News - Amazon MP3 opens its DRM-free doors to UK consumers

[HEXUS]

After a lengthy wait, Amazon has quietly made its online MP3 store available to UK customers and single prices start at 59p.

Read more.

[Rosaline]

Finally!

I had a quick search, and finally for once there is a music download service, which offers decent quality MP3s, with no DRM, with a good range of artists (although it could be better), and actually has almost reasonable prices!

With the prices being, in my opinion, a little higher (by about a £1 or so on average, I'd say) than I would have prefered for such an ethereal product, I was surprised to find that you only get a single download of any purchased song or album. Whilst I can see some logic in this and expect this to be the future, I do think that it raises questions, and is going to have to be reflected in changes in related consumer services.

[pauldarkside]

I was surprised to find that you only get a single download of any purchased song or album.

If I buy a CD (or anything else for that matter) from a shop and subsequently lose it, I can't go back and expect them to give me another CD free of charge. I don't have an issue with that. It's up to me to look after my purchases.

[menthel]

They have good prices on new and popular stuff but if you dig a little deeper the prices are similar to iTunes. I also found CDs cheaper than their prices on such things.

But then again I love the shiny, shiny discs!

[Parm]

They have good prices on new and popular stuff but if you dig a little deeper the prices are similar to iTunes.

Yep, I've found that too. But even then, even if the prices were an exact match, I'd go for Amazon for the DRM-free tracks.

[Funkstar]

If I buy a CD (or anything else for that matter) from a shop and subsequently lose it, I can't go back and expect them to give me another CD free of charge. I don't have an issue with that. It's up to me to look after my purchases.

QFT.

The thing that does need to catch up is insurance. I don't believe household insurance would cover lost data on a hard drive, but it would cover the loss of physical media due to fire/flood/theft/etc.

[Rosaline]

QFT.

The thing that does need to catch up is insurance. I don't believe household insurance would cover lost data on a hard drive, but it would cover the loss of physical media due to fire/flood/theft/etc.

Exactly. That is the main reason why I raised this as an issue, and said that I saw the logic in why they don't offer repeat downloads, and that I believe most services will go this way. The other reason was that it would have been a nice feature, given the somewhat premium prices.

[nichomach]

Having picked up "A Hundred Million Suns" and "Only By The Night" for £3 each, and synched them to my TomTom and my Sansa, I can say that I'm already a fan. Only mild glitch is that little download app they provide automatically starts adding the stuff you've bought to the iTunes library. You can point it to WMP, but I'd rather it had asked.

[Joe5]

Well this is good news. Amazon stepping up to the plate is sure to drive the price of digital songs down. I am sure that they will start putting groups of songs soon and not just stick to the single songs.

It sure did take them long to enter into the digital song market. It has the potential to be very profitable for Amazon and for Amazon affiliate sellers.

[sprucemoose]

Does anyone know if the downloads are joint stereo or stereo 256 kb mp3?