The New, Revolutionary Amazon MP3 Store
This Is Big
DRM-free tracks! 256kbps! 89ยข per song!
Stand aside, iTunes Store, there’s some new crack on the street I need to spend my money on. Amazon MP3 Download Store.
This is big news, folks. This (no DRM) is what what Steve Jobs has done on a small scale at the iTunes Store with one label, but a bit bigger (two labels), and better quality files.
Apple is good, but competition is better.
But there’s a bit of a downside… you need to get the Amazon MP3 downloader. Not a terrible hassle, but why can’t we just download the music after we buy it? Why a downloader?
The Mac downloader, “Amazon MP3 Downloader”, clocks in at 1.1MB and is a Universal binary, meaning it will work on G3, G4, G5 and newer Intel-powered Macs. You get the downloader when you buy your first track or album.
The buy/download process was less than streamlined, and in my haste I bought The Reminder twice. I have a support ticket in currently asking for a refund for one copy, which comes to $9.79 with Washington State tax. I expect this to improve, and I note that the service is still in beta.
Background + News
Read about why I parted ways with the iTunes store back in Fall, 2005, on my Mac blog, AppleSwitcher.com.
Salon’s take on Amazon’s MP3 store. Ars Technica’s take.
The Reminder review coming soon.
Have you used it? Do you plan to? Let’s hear your feedback.
Just got this: “Hello from Amazon.com.
Thank you for writing about the accidental purchase of The Reminder
by Feist you recently made in our Amazon MP3 Music store. I understand
that with 1-Click ordering, it may be easy to make an unintended purchase.
To remedy the situation, I’ve requested a refund for the purchase.
Refunds are issued to the payment method used to make the original
purchase and usually complete within 2 to 3 business days.”
Hey Matt, nice little write up. I also think that a pretty large catalogue of mainstream digital music will give Apple’s iTS a much needed kick in the pants. While I like the iTunes Store because it makes searching for music easy, buying music easy, and loading music onto the iPod easy, I don’t like the DRM and I find the prices a little higher than I’d care to pay. Also, I’d prefer MP3 to AAC for better compatibility with both my digital audio players.
I’ve been looking forward to the Amazon offering since the first whispers and my brief experience poking about the site seems decent enough. I’ll tell you the truth, if this Amazon music “game” requires a download manager to download the music, I probably won’t bother to play. No matter how small or how well written, I’d rather use a more cumbersome website only download method. Which of course would insure I can use the service from any web enabled computer. Hence, no OS restriction. Also, if I were to download the app, I don’t want to use an installer, I prefer the traditional mount dmg and then drag and drop method most Mac apps employ.
Of course, right after I post I uncover some more info–good news so no worries.
I just downloaded my first Amazon MP3 Download Store track, White Town’s “Your Woman”, and while Amazon prompted me to use their downloader, I simply hit the skip button and kept on going. Seems relatively painless to NOT use the Amazon software to download my music (well, not so much if you want a whole album, but a la carte works fine). True, my anal retentive nature called on me to create a new directory and subdirectories (Amazon MP3 Download folder->Artist Folder->Album Folder), but that’s only a two second task and I’m already doing that manually for every eMusic (I’m also an eMusic subscriber) track I download.
Oh nice, Nathan. I’ll skip the downloader next time. Thanks for your thoughts on the new store and the update on the downloader non-requirement.
256kbps non DRM tracks are the BEES KNEES to my musical innards. The cream in my musical coffee.