Amazon creates open music system

Amazon has played IBM/Microsoft to Apple's..well, Apple in the Web Music space - and launched the MP3 version of the iTunes value chain in beta....must say I was quite impressed with the selection that was on it, its quite far off main stream America (or UK for that matter)

Key structural feature of interest is no DRM. It's going to be really hard for any DRM based play from here on in.......

Big picture though is that this plays out fairly typically in 3 main phases in a new industry in our space:

1. Total confusion of standards, no end to end services, crap user devices, lousy interworking

2. A player (Apple, quite often) comes forward with a proprietary end to end play, and proves the market. Having an iconic end device never hurts. Pioneers the market and gathers a core fan club

3. A more open play arrives, allowing more players to share the wealth and drives the larger main market.

Web Music is going into Phase 3, we are in Phase 1 in Web TV, and (in our opinion) moving to Phase 2 for mobile multimedia with the iPhone providing the shock to that value system.

It's also been picked up by GigaOm over here