RunawayJim.org

I found a great writeup comparing Amazon’s new DRM-free MP3 store with Apple’s iTunes Music Store.  It goes into some nice detail comparing the various issues.  From the sounds of it, Amazon comes out on top.  While I don’t regularly buy digital music because I do prefer CD’s for having higher quality music to use as I please, I have used iTunes to grab some songs to use as suggestions for my upcoming wedding.  The biggest issue it seems regarding the Amazon store is that it’s a bit clumsy to use.  That’s no surprise to me considering it’s still in Beta.  I love Amazon’s regular store and buy stuff from them all the time.  It makes buying stuff online quite easy.  I also love Amazon Unbox, which is very convenient for renting movies as I don’t have to go to a store (though they don’t download to my Tivo very fast and I usually have to pick a movie at least an hour and a half before I want to watch it, but maybe I’ll write a review of that some other time).  With time, I have a feeling that Amazon’s MP3 store will work just as smoothly as everything else Amazon.

The biggest thing that the Amazon store will be is competition for iTMS.  The prices are a cheaper ($0.89 and $0.99 for single tracks and $5.99-$9.99 for whole albums, all DRM-free all encoded at 256 kbps compared to the iTMS prices of $0.99 for all tracks with DRM and $9.99 for all albums with DRM encoded at a lower bit rate and $1.29 per track and $9.99 per album for the DRM-free versions, also encoded at 256 kbps).  While I don’t expect this to bring the majority of iTunes users over to Amazon, I do think it will take enough of them away for Apple to change their thinking, perhaps their prices, and perhaps a complete abandonment of DRM.  This, of course, will take some time.

For the record, the writer only tested the Amazon store on his Apple computer using a lesser known web browser called OmniWeb (I’ll have to look into that one as I’ve never heard of it).  I have a feeling one of his issues with the Amazon MP3 store was caused by his use of OmniWeb.

Again, I urge any iTunes Music Store users reading this to make the switch to the Amazon MP3 store when possible (as the one thing that iTunes has over Amazon is 6 million songs as opposed to Amazon’s 2 million songs).  Check Amazon first when looking for a song or album.  You’ll probably save some money and have a file that can be played on just about anything (all computers using Windows, MacOS X, Linux, etc.; any portable music player as they all support MP3; and even most newer car stereos support MP3 directly now, with with USB ports for a flash drive).

Amazon MP3 Vs. iTunes Music Store (Slashdot)