Amazon's MP3 service

I recently made my first jump into digital media purchases. Up until this point I refused to purchase music from any of the online services that use Digital Rights Management technologies.

The iTunes store has a clean interface and an impressive catalog, but the DRM-laden AAC files do not play on my current digital music player of choice, a 2nd generation Dell DJ 20. All of the services that were compatible with my device used DRM-laden Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. I've heard countless stories from people who have purchased music only to have a computer/software glitch that renders their purchased music unplayable, so I never wanted to take the risk.

A few weeks ago, I heard that Amazon had recently opened up their MP3 store as a public beta, offering DRM-free 256Kbps MP3 files that are compatible with pretty much any digital music player available (past or present). After looking through the initial catalog offerings, I decided to take the plunge and make my first digital music purchase.

After installing the Amazon MP3 Downloader application (only required for albums, but useful for purchasing many singles at once), I decided to download Pablo Honey by Radiohead. I have owned this album since it was first released in 1993, but sadly only in Cassette format (without a cassette player for the past 5 years). After following the quick checkout procedure, the Amazon MP3 Downloader opened and my music files began downloading. After each file finished downloading, the application would add it to my Windows Media Player (or iTunes) library automatically.

When everything was all said and done, I opened up WMP and found (surprisingly) that everything had worked and transferred the files onto my DJ without hassle. I even made a physical copy of the CD to put into my home stereo just as easily (and using whatever application I wanted to do it with!).

I applaud Amazon for offering DRM-free MP3 tracks and the seamless downloading experience has left me a happy consumer, willing to purchase digital versions of albums that I only own in cassette format as well as new albums. I only wish that they would also provide cover & disc art to go along with album purchases so you could make your own physical CD's look nicer.