Amazon MP3 Vs. iTunes Music Store

Ali writes "As discussed here recently, amazon.com has launched a public beta of Amazon MP3, a digital music store that provides DRM-free downloads of over 2 million songs from 180,000 artists and 20,000 labels. In comparison, Apple says the iTunes Store now contains over 6 million songs. Here is a head-to-head comparison."

Comments

no-DRM is significant

[confused_demon]

I've recently started buying music again now that it's possible to get DRM-free music again (on amazonmp3 and a few others). For those that haven't thought very hard about it, DRMed music (itunes music) is essentially ephemeral. At some point it will stop working, either when it thinks it's on too many devices, or when the vendor decides it's no longer important to support that format (ever try opening a decade-old data file made by a windows or mac product?). The music I love, is music I want to keep forever, and I still listen to those gold-printed CDs of 'The Wall' I bought in 1990. My older friends still have their Beetle's Albums on LP.

Even without DRM (itunes premium?) using apple's proprietary data format, you're taking a risk since the data format hasn't been made publicly available. Re-processing those files as MP3 (or doing the 'burn to cd and reimport to get around apple's DRM' trick) is non-optimal since you're using two compressed data formats which are lossy in different ways.

Re:I see hope on the horizon!

[HartDev]

You have not heard of anyone? I have a brother in law who bought music and now wants a different device, he can't trade it over and basically lost all his music, a guy I work with in IT of all things, bought videos off of iTunes and had to fix or reformat his computer, and he can't use those purchased videos anymore, it is like buying a DVD and then if you are really good "they" will let you view it.....on their software, their hardware, their terms!