Amazon’s Price War: 69¢ MP3s

May 3, 2011 10:00am by Barry Ritholtz

Amazon is starting a downloadable song music price war:

“Amazon.com, which is a distant No. 2 to Apple Inc. as a retailer of downloadable music, has upped the ante or, rather, lowered its prices to compete with iTunes.

The Seattle online company is now pricing select top-selling tunes for 69 cents, down from 89 cents previously. Many of the songs in Amazon’s 69-cent store sell for $1.29 on iTunes.

Amazon, which in March launched a cloud music locker service, has tried over the years to chip away at Apple’s dominance in the digital music download business by pricing most of its songs below what they go for at iTunes. So far, however, Amazon’s market share remains where it has been the last two years, around 10%, while Apple continues to have about 70% of the digital download music market, according to Russ Crupnick, digital music analyst at the NPD Group, which no longer publicly releases market share data.”

Hat tip: WSJ MarketBeat

Sources:
Price war! Amazon launches 69-cent MP3 store for top-selling tunes
Alex Pham Pop & Hiss, L.A. Times music blog April 28, 2011
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/04/price-war-amazon-launches-69-cent-mp3-store-for-top-selling-tunes.html

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