Yes, you’ve read about this somewhere else already. However, I just wanted to provide a little detail on the service as-is. The files are prices at 89¢ to 99¢ each, and appear to all be 256kbps .mp3 files. Amazon has a small application to help manage downloading the files and adding them to your music database (iTunes or Windows Media Player, apparently); though it’s for Windows XP & Vista (no mac version, boo!) or Max OS X if you happen to be on that type of machine (I wasn’t when I was trying this out; but yea!). The files you download are .azm, which appears to be just a wrapper around whatever .mp3 files you’ve purchased. I don’t know that the .mp3 files have tag/header information that ties them back to the purchaser, a la iTMS Plus songs. Frankly, I don’t care, either, provided it doesn’t have any data that can lead someone to get into my Amazon account.
KT Tunstall: Cool Scottish rocker chicky.
The music that is available is fairly impressive. Of course, it’s not as large a catalog as the iTMS has. I was able to find some fairly obscure music (example: Bat for Lashes, who I’ve written about before), though not everything I was looking for. Any CD’s for sale that have downloadable .mp3s now have a link on that CD’s sale page, and vice-versa. I downloaded KT Tunstall’s Drastic Fantastic (which is a great album and I’ve developed a small fanboy-crush on her already…). Downloads are fairly fast (roughly the same as iTMS) and I used the Amazon download app to place them into iTunes for me. I’ve yet to try this out on the mac and I’ll update as soon as I can (I can only hope that if you don’t use the app, the .amz wrapper isn’t used as I don’t think my mac knows what to do with it).
So far, I have to say that I’m pleased as punch with Amazon’s store. Frankly, even if you don’t use their store, you’ll benefit from what they are doing: helping to pull down DRM just a little more. However, given the competitive pricing and use of more common file format (.mp3 instead of .m4a), I think I’ll use Amazon’s service whenever possible for the near future.
Update: John Gruber has more information and opinions than you could ever want on this over at Daring Fireball.
So I’m really intrigued by Amazon’s mp3 downloads. The prices look phenomenal, and if it wasn’t for me love of album art, liner notes, and actually owning CDs, I think I would take more advantage of this. Their full album prices are like half the cost of owning a physical disc.