Amazon Launches Public Beta of DRM-Free Music Store

[mambodancer]

Tax

Apparently Amazon has a choice in the matter. And this goes for iPods too or Mac computers. You can buy from Apple and get charged sales tax or buy from Amazon and avoid sales tax. Why is that? Is it really because Apple has no choice? I don't think so. When I used Rhapsody, they charged 89 cents for songs if you were a subscriber. No sales tax. And you could re-download your songs if you wanted to.

Federal law requires businesses to charge tax in all states they do business in esp. if they have a physical presence in that state.

Edit-Sorry, looks like others have already addressed this question.

 

[redfirebird08]

My free song was tagged with the same ID #. At least for the free song, the ID # does not appear to identify the downloader, just the song.

We need to find a purchased song that lots of people have downloaded and compare notes on it to see if the numbers are individualized for purchased songs. It'd be cool if there is just a song number and that's all there is to it.

Federal law requires businesses to charge tax in all states they do business in esp. if they have a physical presence in that state.

Edit-Sorry, looks like others have already addressed this question.

Yeah, someone else already explained it. Thanks though. In my opinion, there needs to be a federal statute that overrides the states, preventing them from charging sales tax on a non-physical product from the Internet like a song download. This does weigh on the minds of consumers and hurts businesses like Apple in the long run for having a physical business location in the state.

I'm happy enough with my purchase but it's funky to have the encoder "unknown."

I checked a Pink Floyd song from Amazon and iTunes says it was encoded by LAME 3.97.

 

[TurboSC]

uh oh... I know a lot of people at Apple are feeling a little uneasy today...

I love competition, it just means the consumer wins! fight fight fight!

 

[re2st]

Holy mother of God. Amazon has their ***** together! Their download program works on OSX and they're selling Pink Floyd's The Wall for $8.99. That's right, $17 on iTunes BEFORE tax and only $8.99 on Amazon with NO SALES TAX. Hell, surprisingly enough the songs were automatically added to iTunes and came with artwork. Amazing!

Looks like I've finally found a digital store that is worth my time, at least for things that I feel a need to purchase ripped versions like The Wall because it's a gapless album. Otherwise, I just use a Yahoo music subscription and record unlimited songs for "free" at $70 a year.

ugh.. there's FairUse4WM. you don't need to "record" music anymore.

 

[redfirebird08]

ugh.. there's FairUse4WM. you don't need to "record" music anymore.

I've been using SoundTaxi. It works good although it's not perfect, mainly when you do it in batches. I also have Replay Music which is a great recorder in my opinion. Only problem is that now that I use a Macbook, it means running this stuff through Parallels, which typically means tons of processor intensity and thus my fan gets really loud when running pretty much anything in Windows.

 

[Mackie99]

Amazon.com is located in Washington, so is Real Networks. Washington has a 6.5% sales tax. I get charged for the sales tax rate in Texas at 8.25%. Sorry, but that is a lot when Apple is claiming to only charge $10 for an album.

I live in CA and I am never charged sales tax for iTunes purchases. But, if I buy something from the Apple online store, I'm charged sales tax.

Apple has many stores in CA, but they don't charge sales tax on iTunes music here?

Someone did explain it once, but I don't remember what they said.

 

[Sandfleaz]

Just installed the downloader from Amazon and got the free tune.
Coincidence that it's by the group "The Apples in Stereo"?

It worked well... this is good for consumers and i think good for Apple (more iPod sales)

 

[redfirebird08]

Just installed the downloader from Amazon and got the free tune.
Coincidence that it's by the group "The Apples in Stereo"?

It worked well... this is good for consumers and i think good for Apple (more iPod sales)

Agreed, although I think it's good for Apple because it's finally a solid competitor. We know Amazon has their stuff together. The fact that they had a Mac download client ready on the day they launched this service is impressive. In general, their shipping is top notch from the few purchases I have made from their regular store. They have a good reputation for satisfying their customers and without DRM, it prevents iPod users from avoiding it like the Plague. More competition for Apple means that they are going to get more creative and find a way to put out an even better product with iTunes. This means that in the end, the consumer is the biggest winner of all...and perhaps this kind of thing could save the music industry if they would drop prices enough. People will pay for downloaded music if it doesn't feel like a ripoff.

