New Amazon Store

Amazon.com has gotten into the music download business, having already been in the CD selling business for some time now.
The store features 89c single tracks and albums from $5.99 to $9.99.

I won't go into the actual workings of the store as other sites are doing that. However I've been thinking about some things here. Is it possible that the Record companies are engaging in unfair competition against Apple?

From what Steve Jobs has said, the Apple Store uses DRM because they are under contractual obligation to record companies to do so. If that is the case why are the record companies allowing Amazon to sell the same tracks sans DRM? It would seem to me that is an unfair business practice. I would also point out the price difference but it is entirely possible that Amazon is taking a hit on their end rather than the record companies taking it on theirs.

Still though, it smells like collusion against a company to me. I mean it's not like the record companies are incurring extra cost to get product <i> to</i> Amazon. And it is pretty clear that Amazon doesn't currently have the retail moving power that iTunes has, so it's not like they are getting some kind of bulk discount. The only thing I can see is that record companies simply decided to give Amazon different terms for the same exact product in order to put pressure on one particular retailer. I thought such things were illegal. I'm probably wrong since lawsuits haven't flown but it still smells pretty bad to me.