No doubt by now, some of you ubernerds are drafting your comments about ZumoDrive or DropBox, but neither of those solutions offer start-to-finish music purchasing, storage and listening… not to mention that none of those services are offering 20GB free either!

MP3s bought in the Amazon MP3 store can be stored directly in your cloud, accessed anywhere, and downloaded at anytime. You can also upload files from your local hard drive to your Amazon Cloud Drive. Those files could be music files, documents, anything you want. The music ones will be accessible from within your Cloud Player as well.

Presently, the only mobile support is for Android, since the player is Flash based. Hopefully that will change sooner than later.

PROMO: If you purchase an MP3 album from Amazon between now and the end of the year, you can bump up for free storage from 5GB-20GB. Need a good album to check out? Scope out our Wax Picks section or check out this months’ $5 albums (especially The Civil Wars!). ACCESS THE PROMO HERE.

Way to go Jeff Bezos, slay the dragon.

Free Amazon Cloud Drive + Cloud MP3 Player is a post from: wax&wires

My buddy Joe Hartman just sent me this link for $3 credit at the Amazon MP3 store. With their Black Friday Deals going on right now, they’ve got several albums for $1.99, and they’re changing them up daily if you don’t find anything that suits your fancy.

Click here to snag it.

Amazon MP3 – $3 Free is a post from: wax&wires

For indie artists looking to distribute music via the myriad of online avenues, RouteNote provides a great solution. They will distribute your music to iTunes, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Last.fm, imeem and others, while only charging you a light commission.

It’s a no brainer that your music needs to be easily accessible in the MP3 markets that people are using. While a lot of budget services will offer you download cards to sell, and host your music on their site for you, that’s only going to have as much reach as your own website or gigs give you. If somebody searches iTunes for your band’s name, your music needs to show up. Web presence is critical to the success of the emerging artist, and saturating the web with your music is a first step in gaining popularity.

There are services from DiscMakers and other CD pressing companies that will offer to get your music up as an extension of pressing your CD. The problem with those deals is that they charge you an upfront “set up” fee, just like with pressing a CD. I can’t fault them for that, as it makes sense. From the artist’s perspective though, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever recoup that money. RouteNote alleviates the stress of the situation by only charging you a commission for the music that is actually sold through them.

You can save a lot of legwork by utilizing services like this, and it makes sense when there are no upfront charges.

Check out RouteNote here.

RouteNote: An Solid Way To Distribute Your Music is a post from: wax&wires

Just in time for V-Day (which is TOMORROW for all you gentlemen about to disappoint your lady friends), Amazon has put up Marvin Gaye’s ubiquitous lover’s classic Let’s Get It On as a free download.

Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On

You can also pick up Marvin’s full album Let’s Get It On for just $5 here.

Wax Pick: Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On FREE DOWNLOAD is a post from: wax&wires

Check it out the entire list of albums here, and fill out your collection. Definitely pick up the Joshua Tree (Deluxe Edition) if you don’t already have it. There’s a full bonus disc that comes with it that definitely wasn’t included in my original copy of the album, and that’s my favorite U2 album without question.

I’m not sure how long the sale’s on, but enjoy it while it lasts!

U2 Albums On Sale At Amazon is a post from: wax&wires

IMAGE: Declan McCullagh Photography

Well as it turns out, that very store will be closing its doors for good this upcoming April. Not because of the sagging economy; not because of the incredible overhead for a 180,000 square foot Times Square lot; not because of iTunes and digital music sales pushing CDs into obsolescence. The number one music store in the country, moving $55 million of goods each year, will be closing its doors because it can make more money renting the space out.

Virgin pays only $54/square-foot for the Times Square landmark, and current market value for retail space in the area is at $700/square-foot. While the store generates $6 million in profit per year, Vornado (the real estate company that acquired Virgin Entertainment Group North America) expects to earn much more than that by leasing the space to other retailers. That cuts the total number of Virgin Megastores to 5, making the 14th street store in Union Square the premier Virgin Megastore in New York. Even the future of that store is in question, as they leased the ground floor to Nordstrom Rack this past holiday season; yes, during the holiday season which is supposed to be prime time for retailers. If they can afford to lease out prime space to other retail outlets during shopping high times, I can’t imagine it bodes well for them in low times, which are certain to be just around the bend.

