If you want DRM free independent label music you might as well just download from emusic.com. They have been DRM free since the beginning. I mean in the article, this person dowloaded apples in stereo and dismemberment plan. Both of those are on emusic.

This move by vivendi is just amazing to me. They whine and cry about needing to stop music piracy and then they whine and cry about how little money they make from Apple as a channel (better an 80% of that transaction is has been reported), they whine and cry about the need to keep the ipod from playing anything but DRM content, and then they go and work with another vendor, who doesn't do DRM at all, who sells their music for less, and somehow that gives them better pricing control and stops piracy. When things don't make sense, follow the money.

What throws me for a loop is a standard DMR track on Apple is 99c. A DRM-free song is 1.29. I have seen in articles talking about how the music industry makes only 70c a song (though I've also found articles that point to Apple only making about a nickel a track!) One would assume the reason a song is 1.29 for non-drm is because the music industry wants to make the full buck. (why is the song 30c more for non-drm on Apple assuming the record company makes 70c a track?) So given the fact this is a ploy to get more money out of each track, I don't understand how Amazon's pricing allows them a better deal than iTunes. You can't tell me Apple isn't discounting their services to the music industry to get them into selling non-drm. I would bet their share is greater than 99c on that itunes plus track. Is Amazon running the distribution systems for free? I don't think so.

So in the near term their temper tantrum will actually lead them to make less money any way one dices it.

Amazon does seem to be allowing more variable pricing. "Echoes" by Pink Floyd, at 20+ minutes, goes for $3.87 @ Amazon, but is an "Album Only" track on Itunes.

Good news: Yes there's quite a catalog available. Bad news: The interface is infuriating. Nothing compares with the ease of finding music and sorting the results that iTunes provides. I tried a search for Cocteau Twins, and then had no reasonable way to sort out the 257 results. That's right, you cannot sort by song title. What are they thinking?

Hey, btw, as a long time musician and AFM member, the posturing by both sides on the piracy / revenue issue is absurd. We, the artists, see nothing, control nothing, get nothing. Get over the DRM nonsense and deal with some real pressing issues. I'm sure if you look around the country or globe hard enough, you'll find some that require immediate attention.

Quick note: You can buy and download tracks singly without using Amazon's download manager, but the download manager *is* required if you'd like to buy any albums. In addition, the download manager only works on XP, Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4 (or higher). So, if you want to save some money by buying albums (instead of single tracks) but you're running Windows 2000 or OS X 3.9, you're out of luck...

To PK:

Windows 2000? Really? Why not ask Rob how to get the store to work with IE6. I dare you.

PK: Very good point about the MP3 Downloader being required to buy albums--I updated the post to reflect that.

It's weird that Amazon supports Mac OS X 10.4 but not 10.3. I'm less surprised to see that Windows 2000 isn't supported--that OS is, in fact, more than six years old and has near-zero market share among home users.

Juan: I don't mean to make fun of you in particular, but I just knew somebody would post a "what about eMusic?!" comment. (It's like Opera fans showing up anytime I so much as mention the topic of Web browsers.) I have previously applauded eMusic's leadership in selling DRM-free MP3s, but its indie-only catalogue and subscription model make it a much harder sell than either Amazon or iTunes.

- RP

Thanks, Rob - it's good to see it up in your post now. Just tryin' to save my fellow Win 2K users any of the initial pain I experienced ;)

I'm in the same boat as you re: OS support. I use Win 2K at work and home, but will be upgrading to XP sometime soon. It's a great, relatively lightweight, fairly secure (if you know what you're doing) OS but software companies are moving away from supporting it. Oh well - change is good. Time for me to add XP to OS X, Ubuntu, and Win 2K in my stable of operating systems...

Juan,
Of course emusic.com is the place to start, but you have to admit that there are gaping holes in their catalog. Amazon can fill a number of those holes. I find iTunes to be a PITA anyway and this is another great reason not to use it.

Clem,
Well played!

