Monsters and Critics: The appearance of Amazon.com’s new music download service could well be marked as a significant turning point in the ongoing market dominance of Apple’s iTunes Store, and that possibility moved one step closer to reality this week when Amazon launched its public beta of Amazon MP3.While offering more DRM-free unprotected music and cheaper prices than its iTunes rival, Amazon’s service also allows almost all music-enabled phone handsets and portable music/media players to take advantage of its content with limitless CD burning and file copying – something Apple’s iTunes presently cannot match.
What’s more, although iTunes users have thus far been strictly limited to using Apple’s own download service, Amazon MP3’s integrated MP3 Downloader program will enable its iPod-owning customers to seamlessly transfer music through to iTunes – if it’s present on the user’s system. MP3 Downloader will work for both Mac and Windows users and will also allow for content transfer on Windows Media Player as well as iTunes.
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