Amazon MP3
I’m not sure if I’ve ever posted to the effect, but I was turned off to the iTunes music store as soon as they upgraded their DRM, breaking the tool I was using that allowed me to continue using my music player of preference, foobar2000.
In conversations since then, I have always maintained that I would become a music consumer once again as soon as I found a store that would sell me the music I wanted without the stupid (breakable) strings attached that came with other services. For example, it would have been easy enough to burn my iTunes music to a CD, and then rip it using EAC and encode it with LAME, but that required work that I didn’t have to do if I just typed a name into eMule and downloaded the song in a few minutes.
I am happy to announce that I have recently discovered the store that I was looking for, and to find it I didn’t have to go very far. Local retail powerhouse Amazon.com has introduced high-quality DRM-free MP3s at a reasonable price at the Amazon MP3 Store. I am once again a music consumer. See, music industry, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
January 28th, 2008 at 12:26:02 pm
So yeah. iTunes announced a little while back they for a little bit more they’re selling non-DRM tracks. Doubt the extra money goes to the artist, though. Don’t know how Amazon’s thing is working out.
There’s some open source solution, too. For buying non-DRM music tracks, I mean. Don’t remember what it’s called or any details about it. Was curious how it worked.
January 29th, 2008 at 09:48:04 am
How much per mp3 on amazon?
January 29th, 2008 at 09:51:05 am
It seemed to be about $0.89 per song, yielding 256kbps MP3s.