Amazon in the past few weeks than I've spent in a very long time. If only the Kindle books weren't ham stringed.

[vivaldirules]

Good point, Nate. This can't happen soon enough. As an aside (comic relief?), I read this week that the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry (hmm, did I get that right? ) claims that 90% of all music downloads are illegal.

[kovidgoyal]

Great news, I hope this means I will be wrong about Amazon not supporting open ebook standards

[Ervserver]

as long as I don't have to use iTunes

[MMascaro]

I wonder how long it will be till you can Whisper Net a MP3 to your Kindle for listening.

[llwwss]

I hope the Kindle international version comes with Wi-Fi, not cell phone network.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Good point, Nate. This can't happen soon enough. As an aside (comic relief?), I read this week that the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry (hmm, did I get that right? ) claims that 90% of all music downloads are illegal.

Probably the same statistics as the one used by the MPAA when they claimed that college students were responsible for 44 percent of the MPAA's total lost revenue to piracy.

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Probably the same statistics as the one used by the MPAA when they claimed that college students were responsible for 44 percent of the MPAA's total lost revenue to piracy.

Oops. Did I say 90%? I meant 9%. Or, no, maybe it's.....

[JAcheson]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

Personally, I'm very happy with Amazon's DRM free MP3s. I've spent more $ at Amazon in the past few weeks than I've spent in a very long time.

Me too, particularly if I only want one song by a group.

If I want the whole CD, I'd still rather buy the CD and get the physical backup media and pretty pictures. Amazon is my go-to place for that too, though.

[Just4Fun]

While gazing deeply into my crystal ball, I'll add my murky view to this topic:

I think that Amazon will wait to offer the Kindle worldwide roll out until some of the obvious unit bugs are worked out. The Kindle's production and distribution as well as the unit's design, and software still need some fine tuning. I'm guessing (sorry the crystal ball went blank here) that Amazon may even wait until the second generation of Kindles appears to start marketing to the rest of the world.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Well, MP3s aren't books. And Amazon waited until the MP3 player was pretty much ubiquitous before taking this step. By that logic, they would have to wait until the Kindle reader (or Kindle format for other devices) was ubiquitous. The higher cost of books will also play into this scenario.

Bottom line, I don't think Amazon's Kindle store will be international or DRM-free anytime soon. I can see it happening if Amazon releases a free downloadable "Kindle reader" for other devices.

[chef]

Originally Posted by Just4Fun

While gazing deeply into my crystal ball, I'll add my murky view to this topic:

I think that Amazon will wait to offer the Kindle worldwide roll out until some of the obvious unit bugs are worked out. The Kindle's production and distribution as well as the unit's design...

If it wasn't so damn popular...