Two years after I first laid out my plea to be able to download music the way I wanted, Amazon have pretty much come through. My canonical test song whenever someone announces a new music service is “Feelin’ Good” by Nina Simone, and here it is on Amazon.com. So, let’s test this service against my list of requirements.
- I can download one track, instead of a whole album; I don’t want ten Nina Simone songs, I just want the one I’m looking for – PASS
- No DRM. None. I don’t mind what the format is, if there’s no DRM, as long as it can be played on Linux (which is pretty much everything). Bonus points for oggs. Half a bonus point for just plain mp3. – PASS
- A track costs a pound or less. I’m not paying more than a quid for one song. – PASS (99c is about 50p)
- I feel comfortable putting my credit card number into the site. This means, in practice, that if it’s called something like mp3downloads.haxx0r.ru, I am not interested. – PASS
- I can just buy a song by putting my credit card number in and getting it for download. I don’t need to sign up for an account, give them all my details, none of that. – FAIL
- My music tastes aren’t very eclectic, so I’d expect the service to carry most of what I’d want to listen to. This means that a service for one label alone isn’t really what I want. I don’t want to discover new music with this; I want to get the stuff I already know about and want to listen to. – PASS
- I’ll get, probably, about five songs a year. So a subscription service is out, especially since with most of them your music stops working when you unsubscribe. – PASS
So it only fails on one thing: you need to sign up for an account. However, I already have an Amazon account. This is still technically a failure — because my desire for no signup was not only for my own benefit but because I didn’t want it to be a powerplay by some firm who would then spam everyone who bought mp3s until the end of time — but largely people already have Amazon accounts and Amazon have shown themselves (in my experience) to be reasonable citizens in this regard. I don’t receive lots of spam or unsolicited “recommendations” from them, and (from a web, if not open source perspective) I think the Amazon Web Services are a Good Thing. So although that’s a fail I’m prepared to let it slide.
Well done Amazon, I say. I suspect that it’s only tracks from some record companies, or some labels, or some other criterion that I don’t care about, but since my test track appears there they must have at least some of the music I like. Now I get to start buying mp3s.
Update: dammit, it requires a US billing address. Obviously I could lie about that, but if I was happy to lie then I’d just google for the mp3. So it’s presumably US-only at this point. Anyone got any contacts at Amazon who could give me an indication as to when or whether it’s being rolled out to other countries?
[...] Via kryogenix.org and Engadget [...]
Posted by Amazon launches DRM free MP3 service | Muffin Research Labs by Stuart Colville on September 25th, 2007.
But it’s only for the USA right now, so it should still fail on the “available in my country” test.
Posted by usa on September 25th, 2007.
Hmm… seems to want a US billing address. Am I missing something?
Posted by http://simonwillison.net/ on September 25th, 2007.
I ordered an MP3 (discovered some cool new Jazz music in the process) and completed the download… From the UK. I have now got an email from Amazon saying they’ve cancelled the order due to an invalid billing address…
Should I return the MP3? If so, how as it was sent from a non-returnable email address.
Posted by Nick on September 25th, 2007.
Oh.
I figured that if I could sign into amazon.com with my amazon.co.uk signin details (which I can) and I was paying with a credit card (which I was) (because VISA is honoured everywhere), then I’d be OK. I was waiting until this evening until I actually bought one.
You’re telling me it doesn’t work? arse!
Posted by sil on September 25th, 2007.
Main post updated. Bloody Americans keep all the good stuff. I suspect there is Some Legal Stuff meaning that this is US-only at the moment. So much for me seeing the thing and jumping on it. Bah.
Posted by sil on September 25th, 2007.
7digital.com would get pretty much the same pass / fail (you have to create an account sadly) except it doesn’t have Feeling Good by Nina Simone in mp3 format (just about every other song she’s done in mp3 but not that one). My only other complaint about 7digital is their site is a little rough around the edges, not as easy to search or navigate to stuff as Amazon is (or allofmp3 was). I’ve bought a couple of albums from there in their standard 192kbps and hq 320kbps formats and been pleased with service.
I still don’t understand why none of the record companies haven’t gone ahead and stolen the allofmp3 idea and just charge slightly more. Charge by size of download and let customers choose which ever format and whatever quality they like – want crappy 72kbps mp3 tracks for 10p each, fine we can do that, you want ultra music snob lossless FLAC audio, fine we can do that, but it’ll cost 2.99. And everything in between.
Posted by pscoop on September 25th, 2007.
And if you want to download an album, how does one do that without their downloading app?
Weird that they allow singles to be bought & fetched normally, but “You must install the Amazon MP3 Downloader to purchase albums.”
