Amazon MP3 Store opens in the UK The official word: Good bye iTunes Store and hello Amazon MP3 Store! The DRM breaking Amazon MP3 store has finally arrived in the UK. Before now the service was only available in the USA and people assumed it would never come to Europe (or at least the UK) due to record label greed. Now you can buy MP3's from around 69p from Amazon which come with no DRM and can be automatically put into your Windows Media Player or iTunes Library Amazon MP3 Download I decided to buy a track I wanted to do some remixing with to see how easy and quick the service was. I was already an Amazon Customer so they had all my details so I could do one click ordering. As it was my first time ordering it told me to install the Amazon MP3 Download application. This is when i thought oh, I dont want more junkware like iTunes on my PC. The application is a whole 640kb and only appears when you open it (no system services, no loading on boot). Once my order had gone through I was giving a file to download, Firefox prompted me to open it in Amazon MP3 Download Application which i did, and within 10 seconds the tune had downloaded and been automatically put into my iTunes Library with cover art and everything else. Best of all, it was free of DRM. I am now going to burn all the music I purchased off iTunes and then re-rip it to get rid of the DRM. Then infact ditch iTunes and go back to using Winamp as my music manager. As much as I know some people will always pirate music, the excuse of DRM is now gone. Technical Information: A simple MP3 with all ID3 information filled, at 320kbps. Comment field is filled with your transaction ID, so if it appears on music sharing networks they know where from, unless you simply removed the field. Either way, with cheap DRM free music now available you shouldn't be on those networks! Once downloaded unless set otherwise it will go into your iTunes library and be organized by it if installed, else it will go into Windows Media Player. Copies are kept in: C:\Users\USERNAME\Music\Amazon MP3\ (Vista Users) No automatic support for Winamp, but if you get it to listen to the Amazon MP3 folder it will automatically pick up new songs on load. MP3 Information
Let be honest no one likes DRM, It hurts the legitimate consumers more than the pirates. It looks like Amazon have realised this and from Nimrod’s review above hit the nail on the head. The tracks are cheap, high quality 320kbps unlike other services that offer a much lesser quality and most of all DRM free. The best bit is you know if your device can play MP3’s it will play your legitimate Music you buy from now on. Thanks for posting this up, I hope many people see it. From what I’ve seen this destroys any other legal download service.
If I can't find the track I want on Play.com I used to end up buying it from Itunes (begrudgingley). Now I have another option and am glad to hear you had a great experience Nimrod as I wasn't too sure on whether to use Amazon's service. With Play.com's service you can download tracks for either 65 or 70p and whole albums like Itunes except like Amazon, these MP3s are also DRM free. The only real problem I've had with Play's mp3 service is it sometimes takes them a while to process the songs you order (had to wait up to 2 hours once, not good if you want to listen to a track right away). You can easily check what songs you've ordered and downloaded though I'm not too sure how many times you can download a track again (haven't needed to do this yet). But at least you don't have a maximum of 5 authorisations (like on Itunes, even if you've backed up the mp3 and reinstalled Itunes after a reformat etc )
I'm definately gonna be using this from now on. Just downloaded an album today, i think it was about £3.89 or something stupid, 12 tracks downloaded in 5 minutes, straight into my iTunes library, and I'm listening to them as I write this. Brilliant service, well done Amazon!!