As a dyed-in-the-wool Apple "fanboi," I've been a huge fan of the iTunes store for several years. But recently, I've started buying from Amazon for several reasons, and thought I'd share a recent buying experience.
I was shopping for Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon(the 1993 20th Anniversary remaster) this week. I checked iTunes, who wanted the standard album price, $9.99, which wasn't bad. While there, I also looked at The Wall and it was going for 25 bucks and change.
Both albums were encoded with DRM. While Apple's DRM is better than some (read "Microsoft's Zune" or their "Plays for Sure"), I'd rather have something without DRM if possible. While Apple does have some DRM-free tracks in the "iTunes Plus" format, most of Apple's offerings still have DRM.
After flipping over to Amazon, I found both albums considerably cheaper and without DRM. Dark Side was $7.99 while The Wall was 18 dollars and change, a savings of $2.00 and $7.00 respectively.
Amazon's downloader worked flawlessly, the songs were imported into iTunes without incident and included artwork. The songs are in 256 bit MP3 format and sound great.
If you want unprotected music in high fidelity, I suggest you try Amazon. They carry most things, there are only a few artists I've not been able to find there (ELO being one).
My Trusted MOGs
Yeah, I've been buying from them as well. Fast downloads, the quality is great. The one flaw is that once you download, you never get access again. My download failed on one song on a list and it's ben DAYS of back and forth to get Amazon to agree to let me download again.
Apple keeps track of your purchase history, and aside from the authorization one has to do, you're protected from computer/data loss.
I bet that Amazon will have a subscription son to cover track mirroring to the s3 cluster.
My Trusted MOGs
i totally agree. i'm currently in the process of un-DRMing albums i've bought from iTunes in the past (pain in the ass). Amazon is great and the music industry will officially be totally abandoning DRM soon from what i hear. So i'd advise anyone against buying any music from iTunes that doesn't clearly say iTunes 'Plus' (DRM-free). If not, go elsewhere. EVEN IF someone gave you one of those pesky iTunes gift cards for x-mas last year.
My Trusted MOGs
yep, i agree too. i haven't downloaded from iTunes (i won't do the DRM thing, don't have an ipod) but i have from 7Digital, Amazon and a few others. so far, the files i got from Amazon sounded the best. don't know how much of that is Amazon and how much is the album/label coz i haven't done a side by side comparison. i've heard from lots of people that Amazon has met their needs best for one reason or another.
My Trusted MOGs
Albums purchased on iTunes, when burned to a CD, are encoded with the disk info so that when you re-rip it, it will have all the track names and so on. That's one way to remove the DRM from your iTune's purchases!
My Trusted MOGs
Albums purchased on iTunes, when burned to a CD, are encoded with the disk info so that when you re-rip it, it will have all the track names and so on. That's one way to remove the DRM from your iTune's purchases!
My Trusted MOGs
I previously posted on Amazon's announcement of an out-of print CD copy service. Apparently, it's through a subsidiary, costs $4.95 each for up to 5 copies and does have the catalogue of three major labels. This is a licensed download, but although I have put in an inquiry to Amazon, it's all pretty new and details not available. I agree Amazon has a pretty deep catalogue and have used both itunes and Amazon, but the former is better in non-DRM format. Some MP-3 encoded tracks sound pretty good, some not so good. BerkeleyBob
My Trusted MOGs
I previously posted on Amazon's announcement of an out-of print CD copy service. Apparently, it's through a subsidiary, costs $4.95 each for up to 5 copies and does have the catalogue of three major labels. This is a licensed download, but although I have put in an inquiry to Amazon, it's all pretty new and details not available. I agree Amazon has a pretty deep catalogue and have used both itunes and Amazon, but the former is better in non-DRM format. Some MP-3 encoded tracks sound pretty good, some not so good. BerkeleyBob
My Trusted MOGs
iTunes just isn't making a lot of tunes available without the DRM restrictions. there's no way i'm going to burn a CD of an album just to get rid of the DRM. i'm trying to reduce waste not make more of it. but that's still a great tip to know, just in case...