Amazon Will Target Apple’s iPod With its Portable Digital Music Player

Amazon is preparing to launch its own portable digital music player in direct competition to Apple’s iPod. The plan is interesting for its business model. It plans to offer unlimited download on a monthly or yearly fee.

Instead of selling music at 99 cents each (iPod model) Amazon plans to allow unlimited download for a monthly or yearly fee. When the user stops the scheduled payments, the music player will be disabled. The monthly fee is likely to range from $5-15 per month based on similar offerings in the past.

Previously such efforts were not very successful due to the clumsiness of the software and usage. Amazon is designing the player with a consumer electronics company to rectify these issues. Given Amazon’s success in the past I am rather optimistic about their chances.

The music industry is excited and I think users who are heavy consumers of music should be too.

Source: NYT