May 2008
Amazon.com launched the Amazon MP3 Clips Widget, which allows bloggers and website owners to showcase and play song samples from Amazon's catalog of over 5 million DRM-free MP3s available at Amazon MP3. Users can handpick the songs and albums they want or display or select the latest bestsellers or new releases from the music genre of their choice. The launch of the Amazon MP3 Clips Widget comes on the heels of the release of several new digital product widgets from Amazon's Associates Program, including the Kindle Chicklet, Your Video Widget and Unbox Movie & TV Preview Widget.
Amazon Widgets are free to use. Users have the option to make money with their Amazon Widgets by joining the Amazon Associates. When a visitor to their site clicks through their Amazon Widget to the Amazon.com website and makes a purchase, they may earn up to 10 percent in referral fees from Amazon.
"The Amazon Associates Program offers a suite of digital products that make it fast and easy for anyone to monetize their web presence," said Dave Cotter, director, Amazon Associates. "The Amazon MP3 Widget is our latest innovation, and we're excited about the early adoption we've seen to date."
"The Amazon affiliate program has a new MP3 widget that really sets them apart from other affiliate programs. Fan blogs of different singers and bands are a natural. Movie sites can feature soundtracks. There are a lot of possibilities here," said Shawn Collins, co-founder of the Affiliate Summit.
"Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, is excited to join the Amazon Associates Program and use the Amazon MP3 Clips Widget. The extensive variety of artists available to download on the Amazon MP3 site makes this a perfect match for us to promote upcoming shows at all of our venues," said Oscar Sagastume, Internet Marketing Manager, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Amazon digital widgets include:
Amazon MP3 Clips: Showcase and play clips from your favorite songs from Amazon MP3, Amazon's a la carte MP3 digital music store offering Earth's biggest selection of DRM-free MP3 downloads. You can handpick the songs and albums you want to display, or choose to have your widget automatically updated daily with the latest bestsellers or new releases from the music genre of your choice.
Kindle Chicklet: Highlight content that is available to purchase on Kindle, Amazon's revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs, magazines, newspapers, and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper.
Unbox Movie & TV Preview: Show a wide range of video previews from the latest Hollywood movies and top TV shows available from the Unbox video download service. This widget lets you display the previews for movies and TV shows directly on your page.
Your Video: Your Video Widget lets you earn referral fees while sharing the videos you already post on your webpage. Use the widget to make your videos more interesting, informative or entertaining by adding product links to them.
All Amazon Widgets, except the Amazon Unbox Movie & TV Preview Widget, Amazon MP3 Clips Widget and Kindle Chicklet, which are available only in the U.S., are available for each Amazon site that offers the Amazon Associates program, including Canada (Amazon.ca), France (Amazon.fr), Germany (Amazon.co.de), Japan (Japan.co.jp) and the United Kingdom (Amazon.co.uk). For developers, the Amazon Associates Web Service, which powers the digital widgets, has extensive support for discovery of digital products. Find out more about our Amazon Associates Web Service in our Developer Guide.
Other widgets in the Amazon Widgets Gallery include:
Carousel: Take your products for a spin in the Carousel Widget. The Carousel Widget presents products in an engaging 3D carousel or Ferriswheel display. You can search for specific products to recommend to your viewers or choose to display the latest bestsellers and new releases from any Amazon category you choose.
Slideshow: Pick favorite images from the Amazon catalog and present them as a stylish slideshow. Showcase favorite CD cover art, present recently read books, or even reveal favorite breakfast cereals. Slideshow also lets users caption the selected images.
My Favorites: Express yourself by recommending and commenting on favorite products from Amazon. This widget lets everyone know how you feel and what you like by showing product images, information and your own comments.
Wish List: Display an Amazon Wish List on a blog or profile page, and let friends, family and others know what you want.
Product Cloud: Take tag clouds or word clusters one step further by showing Product Clouds. Product Clouds engage site visitors by displaying product titles that are relevant to the content of the page in a cloud or cluster with the most popular product bolded. Site visitors can click on the title to directly visit the product page on Amazon.
The Amazon MP3 Clips Widget is just the newest in a suite of tools available to Associate partners linking to Amazon MP3. Since launching in September 2007, Amazon MP3 has become an important partner of several music sites across the web, such as Pandora and Last.fm.
"Forty percent of Pandora's listeners are buying more music since they began using Pandora. We're thrilled with the great flexibility that Amazon brings to our listeners with access to the Amazon MP3 store to satisfy this wonderful appetite for new music," said Pandora's Founder, Tim Westergren.
Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder, said: "When we started offering millions of tracks for free-on-demand streaming earlier this year, we were confident that enabling music fans to listen for free would encourage more music purchasing. In this respect our relationship with Amazon MP3 was vital - it has the breadth of catalog and ease of use that's necessary to give our users the best online music consumption experience. We were extremely pleased to see that our partnership has raised the game for online music, as download and CD purchasing on Last.fm via Amazon increased 119% since the free-on-demand launch. This is a great vindication for the pioneering services both our companies provide to music fans."
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