Amazon.com Launches Artist Pages

Amazon Monday launched 100,000 new "artist stores" -- special pages which, while filled with useful information on bands including biographical information and tour dates, are designed to do one thing: sell music. Comparing the new pages to similar pages on MySpace and Last.FM, all three include information about albums and CD's, including links to buy songs legally, tour date info and more.

The main thing that Amazon does not include is a way for fans to reach out to the band. Both MySpace and Last.fm offer a "wall" that fans can write on to express their affection for artists. Amazon isn't in the social networking business and is much more of a one-way information resource. Because of the lack of interaction, many fans will still flock to other music resources like MySpace music -- but I suspect that fans who just want to buy music will find everything they need on Amazon's new artist pages, which are vaguely Facebookesque in their presentation.