 

[mduser63]

Came home tonight and saw that there was a new Neil Young song on iTunes. I've had a bootleg of the song (same recording and all) for a long time, but figured now that it has been released, I'll pay for it and get a high quality copy. Got all ready to buy it on iTunes, and thought I should check to see if Amazon had it. Sure enough they did. Bought it, installed the Amazon MP3 Downloader, tried to download the song and Safari crashed. I called Amazon technical support and they reset the download count for me. Retried and got the same thing. So, I switched to Firefox, had them reset it yet again, and the download worked fine (although it never actually used the Downloader app...). Song sounds great, all in all I'm very impressed. I assume they'll get the bugs worked out of it, after all this is the first day. But I may switch to this as my primary music store, with iTunes only for songs they don't have.

BTW, the song was Walkin' To New Orleans and it's on Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino. Highly recommended.

 

[Doctor Q]

I guess we should all be switching to a meta-search site to shop for online music that we can purchase for our iPods. You don't want to have to check the iTunes and Amazon stores separately now, do you?

 

[redfirebird08]

I don't use Safari. Thank God for Firefox being open source. Loved it when I was a Windows user and still love it on Mac. The customization is awesome. Hopefully Amazon does get the kinks worked out for Safari users though. Good luck.

 

[tarkeybear]

Album only limitations at Amazon?

I just checked out Don Mclean's song "American Pie" from the American Pie album at Amazon ($0.89/song); compare this against "album-only" availability from ITMS.

Will this force ITMS to move away from the "Album-Only" purchase restriction for popular songs?

 

[uv23]

God I hate 30 second samples. I was hoping this was one place where it would improve over iTunes. Bleep still does it the best: the song fades out after 30 seconds but you can press play to keep it going. That way it can't be stream ripped but you can still hear entire songs.

 

[redfirebird08]

I just checked out Don Mclean's song "American Pie" from the American Pie album at Amazon ($0.89/song); compare this against "album-only" availability from ITMS.

Will this force ITMS to move away from the "Album-Only" purchase restriction for popular songs?

That's always possible, although I've found some quirks on Amazon as well. Pink's Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album has only 5 tracks but because they want to charge $7.80 for the album, some of the longer tracks are $1.94. That's basically the same as an "album only" restriction, and I think iTunes does in fact have an album only restriction on some of the longer songs from "Wish You Were Here." One of the songs is a total ripoff. They're charging $1.94 for "Welcome To The Machine," which is 7 minutes and 26 seconds long. The other two are 12+ minutes long so it's understandable.

http://www.amazon.com/Wish-You-Were-Here/dp/B000SX6JUO/ref=pd_sim_dm_hp_nav_lk_1/103-1977721-6474202

 

[sonictonic]

I think this is great but I don't understand how Amazon has so much more DRM free music than iTunes! How the hell did they get record companies to say yes to this and Apple had trouble? What's the deal here?

Specifically, one of the top selling albums on the new service right now, by Feist, is DRM free on amazon and yet restricted on iTunes with 128kbps. They had a deal for the 1, 2, 3, 4 song with Apple, and yet Apple couldn't secure a deal with them to sell that album DRM free?

I'm confused about this. Can someone explain?

 

[genshi]

Unless my iTunes has suddenly stopped showing DRM-free choices, there seem to be quite a few artists that Amazon's got that iTunes doesn't.

Feist is one, Caribou is another.

Haven't found any examples of iTunes having stuff that Amazon doesn't.

You haven't been looking very hard then as most of the stuff I listen to is NOT on Amazon but I can find it on iTunes. Most of the bleep.com artists are on iTunes as well but haven't found many of them on Amazon. And being an independent label myself, none of my artists are on Amazon nor have I found a way to get them on there (but they are selling well on iTunes, eMusic and Rhapsody.)

