November 18, 2008

By By Antony Bruno, Denver

Amazon expanded its online music sales efforts to include more than 100,000 artist-specific pages, or stores. Each store lists an artist's full discography, biographies, images, and links to buy music in any format - CDs, MP3, or vinyl.

The launch comes in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Amazon selling music online, which it is celebrating with a special CD compilation. Amazon will donate $1 from each CD sale to benefit the Grammy Foundation.

The addition of the stores is another direct challenge to the dominant iTunes. The music industry and fans have complained that iTunes doesn't offer artist-specific pages (other than simply aggregating all an artists album into one page) that engages fans.

Subscribe to Billboard magazine today!