Initial Impression: Amazon.com’s MP3 Download Store

I’ve been wanting to buy high-quality non-DRM’ed digital music in MP3 (or some other fairly open format) for quite a long time.  Searching my archives I see that I first brought this up four years ago.  And after using iTunes music store for a while, I finally got tired of the DRM about three years ago.  Recently, Apple announced DRM-free music, for a slightly higher price, although it was of slightly higher quality.  I played with it a little bit, but didn’t do too much with it, as it was still in Apple’s format (although being DRM-free it would at least play on my Squeezeboxes ) .

So upon learning that Amazon.com was offering DRM-free MP3 downloads in 256kbps VBR I decided I had to check it out.  First, installing their download app was pretty painless (although I have not used it to buy a full album yet).  The prices seem reasonable ($0.89/track in most cases).  And the selection is far better than any of the other DRM-free services I’ve investigated in the past. 

In fact, I fear that this could become quite a dangerous feature of Amazon.com.  It’s easy to lose track of what you’re spending when it’s only $0.89 a track.  I’ve already picked up one track that I couldn’t previously find without either buying the whole CD (or buying a DRM-encumbered version in iTunes).  That’s exactly the scenario that I think this setup is perfect for.  I would not have bought the whole CD for the one song, so ultimately the label and artist get some small amount of revenue that they would not previously have gotten, and I get a copy of the song to keep.  Classic win-win.

The best find so far?  Carl Douglas – Kung Fu Fighting (disco flutes and all).  No, I didn’t buy it, though.  I was just amused to find it ranked as the 16th most popular MP3 download in the “Dance & DJ” category.

4 Comments

  1. Kevin White says:

    I’ve been wanting to try it. I’m pretty particular about my MP3 encoding, since I listen through high quality sources (including $350 headphones), but hopefully they know what they’re doing when they encode.

    It’s perfect for collecting one to three songs from an album. A lot of times though I buy the whole CD from Amazon sellers for less than $5 including the shipping—then I can experience the rest of the album and encode with my own settings, plus I have another disc to add to my attractive wall of CDs…

    I’m a little disappointed that they make you install a separate downloader, however.

  2. I haven’t tried the MP3’s with high-quality headphones, although I have tried them using my Squeezebox digitally connected to my Onkyo receiver, and they sounded fine to me.

    When you set up the downloader they have you download a free song to make sure that it works correctly.  You might give it a try to see if you can hear any artifacts (although you wouldn’t have the full source for comparison).

    The downloader doesn’t bother me much.  It was painless to install.  But if you’re just buying singles, you can skip the downloader.  It’s only needed for full albums. 

    However, I was downloading some music on Sunday and experienced a brief network outage, which the downloader handled without a hitch.  I suspect I would have lost the files if I hadn’t been using the downloader.

    Like you, though, I like to have the CD because I encode in FLAC these days (the Squeezebox does FLAC natively) for anything I’m really interested in.  For getting one or two tracks or for music that I’m experimenting with, then the Amazon MP3 store seems like a good choice.

  3. Doug says:

    Kung Fu Fighting????????

    Next thing you know you will be downloading Streak, Convoy and Mohamid Ali

  4. Heh.  Very funny.

    I didn’t buy it, though.  I was just noting that it was surprisingly popular.