After growing increasingly unimpressed with the Apple iTunes/iPod “lock-in” model I started hunting around for alternative low-cost music services online. Fortunately one of the first and favorite services I ran into is the relatively new Amazon MP3 Downloads service.
Some of the big highlights of the Amazon MP3 service for me were:
- Non-DRM’ed music
- Low-cost music (about $0.99 a song or cheaper)
- Huge selection
- 1-Click Buy Ability
- Easily see the quality of the song or album in the music listing page (256kb is common)
- Nicely Browser-integrated Downloader
- Downloaded auto-adds music to iTunes library
- Almost all albums have a Preview list of songs that are easy/instant to sample using integrated Flash player (so just hit “Play” to sample and listen to the music).
- Easy to buy an album or individual songs
My first experience with the Amazon MP3 service was immediately intuitive and smooth, I didn’t have any hickups nor did my wife (who was used to the iTunes flow of purchasing music).
To get an idea of what the flow tends to be, I wanted to buy the following album of meditation music, so I hunted Amazon MP3 for it, and found it:
After clicking Buy MP3 album with 1-Click, the integrated downloaded popped up and showed the download progress for the album.
The downloaded is a 1-time install browser plugin that runs on the background and listens for Amazon clicks in the store to download. There are some settings you can adjust in the downloader as follows:
One of the cooler side-effects of non-DRM’ed music and configurable download locations allows you to easily setup the Amazon MP3 Downloaded to dump music directly to a home network NAS music directory or the like that can be shared throughout the house to other devices (like your consoles).
Overall I’ve used the Amazon MP3 Download service quite a few times and been really happy with it each time. Since it offers the iTunes auto-integration, there is really no different use-case than using iTunes and a whole slew of benefits. I’m sure there are some limitations on the label offerings on the Amazon MP3 service, they focus mostly on Warner and Sony but do offer albums from all 4 major labels out there, so most of what you are looking for is probably on here.
Overall I think if you are a music junkie, you might take the time to check out Amazon MP3 Download service.
No offense, but every single one of your “big highlights” in regards to Amazon is also true of Itunes.
You also failed to specifically mention even a single one of the “whole slew of benefits” Amazon brings you.
D.Corban,
I could have been a little more specific I suppose, but I wasn’t aware that all of iTunes music was now DRM-free and still $0.99, I know about the higher-priced DRM free music they announced last year… maybe I missed something.
Overall I’m not that enamored with iTunes, and find an alternative that does almost exactly what iTunes does a huge boon, now with Amazon launching their video service, I’m also happy to see that Amazon offering continue to expand (although in the face of Hulu, I think the “free” of Hulu will win out in the end).
My experience of purchasing music off of Amazon and downloading it directly to my NAS into the share directory was dead easy and I was thankful for it.
Sometimes (often?) there is no room for discussion with Apple fans. I have been using Amazon mp3 service almost since it was rolled out, in part because I did not like Apple’s method of selling and distributing songs. Clearly, many people do not have a problem with iTunes, but I think that there is a non-trivial amount of people who prefer to avoid iTunes — and for those people, the Amazon mp3 service is a nice alternative.
i’m interested in switching from itunes to amazon.. My question is, once I download music from amazon and transfer that to my itunes will my music still be DRM-Free so that I can play it on my xbox 360.. or will apple turn it into DRM-protected thus not allowing me to play it on my xbox 360??
Drew,
Great question (as I had a similar situation). iTunes will leave the music DRM-free, it’s just when you use iTunes to rip music from the original CD that it adds the DRM to the music, if you are importing DRM-free music that you have purchased from Amazon or ripped yourself using other software, then you are all set. The music will stay easy-to-manage.
I have tried to download a few albums in three seperate sessions. Each time I had about 10 songs downloaded, then it hung. I have to pause the download then start again. So it requires constant attention. As the downloads seem slow, I have left the machine overnight, to find it hung two minutes after I went to bed. This is too inconvenient. iTunes does not exhibit this behavior.
I have tried to get help from Amazon. They have no clue and ignore my requests for help.
Any ideas?
Martin,
Weird… no I haven’t seen this behavior — most of the songs download in like 20secs anyway so it’s never been an issue of my leaving it and walking away.
That’s not to say it’s not possible — network issues are as random and widespread as last-names… they can happen anywhere, anytime for any reason.
Do you see wonky network behavior with any other sites or services? Like streaming movies from Hulu or something?
Maybe you have a goofy piece of equipment? I’m on DSL in Tucson and everything been smooth sailing.
Riyad
I have 64 bit Vista OS. I was running 32 bit Explorer and the behavior was very consistent. I quit using 64 bit Explorer a while ago because it failed at so many sites.
I tried Mozilla Firefox since the last post and the problem went away. Go figure!
I loaded four albums in succession without a problem.
So at least those of us here in Tucson are happier today (me too!).
Amazon have my vote. I have a SD reader in my car that only supports MP3. I have erroneously paid and downloaded some older albums in iTunes, only to realize they cannot be converted. So I cannot listen to them in my car (which is where I do a lot of my listening, up and down route 10). It seems the iTunes library is loaded with AAC protected material, and is becomes very restrictive if you have to make selections that avoid it. I have found a number of albums on Amazon that I could not purchase on iTunes because of their restrictions. I still use iTunes to manage my songs, although it’s quirky file management system requires more administration than I would like. I have 14,000 plus songs and have found no easy way to clean up duplicates it seems to create randomly.
Martin
Martin, glad to hear things are working better now!
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas of how to make my itunes purchased music drm free. I cant seem to find any programs online that will do this. What about burning to a cd and then putting them back on my computer?
drew,
That is actually one way to do it, you can also google for an automated solution that *essentially* does what you are suggesting for you, and QTFairUse is the original one that has been discontinued… so burning it and re-ripping is one good way to do it.