Review of Amazon's DRM-Less Music Download Store

fdmendez writes to tell us that he had a chance to check out Amazon's DRM-less music download store that was recently released as a beta trial. "Amazon one-ups the iTunes store in every way except for popularity. Never once did I find an album to be more expensive on the Amazon store in comparison to the iTunes store. The download experience was pleasant, and the lack of DRM truly makes it YOUR music. I don't know of any other download service that could top the Amazon MP3 store."

Comments

Magnatune has lossless downloads

[cutecub]

The indy music store/label Magnatune has both lossy and lossless music downloads. They're a good example of what's possible:

There are 5 major formats availabe to buyers:

• 44k/16bit WAV: zip file of perfect quality WAV files.
• FLAC: zip file of perfect quality FLAC files.
• OGG: zip file of high quality OGG files.
• 128kb MP3: zip file of 128kb MP3 files.
• MP3 VBR: zip of high quality MP3 VBR files.

-S

Re:MP3 sounds bad to my ears

[afay]

The question is not whether you can distinguish one from the other. Anyone can do that. The question is, if you're not told beforehand (blind), can you pick out the higher quality recording more than 50% of the time. And the answer is you can't.