A recent report filed by Reuters aims to shed some light on how online retail giant Amazon plans to commandeer market share of digital-music downloads from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The current state of music downloads in the U.S. has AmazonMP3 with a 1.3% market share, while Apple’s iTunes holds a 26.7% share. To try and narrow this market gap, Amazon is doing what it does best: deep discounting. The online retailer’s Daily Deal has been a huge success in boosting sales. Recently, the company offered Kanye West’s new album — My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — for $3.99 on its release date. Amazon reportedly sold 59,000 digital copies of the new album, while iTunes sold 163,000. The less than 3 to 1 gap in sales is notably impressive.

Not everyone thinks the strategy can succeed. A “senior major-label distribution executive” was quoted as saying, “Amazon is growing, but they are growing in millimeters,” and went on to speculate that the strategy “doesn’t seem scalable.”

Amazon does have a broader price advantage over Apple as new tracks sell for 99-cents on the company’s site; new tracks in iTunes sell for $1.29. Amazon also has 100 albums on-sale for $5 every month. What digital music store are you using?

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If you are at work and you see the private mobile phone records of President-elect Barack Obama, no matter how enticing, you must resist the urge to take a quick peek. Several Verizon Wireless employees succumbed to that temptation and have found themselves in a heap of trouble. According to a press release on Thursday, a number of employees were caught browsing through Obama’s cell phone records. The mobile account was for a flip phone, rumored to be a Razr, that had been inactive for several months. The records that were breached included call times, phone numbers of incoming/outgoing calls, numbers of text messages sent/received, etc. The employees in question reportedly did not have access to the content of any email, text or voice messages. Verizon initially put all employees who had access to Obama’s account on leave while it conducted an investigation. Late on Friday, Verizon announced that the matter was publicly closed, appropriate federal law enforcement agencies had been contacted and the offending employees were fired. An internal investigation is continuing to see if the information was shared only amongst internal employees or if the information was sent to any outside third parties.

Thanks, Rosario!

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