Amazon DRM-Free Music Store Goes Beta

LowSNR writes "Amazon this morning moved their DRM-free music store into open beta. According to the release, 'Since all our digital music downloads are DRM-free, you can play them on anything that plays mp3s including PCs, Macs(tm), iPods(tm), Zunes(tm), Zens(tm), iPhones(tm), RAZRs(tm), and BlackBerrys. Plus, our Amazon MP3 Downloader application makes it easy to add your downloads to iTunes(tm) and Windows Media Player(tm), so you can sync up your devices or burn your music to CD hassle-free.' Not to mention Linux." Of course, without DRM few of the major labels play with them.

Store in beta?

[by Anonymous Coward]

So if while testing I get some music for free, do I have to return it?

Re:Store in beta?

[Dachannien (617929)]

Yes, but they charge a 20% restocking fee.

True, however ...

[eldavojohn (898314)]

Of course, without DRM few of the major labels play with them.

That may be true but why not view this as a way to stick it to iTunes and other music services? Everyone on this site has been complaining about wanting an alternative way to get DRM free music so they can stop paying money to a broken, defective by design system known as DRM. Now put your money where your mouth is and rid yourself of iTunes. The music selection may not be as great but if everyone moves, you can make a difference. Not to mention this is probably the best thing to happen to unsigned artists looking to make some quick easy cash even though it may not be much.

Re:True, however ...

[lexarius (560925)]

iTunes happily offers non-DRM songs (with higher bitrate, for 30 cents extra). Problem: Labels don't want to. The only problem that record companies have with iTunes is that Apple doesn't let them set prices however they like. Apple is, as usual, a bit of a control freak here, but I think we've seen that record companies shouldn't be trusted with things like setting prices on music.

Re:True, however ...

[tfoss (203340)]

What I find odd, is that of the small sample I just checked on, there are lots of songs that Amazon has DRM-free that iTMS has, but not DRM-free. Lots of small labels seem to not have their catalogs DRM-free on iTunes...I wonder why that is?

-Ted

Re:True, however ...

[pushing-robot (1037830)]

Control. Apple obsesses over the "user experience" and wants control over everything from pricing to marketing to bundling to the choice of album art. This frightens the labels; if iTunes already does much of the labels' work for them, they may decide to cut out the middleman entirely. The labels have been afraid of becoming obsolete for years now, so they do their best to keep the retail market as fragmented and easy to control as possible; punishing whoever sells too much (or worse, tries to think for themselves) and throwing bones to the weakest. As long as the retailers are relatively weak and afraid of losing their market to the competition, the labels can maintain control.

The labels would probably dump online retailers and sell the music themselves, except that it would open up an antitrust can of worms. That, and it would also involve real work on their part...

Re:True, however ...

[heelrod (124784)]

But (tm), can (tm) we (tm) really (tm) do (tm) anything (tm) without (tm) Lawyers (tm) ? (tm)

Re:True, however ...

[RDW (41497)]

'Everyone on this site has been complaining about wanting an alternative way to get DRM free music so they can stop paying money to a broken, defective by design system known as DRM. Now put your money where your mouth is and rid yourself of iTunes.'

Sounds good! And I just spotted an album I want at about half the UK CD/iTunes price. But then I clicked on the T&C and got:

'5. Territorial Restrictions

As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United States.'

Cheers. If I'm lucky it'll soon be available on this side of the pond at the usual 1 USD = 1 GBP exchange rate for 'digital content'...

Re:True, however ...

[Tumbleweed (3706)]

Cheers. If I'm lucky it'll soon be available on this side of the pond at the usual 1 USD = 1 GBP exchange rate for 'digital content'...

Shipping costs, ya know. :)

Re: Useful, Only If You're A Resident Of the U.S.A

[ScottAS (1108325)]

EldavoJohn I agree with your comment regarding the fact that un-signed musicians are now able to advertise their content via Amazon.Com's Online Store however there are also many other vectors which are able to be used to promote un-signed artists, of which include Jamendo.Com; although the file format used is primarily an OGG file format, a format which multiple multimedia applications, of which include Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 and Apple iTunes are unable to process without the installation of an additional codec. Amazon.Com has become a serious consideration however it's a pity that that Online Store is only available to residents of the United States Of America, and, being a resident of the United Kingdom, I'm unable to use it. Until the Online Store is available in the United Kingdom, I will continue to perouse Jamendo.Com. http://www.jamendo.com/ [jamendo.com] - Jamendo.Com - Open Your Ears

Re:True, however ...

[CastrTroy (595695)]

There's already been DRM free music [emusic.com] for quite a while. People like to complain that the music isn't available online without DRM, but aren't willing to vote with their wallet, and stop buying music from bands and labels that require DRM to download songs. Currently I get all my music from eMusic. It doesn't have everything I want, but it does have a lot of good music. I'd rather have music for about $3-$5 an album, than have to put up with DRM'd files, or paying $15 for a single album on CD.

Re:True, however ...

