The Amazon Associates program has announced that affiliates can now earn 20% in referral fees on Amazon MP3 Downloads.
Amazon MP3 boasts Earth’s biggest selection of a la carte, DRM-free MP3 music downloads with over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels.
All songs and albums on Amazon MP3 are available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software, so Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device, organize their music using any music management application, and burn songs to CDs.
Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents. The top 100 best-selling songs are 89 cents, unless marked otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100 best-selling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise.
Every song on Amazon MP3 is encoded at 256 kilobits per second, which gives customers high audio quality at a manageable file size.
Now to the money part for affiliates. Amazon affiliates are eligible to earn 20% on all MP3 referrals (up to $1.50 per item) through December 31, 2007.
Beginning January 1, 2008 the referral fees will be 10%. There is no limit to the number of items on which referral fees are earned.
The Apple iTunes affiliate program pays 5% commission on all goods. So Amazon is paying significantly more than iTunes, but are people willing to change their habits in the way they purchase MP3s?
I always buy from iTunes, but I’m going to give Amazon MP3 Downloads a shot to see how smooth it is. Then, I’ll see if this service has the potential to be an iTunes killer.
More details on the Amazon MP3 Getting Started page.
