Amazon MP3 music store beta (DRM-free)

[Trippy]

Amazon's DRM-free MP3 music store is now open for public beta.

Annoucement here

Store here

The selection is a lot more limited than iTunes at the moment as you might expect.

The one song I've purchased so far is encoded as 256 Kbps CBR which is nice and compares favorably to iTunes' DRM-free tracks which are AAC 256 Kbps CBR (yes I know AAC is a better codec bit for bit than MP3) and is better than the normal iTunes 128 Kbps DRM'd AAC files.

There's a standalone MP3 downloader that I haven't tried yet. The sample clips stream as M3U files to an external music player like Winamp which is nice cause unlike Apple's piece of shit music player UI songs don't stop playing when you move to a different page like they do in iTunes.

Edit: fixed title

Edit 2: I just noticed that because the M3U files are actually downloaded through your browser first before being opened by the appropriate app they'll show up in your downloaded files list if you browser has such a feature and you can just go back and double-click an entry to replay it.

[Sky]

I just bought 11 CDs for $70 at Amazon.

[Quinton]

Obviously needs more content, but yeah I downloaded a song just to try it out and it was pretty painless, reasonably encoded, etc. Album art is embedded in the id3 tags and shows up just fine on my Sonos.

According to this blurb in WiReD, the tracks are watermarked but not per-customer:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/09/some-of-amazons.html

Honestly, watermarked tracks wouldn't have me all horribly upset.  People rant a lot about "privacy" there, but it sounds a lot like "offended that if they pass it around in violation of the 'personal use only' license someone might find out" more than anything else to me.  Interesting that they're not going that route.  Reportedly the Apple non-drm stuff is tagged per-customer but it's not clear to me if that's watermarking or just metadata.

EDIT: Totally forgot the *point* of posting... I think this, iTunes non-drm tracks, etc, is a pretty strong sign that drm'd music is on its way out.  Looks like it's finally sinking in that nobody wants to pay almost as much (or more, depending) than a CD for a format that is crippled.  About damn time.  I'd still prefer a little higher quality, but it's getting to the point that the convenience of not having to buy a physical copy and rip it will outweigh the "inferior" bits I'm getting.  Honestly, I can't really hear the difference -- just the principle of the thing ^^

- Q

[Righ]

Per-customer watermarking using non-sensitive data is the way forward, and had it been implemented earlier by companies willing to embrace electronic distribution, the music industry would have saved itself a lot of pain. I did an interesting contract for EMI at Abbey Road a decade ago, and they had all this figured out back then... which shows you how severe the resistance to change is at the 'suits' level.

Also, lossless music please Amazon.