AmazonMP3: Too Legit to Quit

Date: October 9, 2007 | Category: Lifestyle, Tech

It’s time for a new weekly feature called Geek-o-fabulous: cool new technology brought to you by my tech-obsessed husband (former CEO of Ofoto.com) with an eye toward sustainability. Posts will be longer and you will need to click at the end to get the full review, but green geeks out there should appreciate his attention to detail…

Consuming music digitally is clearly better for the environment than the shrink-wrapped, plastic-cased, truck-shipped CD alternative. But until recently, consuming digital music legally has been fraught with headaches. Amazon has changed all that with the launch of their new ‘amazonmp3′ music download store.

Why am I so excited? Three reasons:
1. All songs on amazonmp3 are in, you guessed it, standard mp3 format.
2. All songs are ‘DRM-free’ - meaning they have no copy protection. You can move them from one computer to another, one portable player to another, burn them to CD, etc.
3. Amazon provides a great software utility for PCs and Macs that adds your purchased songs directly into your iTunes library. Nicely done.

What about iTunes, you say? The iTunes application is my music organizer and player of choice, and the iTunes Store has a fantastic selection of music for sale. Some of the music for sale on iTunes is available in a DRM-free version called ‘iTunesPlus’. The problem is these DRM-free tracks, when you can find them, show up on your computer in Apple’s AAC format which is not supported on mp3 players other than the iPod. To make matters worse, iTunes Plus tracks also cost more than AmazonMP3 tracks ($1.29 vs. $0.89). Will Apple learn from past lessons and adopt the tried and true MP3 format for the iTunes Store? I doubt it… but I’m happy to know that my AmazonMP3 music purchases play perfectly on my iPod. Full review follows…

Browsing through the AmazonMP3 store should feel familiar as it shares many similarities to Amazon’s CD music store. There are some subtle differences I’d like to highlight.

This is the Sonic Youth artist page on AmazonMP3. Notice the focus on bestselling individual tracks vs. the album focus of Amazon’s CD store. Due to the complexity of digital rights across artists and labels, you won’t find every album under the sun available for purchase. The selection is impressive, however, and we can expect more and more labels and artists to jump on the AmazonMP3 bandwagon as time goes on.

The shopping experience on AmazonMP3 is great. Click on individual tracks to add them to your cart, or buy an entire album in one click:

As a two disc set, this ‘Daydream Nation Deluxe Edition’ album will save you $19.67 vs. buying each track individually. Now compare this MP3 album price to the old-school CD on Amazon:

Wow - this techo-fabulous MP3 choice also saves you $5.98 over the plastic-laden CD option!
Before you can purchase MP3 albums you need to install a free desktop program called Amazon MP3 Downloader. It’s available for Macs and PCs and works like a charm:

While downloading in the background, this utility provides some nice status updates that fade in and out over your task tray.

Once your tracks have downloaded to your computer, Amazon gives you the option of automatically adding them to your iTunes library. This worked seamlessly, even with iTunes running at the same time. As you can see, songs show up as high quality (256 kbps) DRM-free MP3s:

Any complaints? Only one. Be warned that all sales are final and your MP3s can only be downloaded once. Be sure to keep a backup copy as Amazon will not replace your tracks if your hard drive crashes or your laptop gets pinched. If you own more than one computer, I recommend a free Mac and PC utility called FolderShare that will keep your Music folder in sync across multiple machines.

Happy legal downloading!

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