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Amazon DRM-Free Music Store Goes Beta
LowSNR writes "Amazon this morning moved their DRM-free music store into open beta. According to the release, 'Since all our digital music downloads are DRM-free, you can play them on anything that plays mp3s including PCs, Macs(tm), iPods(tm), Zunes(tm), Zens(tm), iPhones(tm), RAZRs(tm), and BlackBerrys. Plus, our Amazon MP3 Downloader application makes it easy to add your downloads to iTunes(tm) and Windows Media Player(tm), so you can sync up your devices or burn your music to CD hassle-free.' Not to mention Linux." Of course, without DRM few of the major labels play with them.
eMusic has been around and has been DRM free. Their selection is probably larger than Amazon's at this point. Best part is when I import the mp3s into iTunes the songs are properly recognized and the album covers are downloaded accordingly. It looks to me that some tests at least goes on there to make sure that it is compatible with iTunes.
Hmm...maybe something harder...Neutral Milk Hotel? check. Danielle Dax? aww...so sad, not check. Mongol 800? no...too bad.
It seems just about everything that I listen to that is available somewhere is available here, so what am I missing? Even better though, if it's not available as an MP3 Amazon redirects me to a cd or vinyl copy. iTunes, etc. don't do that.
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iTunes happily offers non-DRM songs (with higher bitrate, for 30 cents extra). Problem: Labels don't want to. The only problem that record companies have with iTunes is that Apple doesn't let them set prices however they like. Apple is, as usual, a bit of a control freak here, but I think we've seen that record companies shouldn't be trusted with things like setting prices on music.
Something that no one has mentioned so far is that these mp3s are 256k bitrate (at least the few I checked). I'm not an audiophile with tubes or anything, but I do think that straight mp3 at 128 sounds off. I for one welcome our new DRM-free music overlords.
Well, I don't know what you think a fair price should be. Do a search for "50 cent" and you'll see that the prices vary slightly, but are overall pretty good. Either 89 cents or 99 cents per song, albums weigh in at $5.99, $8.99, and $9.99. All of these prices trump are on par with the competition or slightly better. Don't forget a major competition piece: the $16.95 brick and mortar cd price.
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They seem to be high VBR - around 210-260 according to iTunes, and encoded with LAME 3.97
So they're using the same encoding scheme that eMusic (and some other online music stores) use: lame --preset standard (or fast standard). That's excellent news.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
'Everyone on this site has been complaining about wanting an alternative way to get DRM free music so they can stop paying money to a broken, defective by design system known as DRM. Now put your money where your mouth is and rid yourself of iTunes.'
Sounds good! And I just spotted an album I want at about half the UK CD/iTunes price. But then I clicked on the T&C and got:
'5. Territorial Restrictions
As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United States.'
Cheers. If I'm lucky it'll soon be available on this side of the pond at the usual 1 USD = 1 GBP exchange rate for 'digital content'...
Apple had DRM-free music available first, albeit at a higher price and with a better codec. Of course, I don't think they really care about owning the digital download market as long as everyone is DRM-free, but they're in a good position to compete.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Amazon: .89/song, $~8-11 per album
Interface is a bit awkward
Can't sort search results by column
Seemingly large selection of mainstream artists, along with some good Indie action.
256kbps VBR MP3 (Some report higher bitrates)
eMusic:
Interface is great.
Searches are helpful, recommend artists who are in the same category or are "like" the one you searched for.
~.25c/song (Not sure what current rates are, but that's what I pay). You pay for every song in the album the same as if you purchased separate, amazon has a lead here.
GIGANTIC selection of Indie arists. Some mainstream, but not very much at all.
192kbps VBR MP3
My personal opinion of Amazon's setup is, it's really nice. A lot more expensive than I'm used to, but nice. I'll buy a track here or there on Amazon, whereas I'll buy entire albums on eMusic. The increase in bitrate is nice, but not 3-4x as expensive nice.
I think Amazon could have a big winner here. The prices are competitive, the selection seems quite vast, and it's only the beta. I'd worry about eMusic's future if it takes off.