Since I run Linux at home and would much prefer to purchase music as a download rather than on CDs I was ecstatic to see this happen Suffice it to say that I am severely bummed that it requires their 3rd party app to download an album. (Yeah I'm old enough to think in terms of albums; plus I buy a lot of classical music and 50's jazz where having the whole album is generally a plus). You'd think they could provide a means to pay the album price and individually download all of it's songs, including the ones marked "album only".

Good article! I'm a longtime Mac and iTunes user, and have bought my fair share of music (and vids) from iTMS. Today, I tried Amazon's service, since I already have an account with them, and I was truly surprised at how easy it was to purchase and download two songs. Not as easy as iTunes purchases, but relatively painless anyways. They don't have the selection that iTMS has, but I'm willing to bet that if Amazon's MP3 service is successful, the selection will grow exponentially. I love Apple and its iTMS, but they sorely need some good competition to keep them from resting on their laurels.

Amazon does not offer any protection or recovery service:

"Your Amazon MP3 Music purchases can only be downloaded once. After you have successfully downloaded the file to your computer at the time of purchase, we recommend that you create a backup copy. We are currently unable to replace any purchased files that you delete or lose due to a system or disk error."

Why should anyone pay to download music with no guarantees or protection when you can get the same thing free somewhere else, and without "album only" restrictions?

Convenience and visibility may attract a lot of casual customers, but it won't convince serious collectors to give up free file swapping. Amazon download customers will likely be new buyers or casual fans who only buy small amounts.

Failing to provide customer service will only alienate their best high-volume customers. People who buy a lot music from Amazon are most likely to lose a lot when a computer gets replaced or suffers mechanical failure. Nobody's going to be eager to come back and buy again after seeing their whole music collection wiped out by computer problems.

Music sellers have to realize that convenience and customer service are the only reasons anyone is willing to pay for music anymore. Illegal file trading will continue to thrive as long as most digital music sellers continue to fail on both counts.

I have procrastinated on getting a record digitizer to convert my 'stacks of wax' into MP3, as an iPod Shuffle is easier to carry around than 20 vinyl LPs! My procrastination was seemingly rewarded with Apple announced their limited non-DRM selection, to which I rewarded them with my first iTunes store download of a DRM-free album (Pink Floyd's "Animals"). No problems, but there was only 1 album I wanted. Amazon.com's announcement was also welcomed by me, as they had an album I wanted (10cc's "Greatest Hits", actually I want "Sheet Music").

I just tried to download that album using Mac OS X 10.4.10 (latest & greatest) and Amazon.com's "AmazonMP3Downloader". Despite the fact I was really annoyed that 'yet another piece of software' to do something web browsers (Safari) do fine was needed, I trusted Amazon.com, as I have happily used them for many years now.

The download failed. Nothing! The idiotic downloader is completely unaware of the fact I just bought and paid for an album. Hopefully Amazon.com's customer service, which I have never used before, will be better than the worthless downloader they forced me to use.

I may procrastinate, but it looks like I fired off a complaint too soon, and I apologize!

Seems if you quit your browser (Safari, in my case) and quit Amazon.com's downloader, "AmazonMP3Downloader", you will find a file on your desktop of the name of the album (probably assuming your browser is set to download there, as mine is). Double-clicking that file started up the Amazon.com downloader and the files downloaded.

iTunes is also started up, and the album and songs were successfully installed, along with the album art.

I should have expected some glitch, as the version is 1.0.0, so by that measure, I was foolish to spout off so soon, to which I again apologize!

Call me old-fashioned, but i prefer buying compact discs. I can import my favorite tracks into iTunes at my choice of bitrate or DRM-free format, and i don't have to make a backup copy -- the CD stays on the shelf for whenever i need it again.

I have not tried online music stores, but having been frustrated by the horrid Amazon interface (you know, the "YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE THIS!!!" crap that gets in the way). I suspect that, like their main online storefront does with your browser files, the Amazon Downloader will be doing data mining on your hard drive to figure out what else they can sell you. No thanks!!!

