Today only you can get U2's new album as a DRM-free 256kbps set of MP3s at Amazon.com for $3.99. I've used their music store occasionally, the prices were OK for some tracks, but you can't beat a brand-new album for $4. Just thought I'd give the heads-up, I took advantage of this deal already.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001S6HZTE

If it supported purchases from Canada I'd have already bought it too.

Well, that sucks. I thought it might not be Euro-friendly, but Canada? Come on, Amazon. So if you are in the US, then this might be a good deal for you.

This strikes me as something that might not be Amazon's fault.

Because of the DRM? Apple seems to be able to pull it off, it is going mostly DRM-free and is available in Canada.

I was more thinking about international music licensing and deals with the record labels. But I don't know how these things work, so I shouldn't jump to any conclusions.

Neither do I, I was just speculating. I would think that maybe Apple might have a better relationship with the record labels than Amazon.

Amazon's downloadable music is, AFAIK, 100% DRM free.

Yup, it is. I was thinking that maybe Amazon wasn't allowed to sell in other countries because of their MP3s being DRM-free. At any rate, it's a place where I can download a track or two and play it on my Empeg, iPhone, my wife's iPod or stream to my Xbox. It's great to have choices!

So how's the album?

I like U2 and clicked to purchase it, only to learn I couldn't simply purchase the album for download, but needed to install Amazon's "special" software in order to make the purchase. No thanks Amazon.

I wouldn't worry about it. I don't mind having a light weight app download each individual track for me. It's downloading the album as I type this now.

Like others have mentioned, all tracks sold on Amazon are .mp3, i.e. completely DRM-free.

Yeah, I don't even begin to get that either. Actually, given that you're only given a few minutes to download a track, maybe it's a way to queue up purchases. Of course, that begs the question of why you only have a little while to download the track. My guess involves the RIAA.

Still ridiculous. Still a very small app.

There's nothing wrong with that app. It's installed on my wife's machine, and my favorite part about it is that if you choose, it can import everything you just bought into iTunes automatically. I like that they're trying to make it as easy as possible for people to use them instead of the iTunes store

Does the small download app watermark (even if only within meta data) the tracks with personal identifiers? Not having that being done on the server may be a reason to use that app. Otherwise they could have had an easy shopping cart that simply zipped up all the file when you checked out, making for a single file download.

Nothing obvious, but certainly a possibility. Next time I download something, I'll take a look to see if it's consuming a lot of CPU.

That said, if you download individual tracks, you don't have to use the Downloader app.

It may very well just be a way to automate the import into iTunes for Mac users. Not sure what the purpose of the software would be under Windows.

Take a guess what percentage of itunes users use windows. I know my girlfriend bought tracks on amazon and had them on her iphone without any hassle at all, which is exactly what I suspect they're going for.

And so what if they're watermarking them? They're your music, you can play them anywhere you want and keep them as long as you want. They're not giving you a license to share them with the world.

He's just suggesting that might be a reason, not necessarily a negative one.

I'm just not clear why platform has any relevance. The need (as much of a need as it may be) is there on mac and windows.

And I meant the watermarking.

Bitt is right, I wasn't talking about negative reasons, I was just trying to come up with some hypothesis as to why they might be using a stand-alone downloader application versus a server-based cart that simply combines everything you toss into it and then lets you download it all at once directly from your browser (like you download any other file(s) ).

Being able to get the media directly into your media application, like iTunes, without a person having to move files themselves was my last guess. This is what you can do with the Mac version of the software as I understand. But I don't know what the equivalent feature under Windows might be if it's not also using iTunes.

Unlike iTunes itself, the Amazon software is just a downloader, right? Not a media player nor manager.

Hope we're clear now.

It is iTunes under Windows, too.


Correct.

[quote]And I meant the watermarking. \:\) [/quote[
Ok, I think we're all on the same page now.

I'd give Amazon the benefit of the doubt on this one. They want to minimize tech support costs and make it easy. For people who don't know a file from a hole in the ground, the downloaded works. A "zip file" is well beyond your average user.

Yeah, that was my thinking too. People are stupid. Well, maybe not stupid, but definitely dumber than rocks.