I do think this new service is a very wise play from Amazon. Reminds me of when Apple was reluctant to expand iTunes beyond music into video, and some other companies beat them to the punch, which forced Apple’s hand.
Apple likes to wait until conditions are just right for a new product. They waited a LONG time to get into cell phones and tablets. They probably want to wait for better infrastructure and 4G speeds for true “cloud” music services. But the problem is that they already OWN music, so they have to defend their territory.
When you force Apple to release products before they are quite ready, you end up with an Apple TV kind of situation, where the first two or three iterations are sort of cool, but not quite there yet. The availability of content is sparse; pricing is confusing. You get a so-so user experience. It’s the sort of thing where you can tell Steve would have preferred to spend a few more years on it, but he didn’t have a choice. The same thing happened to iWork.com. It looked like that space was going to be important, so Apple got involved in a half-assed sort of way. Really atypical, but it does happen once in a while.
So it’ll be interesting if this development from Amazon forces Apple’s hand on bringing online storage to the iTunes universe before it’s really ready. I think Amazon is smart to go after Apple in this space, considering that unlike every other company on earth, Amazon actually has a depth of retail presence and experience that rivals—if not exceeds—Apple’s own.
Or maybe Apple was smart enough to see this coming, and is already ready with a great service of its own. We’ll find out soon enough.
A company like Amazon can be more nimble with a service like this, because it is the underdog. The music labels are more than happy to grant Amazon online rights that it won’t grant to Apple, precisely because they want to see Steve Jobs knocked down a few pegs. So I imagine the lawyers involved in this are billing a lot of hours.
If this new Amazon service catches Apple off guard and becomes popular, it could also save Android from almost certain long-term obscurity. Unless Amazon is smart and makes its services available on more than just Android. (Hint: I think Bezos is smart enough to spread the love around to every platform imaginable. The Android exclusivity won’t last long.)
Make this a NATIVE Mac app, get it onto iOS (which will be tricky, but they’ll get it there eventually), and you’ll maybe even get MY attention. So long as Apple doesn’t come up with something better in the next few months, that is.