Sorry, Amazon's not a great bargain compared to used CD shops offer competitive prices for uncompressed digital music and real live service people too.

anon's comment:
Call me old-fashioned, but i prefer buying compact discs. I can import my favorite tracks into iTunes at my choice of bitrate or DRM-free format, and i don't have to make a backup copy -- the CD stays on the shelf for whenever i need it again.

I have not tried online music stores, but having been frustrated by the horrid Amazon interface (you know, the "YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE THIS!!!"

I am so with you... Anon. Why download music when you can OWN the original disk, artwork, and do whatever you want with it (for personal use). I purchase a mix of new and used CD's from a variety of outlets... but used mostly from Amazon Marketplace. Personally I like "if you like this, you might like this"... it has led me to many things that I have not heard and found I liked. Found the same beneficial exploration on Napster when it was free. My music purchases increased... I wanted the disks.
Hey, vinyl still exists...so I have hopes that despite what the younglings say CD's will survive many many more years.

Oh one other gem... recently passed 10,000 256 KPS songs on my 80 gig iPod. All from my own collection of CD's. Love to listen in total random shuffle. Who needs downloads when you have 4000 CD's... and are always buying more??

The real story here is the behind the scenes move by EMI and particularly Universal to screw Apple. How does EMI justify selling to DRM free music to Amazon at a cheaper price than they do to Apple? It's pretty clear that Apple is seen as a threat to the music labels. Amazon they can CONTROL. Controlling Steve Jobs is a whole DIFFERENT story. Short term, I guess consumers win, but I'm not so sure long term.

I just tried it, not bad.

I did have to look pretty hard to find something I wanted. A lot of band searches (including indie) come up with barely relevant tributes and other stuff.

I just gave it a try. I bought La Femme D'argent by Air. It's an album only song in iTunes. The price was a bit steep on Amazon at $1.99. It's relatively easy to use but not as user friendly as iTunes. If Amazon is able to get a larger collection they'd give iTunes a run for it's money even if it's not as streamlined. MP3s are just more appealing.

I did my initial Amazon MP3 downloads three days ago. But, half of the album, "Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan," a best of, hasn't downloaded. Whenever I try to resume the download, I get a 'download no longer' message in the program. I do have half of the 10 selections on the album downloaded. However, I paid for all ten. Not off to a good start.

I have made several purchases last week and was very happy with high quality MP3s, but since 3 days Amazon has blocked access to all its Canadian and foreign customers. I will look into emusic.com

I also prefer the 'old-fashioned' method of buying CDs. I have never done file swapping, or been an i-tunes customer, but I do have an Amazon account, so this may be convenient for me. What has me interested in Amazon's mp3 service is that I have found a lot of titles that I want that are actually from long out of print CDs. This I thought was strange, but it will allow me to get many songs from the old Narada label CDs. As long as they can do cool stuff like that with regard to what they offer, then I'm in.

I tried out ythe Amazon MP3 service the other night day and was very impressed. Since I only downloaded a few individual songs I did'nt need to install the software. Downloading was extremely straight forward. The quality of the MP3's were excellent. DRM free! I especially liked the variable pricing which permits you to pay a little extra for longer tracks (i-tunes would make you buy the entire album). The only downside was the lack of selection.

I am new in MP3 business. Have account with iTune. Downloaded couple of hundred songs and only after I realized that the most of the song have a 128 bit rate. You can tell the difference between 128 and 256. Now I am looking for amozon to download again all my favorites wint 256 bit rate.

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The use of digital rights management has been controversial. Advocates argue it is necessary for copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work to ensure continued revenue streams.[1] Opponents, such as The Free Software Foundation, maintain that the use of the word "rights" is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term digital restrictions management.[2] Their position is essentially that copyright holders are attempting to restrict use of copyrighted material in ways not included in the statutory, common law, or Constitutional grant of exclusive commercial use to them. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other opponents, also consider DRM schemes t