Amazon has a new way for iPhone and iPod Touch owners to purchase and listen to music without having to resort to iTunes or the iTunes store. This is good news, because consumers sometimes like Apple's hardware, but don't want to use their software, and are tired of how protective Apple can be of iTunes. Now Amazon's web-based MP3 store will work like an app for iPhone and iPod Touch users.
As many of us already know, Apple has picky rules about what's provided and sold in their App Store and what software you can run on iPhones, iPads, and iPods. One of those rules effectively prevents places like Amazon from distributing a downloadable music-buying app from the App Store that would allow Apple customers to buy music from a third party company: With Apple automatically taking 30 percent of those profits, Amazon simply loses too much money compared to the iTunes store.
This makes sense if you're Apple - if you provide the hardware, and run an online music distribution venue, why let someone else provide their software and reap 100 percent of all of their MP3 sales as well? Customers can already buy their music and listen to it through iTunes.
But Amazon found a way around these rules - a web-based store built on HTML5 and optimized for iOS, that works just like an app, even though you access it through a browser.
That's what Amazon announced today. Customers who prefer to get their music through the Amazon MP3 store can now open Safari in their iPhones and iPads, go to www.amazon.com/mp3, and an app-like site will load, allowing you to make your music purchases outside the confines of Apple. You can then download the Amazon Cloud Player app, which runs natively on iPod Touches and iPhones, to play those MP3s.
According to PCMag, Amazon will be offering some pretty nice deals like $5 albums and $0.69 songs from their 22-million-song library.
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