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Amazon DRM-Free Music Store Goes Beta
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Sep 25, 2007 02:57 PM
from the 2-million-songs-from-20-thousand-labels dept.
from the 2-million-songs-from-20-thousand-labels dept.
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.
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Apple: iTunes DRM-Free Tracks Now Same Price As DRM Tracks 250 comments
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Amazon DRM-Free Music Store Goes Beta
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Store in beta? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Store in beta? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.unity08.com/)
True, however ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~eldavojohn/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @03:26PM)
Re:True, however ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:True, however ... (Score:4, Interesting)
The labels would probably dump online retailers and sell the music themselves, except that it would open up an antitrust can of worms. That, and it would also involve real work on their part...
Re:True, however ... (Score:5, Interesting)
-Ted
Re:True, however ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.eggytoast.com/)
Re:True, however ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:True, however ... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.dickshatepolice.com/)
Re:True, however ... (Score:5, Informative)
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'...
Re:True, however ... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://tumbleweed.smugmug.com/)
Shipping costs, ya know.
Re: Useful, Only If You're A Resident Of the U.S.A (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:True, however ... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
" Zunes" (Score:5, Funny)
don't be so sure... someone would had to have actually BOUGHT one of these in order to make sure they can play mp3s.
Re:" Zunes" (Score:5, Funny)
eMusic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:eMusic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:eMusic (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.lazylightning.org/)
Worst part is that they require a subscription and you can't buy a single track like you apparently can with Amazon without paying for the month. You are correct that their library is limited and while, for now, it seems you must download some sort of application to do mass downloading from Amazon, you can purchase single tracks without it.
I really don't care for eMusic adding a tagline to your user agent when surfing. I really don't need people knowing which music service I use:
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1 eMusic DLM/4.0a5_1.0b1"
Re:eMusic (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
Re:eMusic (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday October 15, @11:53PM)
"Larger" only in the most literal sense. eMusic is doesn't have major label support at all, unlike Amazon. If there's a current artist on eMusic, it's only a few quite old, unpopular, out-of-print albums.
Quick searches for the top artists from Amazon's MP3 service on eMusic turns up crap.
No albums from NIN, Pink Floyd, Kayne West, etc.
One 12+ year-old Radiohead album.
eMusic at best has a couple individual songs via "compilation" albums, but that's about it. Amazon is just a "beta" and it's already got ALL the albums from all these major groups.
Major Labels? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.thevinylgroove.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 26 2005, @01:11PM)
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.
Re:apple's labels fail too (Score:4, Interesting)
****
The reality is that 90% of the stuff out there isn't on BMG or one of the few big labels anymore. In any case, it blows a big hole in ITunes. No DRM, cheaper, and a pretty large catalog. I know of several smaller labels that are going to almost certainly stop selling on ITunes as a result.
All Itunes can do at this point is damage control. It's the old Apple proprietary mentality at work again. And Apple getting burnt again by the cheaper and more open alternatives.
Oh - the bitrate appears to be 256K. Another plus - it's actually fairly decent quality.
Re:Major Labels? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.thevinylgroove.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 26 2005, @01:11PM)
Now, if only they could get the price down... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.jeffrodriguez.com/)
Decent Selection (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.scootin159.com/)
256k mp3s (Score:5, Informative)
(http://nikon.schaab.com/)
Re:256k mp3s (Score:5, Informative)
From Amazon's MP3 FAQ [amazon.com]:
"Bit Rate: Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bitrates for maximum audio quality and smaller file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bitrate allows us to allocate a higher bitrate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bitrate for the less complex sections. The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality. Some of our content is encoded using a constant bitrate of 256 kbps. This content will have the same excellent audio quality at a slightly larger file size."
Joint Stereo defined (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://myatomic.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday November 19 2006, @12:31AM)
Re:89 cents a song....Not bad (Score:4, Interesting)
How does it compare? (Score:4, Interesting)
But this is hardly the first DRM-free music download service. I've used eMusic [emusic.com] off and on for years. How does this compare and how does it improve on the other DRM-free services that already exist? In the past, the main complaint about such services was the lack of mainstream music from major labels. Won't this be the same for Amazon's offering?
Download Manager (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Download Manager (Score:4, Informative)
Good selection of classical music, I think. (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday September 02, @06:01PM)
Nothing by the less-known composers like Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (the more talented son of J. S. Bach) but still, pretty satisfactory.
Sh*t - and just when I decided to save up some money for next summer.
Top 100 (Score:3, Insightful)
Wine (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.shedplant.net/)
Still, cool :) . I expect they'll bring this to Amazon worldwide soon.
Cross platform! (Score:3, Informative)
This works outside the US (Score:5, Insightful)
"
1 Infinite Loop
New York
Cupertino, CA 95014
"
(Apple's US headquarters address - it's valid).
When asked for your phone number, put in your full international dialing number.
Result? It works. Raw MP3 downloads. Legal. I'm using a Mac, and it works fine with Firefox, Safari and with my iPod and on iTunes.
Re:This works outside the US (Score:5, Funny)
Provided that your definition of legal means "obtained in violation of the terms of service and by providing fraudulent information to bypass the compliance checks."
Re:This works outside the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This works outside the US (Score:4, Funny)
Look's like it's not just Americans who can't be bothered to learn geography.