AOL Time Warner's AOL.com is establishing its own online shop for music and movie products, while cutting links to the CDNow.com site operated by Amazon.com. AOL's new shopping section, "AOL Shop: Music, DVDs and Videos," lets shoppers listen to and watch videos before purchasing them. AOL already attracts 15 million unique monthly visitors to its music and entertainment section, including 12 million on AOL.com and 3 million on AOL's NetscapeMusic.com.
AOL, which has been launching its new shop over the past week, until now had referred visitors in its music and entertainment section to the CDNow.com site at Amazon for music video products. As part of a new promotion, AOL is offering visitors the opportunity to sign up for free DVDs through a marketing alliance with YourFreeDVDs.com.
"The relationship with CDNow was successful, but now we want to make it easier for consumers to buy from us as the merchant of record," a spokeswoman says. "It's really about an interesting e-commerce entertainment experience. We want to make it easier for customers to discover movies and other entertainment content and have an easy opportunity to purchase it." AOL is partnering with AEC Direct Inc., a unit of Alliance Entertainment Inc., to fulfill its online orders for entertainment products.
In addition to sales of DVDs and other hard goods, AOL is expanding its subscription services for consumers who want to pay a monthly fee to download music files. Its most popular service, at $8.95 per month, lets customers download an unlimited number of music files. AOL says it expects the services to do well because consumers have expressed a willingness to pay a monthly fee to legally download secure, quality files and also receive 24-hour technical help.
AOL will continue to cooperate with Amazon in other ways, such as by having marketing banners in general areas of AOL.com. "Amazon is definitely still a partner," the AOL spokeswoman says. Amazon declined to comment.
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