As much as they might pin this on making strict business sense from a real estate perspective, you have to assume that the decline of CD sales played into it at least a bit. Brick and mortar music stores have become more of a novelty than a wise business venture. If the number one CD retailer in the US has better things to do with its time and space, expect to see other music shops go down soon.

Virgin Mega Store Times Square Closing is a post from: wax&wires

Beyond the lack of Digital Rights Management, it looks as though there will be plans for labels to impose pricing brackets on songs within iTunes. While that may make iTunes more competitive with other online MP3 stores, rumor has it that many of the songs will actually go up in price rather than down. Back catalog tracks will be priced as low as 79 cents each, but newer hit songs are expected to jump in price. I have to assume these terms were part of the compromise in getting the major labels to come on board.

There are also unconfirmed rumors that Apple will be announcing a mobile iTunes store for iPhone users to download songs directly to their devices via AT&T’s 3G network.

Even with its inferior song quality and pricing, iTunes remained the top MP3 store on the net by linking use so tightly to the iPod. As the iPod blew up in popularity, iTunes was carried along with it. Over the past year or so, we’ve seen users begin to venture away from iTunes in favor of more consumer friendly music stores, though none ever really rose to threaten iTunes as the top seed. Now that Apple will finally ditch DRM, and potentially lower prices, this may all but ensure their online music dominance. Stores like WalMart, Amazon and eMusic will need to find a new way to compete.

Apple iTunes Goes DRM-Free is a post from: wax&wires

It unveils a few more details that I didn’t know about in my initial post, including the application of the first sale doctrine in a digital media world. The first sale doctrine was initially drafted in 1908 and essentially said that the purchaser of a good is entitled to sell it without permission of the original owner, publisher, or copyright holder as long as no additional copies are made.

Here’s where there’s growing difficulty with the used mp3 market. We can’t be sure if the first sale doctrine actually applies, since there’s no way of knowing whether or not an additional copy was made. Sites like Bopaboo can ensure that additional copies of songs aren’t sold on their site by the same user, but cannot ensure that additional copies are not retained by the user or sold elsewhere.

In the article, Rich Bengloff, the president of the American Association of Independent Music, talks about how the industry is reluctant to embrace used sales because there’s no monetary return to the original creators or publishers. Nate Anderson, the author of the article, asks Bengloff what the difference is between selling a used song on bopaboo and a used dinner table on craigslist. After all, the original carpenter of your dinner table doesn’t see additional returns when you sell it. Bengloff states that the carpenter might see returns in the form of needing to repair the table or re-stain it, where as the digital copies of music don’t whether so there’s no market for additional return. I totally disagree. I’m not a fan of the used mp3 market, but I think that he’s making a severely flawed argument. If you’re going to chalk it up as a worthwhile return that a carpenter might get hired to refinish a table he made years ago, you would have to argue that artists have a worthwhile return from used mp3s in the form of an extended fan base and concert ticket sales. I would bet that more people would go to a concert of a band after downloading their used mp3, than would hire the same carpenter who built their table to refinish it. Who even has their tables refinished? I can think of one person I know who has refinished a table, and he did it himself rather than hiring a carpenter to do it (much less tracking down the original carpenter to come in). On the flip side, I couldn’t even count the number of people I know who have gone to shows and concerts, or bought merchandise after downloading a band’s music online.

I’ll let you read the article for yourself to develop your own view on it.

Bopaboo is now seeking licensing from the music labels, which would actually give the labels a bit of return for used mp3s sold on bopaboo in exchange for not taking legal action against the website. There’s a slim chance that with the support of the labels bopaboo could succeed, but I don’t see it happening so long as the free p2p music market is still so at large.

But enough with my commentary, check out the original article here.

First Sale Doctrine and Used MP3 Sales is a post from: wax&wires

I tried it out and it works, but I’m still likely to roll with Amazon for the specials they put out daily.