A reasonable start; lets see: UK support, a linux app or Rhythmbox plugin and I’ll start buying my tunes there!
Posted by John Drinkwater on September 25th, 2007.
well it does seem to work from the UK… Unless I get another email back with instructions what to do with this MP3 file I shall keep it for the time being.
But yeah, didn’t use the downloader but did only fill in the details that applied on the address form (no state, ZIP etc) and filled in my UK phone number.
Can anyone else confirm it’s possible or did I fluke the system?
Posted by Nick on September 25th, 2007.
At least they are realising that we, the public, will buy if they offer us what we want. It may take time for them to fully give what we ask, but this is certainly a step in the right direction. It’d be nice to see a service like magnatune which lets you download in wav/flac/similar or mp3. Although I have nothing against mp3 it’d be nice to see other format supported.
Posted by Robert Small on September 25th, 2007.
I concur with your list of requirements, but personally I would add “Does not require me to install top-secret proprietary software just to download some files”. (FAIL)
Posted by http://blog.ciarang.com/ on September 25th, 2007.
It does require a US billing address, but seemed to accept an old US address for me – about 2.5 years out of date, and which has no relation to the Hong Kong-issued Amex card I used to pay for the file. I understand the point of this, and can’t really blame them for it – it’ll take a while before the licensing regime catches up with a global online marketplace, if it ever does.
Mplayer reports the file as being 128kbit, which is pretty bad – I thought it could be VBR, but doing a quick bytes*8=1024/length gives 125.something kbit/sec. FAIL
Requiring the use of a download tool (what is it actually doing?) which is closed-source and only runs on OSX and Windows to get discounted albums is a pretty big problem for me – in fact, I’d say it’s a deal-breaker. Give me MP3 files over HTTP and I’ll buy loads – require me to install a client, and I’m not spending any more money in your store. FAIL
Posted by Richard on September 25th, 2007.
Of course, if it does come to the UK, it will be more than 50p. I’m guessing 99p (as £1 is one of the quantum levels of pricing) so will still pass your test.
Posted by Paul on September 25th, 2007.
Denied. When I first saw your post, I was ready to leap straight on there and buy something, just to encourage them to keep it going. The Amazon FAQ says they’re working on a Linux downloading tool. Maybe then I can go and re-buy the music I already bought from Apple.
Posted by Tom on September 26th, 2007.
“Bloody Americans keep all the good stuff.”
I am an American. Thank God I am not bloody. I think that would be a bad situation. Sorry, I love the “other” English language and the different use for words that would make absolutely no sense if used here in the USA. BTW: We have many of them here too.
Posted by BrokenCrystal on September 27th, 2007.
Try eMusic – 100 free downloads in the trial, okay, you have to give them some basic details, but they have a download manager that works on GNU/Linux, and is free software, and their tracks are DRM free.
http://www.emusic.com/ge
Posted by Matt Lee on September 29th, 2007.
[...] sconosciuto: [...]
Posted by WRC Torrent Blog»Blog Archive » DRM-free MP3 downloads from Amazon on October 16th, 2007.
Well, perhaps Amazon gives a great service. Or it will be better shortly.
Posted by Steve on December 29th, 2007.
Why can UK Amazon customers purchase mp3s from Amazon .com, is it legal or technical reasons? Surely it’s against some kind of trading law to discriminate against us in such a way. I bet it’s got something to do with the paranoid, capitalist, control freak record companies
Posted by Jay on February 3rd, 2008.
Jay: there’s no equal trading agreement between the US and the UK like there is across the EU. The record companies are indeed paranoid capitalist control freaks, but they’re perfectly allowed to only sell items in one country and not others. Note that the record companies in the US and the record companies in the UK are not necessarily the same thing; a band may be signed to one label in America and a different one in Europe. I like the idea of the global economy, but we ain’t there yet.
Posted by sil on February 3rd, 2008.
[...] while back I tested Amazon’s mp3 store, which was fine except that you have to be in America. Fail. However, Play.com have just opened a [...]
Posted by » DRM-free downloads in the UK, redux: hooray for Play.com » as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge on February 17th, 2008.
That’s interesting!
Posted by Boris on May 2nd, 2008.
Good posting! thanks…
Posted by Andria on August 25th, 2008.
Hey,
I want Amazon to go one step further. I want to see the download option for lossless, FLAC files, and maybe even an open client?
I wrote to them to tell them this, and their response was surprisingly honest!
See their response here:
http://linuxsoftwareblog.com/blog/?p=181
Posted by Rob on May 14th, 2009.