Amazon had a brief breather from its fight with Apple over ebook pricing for a fight with Apple over digital music. Music labels featured in Amazon’s “Daily Deals” promotions are being pressured by Cupertino to cut it out, lest lose iTunes marketing muscle. The intimidation seems to be working, a report said.
“Sources say that iTunes representatives have been urging labels to rethink their participation in the Amazon promotion and that they have backed up those warnings by withdrawing marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals,” writes Billboard.
The confrontation between Apple and Amazon stems from a requirement labels provide the Seattle-based company a one-day exclusive to sell MP3s before albums reach retailers or iTunes. In return, Amazon provides marketing, such as a banner ad on an artist’s MySpace page and promotions on other Web sites and social media.
Capitol, Capitol Nashville and Jive have dropped “Daily Deals” promotions of various promotions, says Billboard. Other labels are continuing to use Amazon’s pre-release sales, opting to put lesser-known artists for Amazon as sacrificial lambs of sort.
[via 9to5Mac, All Things Digital and Billboard]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
