wiredfool

Amazon has The Who. On MP3. For Download. Finally.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for some who albums that I’ve got on old vinyl (not really worth setting up the turntable and ripping, given the quality) and The Who have always been absent. (Along with the Beatles. Guess someone hasn’t shoveled enough money their way yet.)

Amazon has been a game changer for me, and I’m not really sure in a good way for the industry. I’ve been listening to MP3s pretty much exclusively for the last 5+ years, through iTunes and the Slimp3 player in the living room. Any music I buy has been CDs, since the iTunes store music doesn’t work on the Slimp3.

Now, I see the Amazon special deals all the time and while I’m buying a couple albums a month, the average selling price is more like $2, rather than the $15+ that a cd would have been. My concept of what an album of music should cost is dramatically different than it was one year ago. I buy music online. I don’t download. But having that value fall from $15 to $2 can’t be a good sign, since there aren’t that many more stops between $2 and free.