My favorite online music store, Warp Records' bleep.com, has been selling DRM-free VBR MP3s since its inception. It's awesome, especially as they distribute tons of electronica labels other than Warp through the site. Generally works well, the pricing is fair, and I am happy with the quality of recordings (they also sell FLAC files at a slightly higher price.)

Yes, I agree, love bleep.com

 

[CIrawI3riCIge]

Although I'd rather see these as 256 AAC, I'd bet you couldn't pick out 256 mp3 versus cd in a blind test.

Please be kidding. I've already done blind tests between 320 AAC, 320 MP3, and 1411 AIFF; the differences are blatantly obvious on my equipment. I envy you if you can't discern between 256 MP3 and uncompressed PCM. If I had your ears I could save a lot of money.

My point was that it would be nice for uncompressed PCM and allow us to encode at our discretion. The bandwidth is there. MP3 is going backwards in terms of quality.

 

[CalCanuck]

Just downloaded a track, and to my surprise, they used LAME 3.97 to encode it. So not only are they selling music in the open MP3 format, but they're using an open source encoder to make them!

LAME is one of the better encoders, *period*, even when compared to commercial ones. So we get to have our cake (DRM free files) and eat it too (that sound good)! Sweet.

I have 'Sound Check' checked in my iTunes and I've noticed files encoded using LAME are unaffected by 'Sound Check'. I have to re-encode them using iTunes before they will adjust to match my other songs. Otherwise, no complaints having another source for downloads.

 

[uv23]

Maybe I'm missing something but it seems I can't use this from Canada. &*^@3876@&^@*&^@# Gimme a break. Even though I have an amazon.com account, it prompts me for a new billing address and will only accept a US address. Lame.

 

[7racer]

Your speculation about future events with your clouded vision doesn't interest me in the least. Right now, Amazon is selling 89 cent DRM free tracks. You find Universal's move an "About face" because you live in Apple fanboy land where somehow Apple was the victim of the "evil" record companies. I, on the other hand, think that Apple was trying to screw us over with over priced markups on DRM free music, and Amazon seems to do just fine charging far less.

that's the problem. You're short sighted.

 

[genshi]

You haven't been looking very hard then as most of the stuff I listen to is NOT on Amazon but I can find it on iTunes. Most of the bleep.com artists are on iTunes as well but haven't found many of them on Amazon. And being an independent label myself, none of my artists are on Amazon nor have I found a way to get them on there (but they are selling well on iTunes, eMusic and Rhapsody.)

One other thing I noticed, why would Amazon have certain CDs for sale but not have them available for download? Especially of a popular artist. For example, I've had Peter Gabriel's "OVO: Millennium Show" on my wish list for quite awhile (the CD is $45!) yet they don't have it for download... oh well. Unfortunately it's not available on iTunes either.

 

[statikcat]

256 is not bad. I rip all my cds at 320 though. Quality over space imo. Are these downloads going to be VBR? That would make more sense for space.. and Amazon server bandwidth.

 

[Maccus Aurelius]

Seems as though paypal is a no-go. I guess I'll have to pass

Although, my order kept failing to process, so it makes no difference.

 

[brepublican]

The best news since iTMS?

This is really a win-win for all. Especially consumers. Oh wait, who else? But I wonder why some people are voting negative on this one??

Competition is always nice, and I'm really feeling Amazon on this one, and their catalog is massive for a beta (eMusic is *****)! Hopefully, this will shake up Apple and make them revisit some of their ****** policies (album only, I'm talking to you). Amazon is being real aggressive too (that 89c price tag is awful attractive).

Your move Apple.

 

[LordJohnWhorfin]

I thought it was nice...

And then I realized, how absurd is it to be paying the same price for a download when the same Amazon store sells the same CD, with artwork, liner notes, built-in backup, lossless compression, free shipping. Even at Amazon's market-competitive prices, downloads are still not an interesting proposition compared to buying the CD, unless either you want to buy on a song-by-song basis or you just have to have it RIGHT NOW.