Now, when many of us heard of the online retailer Amazon back in 1995…Okay, we really did not say anything, but once we knew they sold books, we took a shine to them and perhaps took the curiosity to look. Then it felt as if a Mexican wave occurred and everyone, logged onto see what the fuss was about, people even bought books. However, once they learned that, the same company felt it needed to sell “VHS,” well we turned a blind eye and all said in unison, “it’ll never catch on.” Well it did just that and more, after becoming America’s biggest online retailer, selling CD’s, toys and even furniture – and that was relatively it, until now.
Amazon is barely 14 years old and worth a billion, for each of those years, and now it seems they want to consolidate all their eggs into one basket. They have launched their new UK downloadable music service, and ask for a measly £3 per album? Sounds cheap right? Well singles will sell from 59p, and will offer more than 3 million songs that will work on every digital music player, including Apples, iPod. However, since its launch a few days ago, "Pirates of the Amazon,” have also launched an extension, this lets you browse the music selection and download for free – well, at the cost of your Internet connection of course. Nevertheless, this is a Firefox Add-on linking the e-Tailor’s service to The Pirate Bay.
The link itself was created by a separate entity. "We are not affiliated with The Pirate Bay, and do not host or even link to any illegal content,” The creators commented.
"This artistic project addresses the topic of current media distribution models vs. current culture and technical possibilities," They added. However, the site is currently down and expresses that “The ship was hit. We're offline!” With the Add-on, successfully installed, it will include a “download for free” button on any Amazon page.
Amazon itself is providing all its downloads free of Digital rights management, which means they can be moved to any device, once they have been downloaded. Britain was worth £163m in 2007, in online music sales alone, so does this put Amazon in reach for the apple stake of the market?
