Online retail giant Amazon.com increased its presence in the music market Tuesday by signing a deal with Microsoft to be the exclusive music merchant on its MSN portal.
MSN will feature Amazon.com’s “Buy Music Quick” links as well as rotating merchandise banners on its front page, shopping channel and other selected spots on the site. Amazon.com will also be the anchor retailer on MSN’s music and video areas of its shopping channel. Financial specifics were not disclosed.
Tuesday’s deal involves only music products. Amazon.com also offers more than 3 million books, audiobooks, videos, DVDs and computer games. Microsoft is already in a contract with Amazon competitor barnesandnoble.com to sell books on the shopping site.
“We think MSN offers Amazon.com the best of both worlds–tremendous reach off the homepage and the targeted shopping audience provided by MSN Shopping,” said Charlotte Guyman, general manager of the online sales and marketing team at Microsoft.
“We are very pleased to be joining MSN Shopping because it will give more people the opportunity to experience the ease and convenience of shopping at Amazon.com,” said David Risher, senior vice president of product development at Amazon.com.