The interface could use some work too, but if they cleaned it up and made it a bit more attractive, there could definitely be a market for this. A few weeks ago, I was thinking that somebody should make a program just like this, so it’s good to see that somebody’s knocking it out.

Easy way to compare MP3 store prices is a post from: wax&wires

So how will this play out? The only way I can see this going is that people will upload their music, retaining a personal copy of it regardless of the site’s intentions, and then download any music available at a discounted rate; essentially making this a discount MP3 store where you can call “dibs” on songs in anybody else’s library, with potentially no loss on their end, all at $0.25 a pop.

Is this a joke, or am I missing something here?

http://www.bopaboo.com/

Used MP3 Store? is a post from: wax&wires

1) The biggest thus far, is that the music is cheaper. Amazon has put some really killer (and chart topping) albums on sale for ridiculously low prices. I picked up Coldplay’s new EP Prospekt’s March for $0.99 (yes, the whole album for 99 cents). You may have thought that the cheap bargain bin was reserved for obscure or washed-up artists producing mediocre music, but Amazon is doing everything they can to prove that wrong. The new Killer’s album was on sale the week of its release for $3.99, Copeland’s new CD was $3.99, I picked up Justice’s Cross for $5, Even Katy Perry’s smash album was $5. The best way to stop illegal file sharing, which I am 100% against, is to do exactly what Amazon is doing. Good music, cheap enough so that people have no reason not to buy it. Each time I find a great album cheap it’s like that rare CraigsList find, or a garage sale treasure; or perhaps more like finding a current chart-topping album in that big bin of random $2 CDs and cassette tapes at the gas station. I’ll be sure and share any finds with you guys, so stay tuned to the Wax Picks thread.

2) DRM-FREE. I know Apple has been working on figuring out all of this DRM drama for years now (iTunes plus). Amazon’s music is all DRM Free. It will play on any player. I like making compilation CDs and mixes for the car and at work. Few things are more frustrating than hitting a limit on how many times you can use a song or burn it to CD. We don’t pay for music to “lease it” from the artist or label, we should own the particular song to listen to wherever and whenever we want. I don’t want this one point to morph into a rant on the pros and cons of DRM, so I’ll wrap it up here. Let’s suffice it to say that DRM exists to protect against piracy. People who want to pirate music will always find a way to pirate music. We all know the “burn-it re-import it” trick to get around it in iTunes. The best way to combat piracy is going to be by making music more accessible to people legally through sites like noisetrade and through alluring pricing (see point 1 above).

3) MP3 Quality. In iTunes, you have to buy songs in the upgraded “iTunes Plus” format to get 256 kb/s DRM-Free songs. Their typical downloads are encrypted at 128 kb/s AAC streams with FairPlay encrytion for DRM. Amazon’s standard is 256 kb/s MP3 DRM-free.

4) Full iTunes integration. So now you like the Amazon store, but how can you function without the iTunes application? How will you get these songs onto your iPod? The Amazon store uses a tool called the Amazon MP3 Downloader, which is cross platform, and a really quick install. It manages all of your Amazon downloads for you, and automatically puts the songs in your iTunes library as soon as they’re downloaded. You don’t even have to close and reopen iTunes. As soon as the song is on your hard drive, you’ll see it pop up in the iTunes library. Seamless.

5) Selection. This isn’t really a section where Amazon one-ups iTunes, but more where it at least holds par. A lot of people think that they can only find the artists they like on iTunes, and that Amazon’s selection will be limited since it’s not as well known. I have yet to find an album I was looking for that wasn’t on Amazon. I’m sure there are some artists that iTunes carries that Amazon doesn’t, but as long as Amazon has the albums I’m looking for, it doesn’t matter.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I don’t work for Amazon (shocking, I know), and this isn’t intended as an Apple-hater thread, as I love the vast majority of Apple products. My goal is simply to get good music in your hands so that you can grow your pallette a bit and get inspired. The Amazon store is the best solution I’ve seen for that purpose so far. I’m definitely open to new and better ones, and will absolutely let you know if I find any.

Amazon VS iTunes is a post from: wax&wires