I've purchased from the store on both the Mac and the PC and have to say it's a breeze to use. If you buy an album they've got a download manager for both platforms. Once that's installed, it's dead simple to buy & download. Somehow I've already spent $45... Seems much better than the competition. And no, I don't work for Amazon, I'm just a fan of the legitimate MP3 store. Good job, guys!
Perhaps he means something that plays well with Amarok? According to their website there are plugins available for various media players... And they claim to work well with "the following digital music players: iPod, iRiver iFP, Creative NOMAD, Creative Zen, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support."
*shrug* Seems this might be what he meant.
There's already been DRM free music for quite a while. People like to complain that the music isn't available online without DRM, but aren't willing to vote with their wallet, and stop buying music from bands and labels that require DRM to download songs. Currently I get all my music from eMusic. It doesn't have everything I want, but it does have a lot of good music. I'd rather have music for about $3-$5 an album, than have to put up with DRM'd files, or paying $15 for a single album on CD.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Indeed. FLAC would make perfect sense for those who want to burn an audio CD.
But not only is MP3 lossy, it (like most lossy formats) also introduces a short gap of silence at the beginning of every track (so does WMA). OGG is one of the few (only?) lossy formats that doesn't and it's therefore better than MP3 if you want to burn an audio CD, especially when tracks on the CD are "linked" musically. Plus the sound quality is better than MP3 for the same size.
Wait, what damage are they controlling? Apple has always been clear about the fact that the itunes music store only breaks even, and that they don't feel that attempting to lock users into their service is a good idea.
So I'm not really seeing how this hurts Apple. Apple isn't especially invested in people buying songs through itunes (on which they make no money); Apple is interested in people buying ipods (on which they do make money), and sometimes through that being convinced to buy macs (on which they make even more).
People will continue to purchase ipods because they're good devices, and will continue to sometimes be swayed to macs because of that. If those people are playing Amazon-purchased songs on their ipods, so much the better.
One other thing to note is that their terms of service explicitly state that you are only receiving a license, and there are restrictions on what is allowed by that license. For the most part you can do anything that would be considered fair use, but there are a few exceptions. For example you may not resell the files, or "modify or edit them" even for personal use.
So you don't have quite as many "rights" as you would buying a CD, but at least they are trusting their customers to follow the law rather than punishing everyone with DRM.
Yeah but 0.20 * $0.00 = $0.00 No problem!
I use Linux almost exclusively, and I checked it out. Initially I feared that to buy a whole album, I'd either have to wait for a Linux version of the download manager, or I would have to pay extra by downloading tracks individually. Luckily, it appears that the download manager works fine under Wine (although it tries to launch iTunes after the download, and that fails somewhat gracefully). I end up with my music in a directory under ~/Amazon\ MP3. BTW, looking at the file with xxd, it appears the files are encoded with Lame 3.97.
I am in the US, and I used the Amazon MP3 Downloader under Wine. It does indeed work just fine, with the odd peculiar function of trying to launch iTunes post-download, which fails but it does download the MP3's just fine.
-- From Amazon's MP3 Music Service: Terms of Use --
"you agree that you will not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, sub-license or otherwise transfer or use the Digital Content."
That sentence starts out, "Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you agree..." Section 2.1, in its entirety, says, "Upon your payment of our fees for Digital Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Digital Content for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use, subject to and in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. You may copy, store, transfer and burn the Digital Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use." This is exactly what you'd expect, except maybe the non-transferrable part.
Quoting a partial sentence the way you did, I'm tempted to think you're just trolling.
Someone mentioned wine works, so I'll try that, but I used vmware to snag the albums @ the lower price.
.amz file which appears to be a base64 blob, that directs the utility to download all the rest of the files. The utility then immeidatly deletes the .amz file and proceeds to download them in sequence.
The utility is silly, when you buy an album you get a
I dunno why they couldn't throw together a simple little java app to let other platforms download.
But, yeay! DRM free MP3's. I can deal with this rather than a integrated store/player that takes away features at every upgrade... *cough*itunes*cough*
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?