SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 27, 2008--Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)
today announced that in 2008 the company will begin an international
rollout of Amazon MP3, Amazon's DRM-free MP3 digital music store where
every song is playable on virtually any digital music-capable device,
including the PC, Mac(R), iPod(R), Zune(R), Zen(R), iPhone(TM),
RAZR(TM), and BlackBerry(R). Amazon MP3 is the only retailer to offer
customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as
over 33,000 independent labels.
"We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers
around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available
outside of the U.S. They can't wait to choose from the biggest
selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads
which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in
the future," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital
Music. "We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3
is going international this year."
Launched on Amazon.com in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers
Earth's Biggest Selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads,
which now includes over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000
artists. Every song and album in the Amazon MP3 music download store
is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights
management (DRM) software and is encoded at 256 kbps to deliver high
audio quality. Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music
downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any
music management application, such as iTunes(R) or Windows Media
Player(TM); and burn songs to CDs for personal use.
Most songs available on Amazon MP3 are priced from 89 cents to 99
cents, with more than 1 million of the over 3.3 million songs priced
at 89 cents. The top 100 bestselling songs are 89 cents, unless marked
otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100
bestselling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise. Buying
and downloading MP3s from Amazon MP3 is easy. Customers can purchase
downloads using Amazon 1-Click shopping, and with the Amazon MP3
Downloader, seamlessly add their MP3s to their iTunes(R) or Windows
Media Player(TM) libraries.
The company is not disclosing a specific launch timeline for
individual Amazon international websites.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in
Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers
Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most
customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover
anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its
customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers
offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories
such as books, movies, music & games, digital downloads, electronics &
computers, home & garden, toys, kids & baby, grocery, apparel, shoes &
jewelry, health & beauty, sports & outdoors, tools, auto & industrial.
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with
access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own
back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable
virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by
Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2),
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon
Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service
(Amazon FPS), and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including
www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp,
www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and the Joyo Amazon websites at
www.joyo.cn and www.amazon.cn.
As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms
include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context
indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ
significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking
statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others,
risks related to competition, management of growth, new products,
services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating
results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and
claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial
agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange
rates, system interruption, significant amount of indebtedness,
inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud.
More information about factors that potentially could affect
Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings
with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual
Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, and all
subsequent filings.
CONTACT:
Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
http://www.amazon.com/pr
SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.