[EggyToast (858951)]

I believe he means non-iPod, and a player that actually has good features. Showing up as a mass storage device is nice, but if the only thing it lets you do is simply copy files back & forth, that means that *all* of the organization is handled by the player. Thus, the interface and features are of the utmost importance. Or they need to support some music library tool that's available for Linux. Or the user has to have very basic portable music needs.

Re:True, however ...

[IthnkImParanoid (410494)]

Finding the song(s) you want out of the aforementioned few hundred files and saving them as a playlist in a way that doesn't make you want to punch a baby?

Re:

[Kandenshi (832555)]

Perhaps he means something that plays well with Amarok [wikipedia.org]? According to their website there are plugins [kde.org] available for various media players... And they claim to work well with "the following digital music players: iPod, iRiver iFP, Creative NOMAD, Creative Zen, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support."
*shrug* Seems this might be what he meant.

" Zunes"

[evwah (954864)]

" Zunes"

don't be so sure... someone would had to have actually BOUGHT one of these in order to make sure they can play mp3s.

Re:

[oyenstikker (536040)]

Plural. It would require that _two_ people bought them.

Re:" Zunes"

[by Anonymous Coward]

You must have forgotten about Microsoft's Zune-only technology, PlaysForSureReallyWeAreTotallyNotKiddingThisTime (tm).

eMusic

[poached (1123673)]

eMusic has been around and has been DRM free. Their selection is probably larger than Amazon's at this point. Best part is when I import the mp3s into iTunes the songs are properly recognized and the album covers are downloaded accordingly. It looks to me that some tests at least goes on there to make sure that it is compatible with iTunes.

Re:eMusic

[Basilius (184226)]

Also, the new eMusic Remote downloading software works on Linux. Linux support had been a bit problematical before.

Re:eMusic

[garcia (6573)]

eMusic has been around and has been DRM free. Their selection is probably larger than Amazon's at this point. Best part is when I import the mp3s into iTunes the songs are properly recognized and the album covers are downloaded accordingly. It looks to me that some tests at least goes on there to make sure that it is compatible with iTunes.

Worst part is that they require a subscription and you can't buy a single track like you apparently can with Amazon without paying for the month. You are correct that their library is limited and while, for now, it seems you must download some sort of application to do mass downloading from Amazon, you can purchase single tracks without it.

I really don't care for eMusic adding a tagline to your user agent when surfing. I really don't need people knowing which music service I use:

(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1 eMusic DLM/4.0a5_1.0b1"

Re:eMusic

[CastrTroy (595695)]

But the advantage is that you can get 30 tracks for $10. If you don't want to spend $10, or download 30 tracks a month, then eMusic may not be for you. But even if you only download 11 tracks for the $10, you still save over the $0.99 music stores like iTunes. I think this is due to the fact that their credit card transaction costs would be too high if you only bought 1 or 2 songs a month. I find that eMusic works well as an addition to the music you usually buy on CD. Because a subscription can be had for as little as $10, it isn't going to break your budget, and you still have money left over to buy music from elsewhere.

Re:eMusic

[evilviper (135110)]

Their selection is probably larger than Amazon's at this point.

"Larger" only in the most literal sense. eMusic is doesn't have major label support at all, unlike Amazon. If there's a current artist on eMusic, it's only a few quite old, unpopular, out-of-print albums.

Quick searches for the top artists from Amazon's MP3 service on eMusic turns up crap.

No albums from NIN, Pink Floyd, Kayne West, etc.
One 12+ year-old Radiohead album.

eMusic at best has a couple individual songs via "compilation" albums, but that's about it. Amazon is just a "beta" and it's already got ALL the albums from all these major groups.

Major Labels?

[fishybell (516991)]

Well let's see...Spoon? check. Apples in Stereo? check. Radiohead, Bowie, Beach Boys? check, check, check. Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Nirvana? all check.

Hmm...maybe something harder...Neutral Milk Hotel? check. Danielle Dax? aww...so sad, not check. Mongol 800? no...too bad.

It seems just about everything that I listen to that is available somewhere is available here, so what am I missing? Even better though, if it's not available as an MP3 Amazon redirects me to a cd or vinyl copy. iTunes, etc. don't do that.

apple's labels fail too

[DreadSpoon (653424)]

Beatles? Fail.
Led Zeppelin? Fail.

Wait, iTunes doesn't have those either, even under DRM. Hmm...

Re:apple's labels fail too

[Plekto (1018050)]

Of course, without DRM few of the major labels play with them.
****
The reality is that 90% of the stuff out there isn't on BMG or one of the few big labels anymore. In any case, it blows a big hole in ITunes. No DRM, cheaper, and a pretty large catalog. I know of several smaller labels that are going to almost certainly stop selling on ITunes as a result.

All Itunes can do at this point is damage control. It's the old Apple proprietary mentality at work again. And Apple getting burnt again by the cheaper and more open alternatives.

Oh - the bitrate appears to be 256K. Another plus - it's actually fairly decent quality.

Re:

[The One and Only (691315)]

Apple had DRM-free music available first, albeit at a higher price and with a better codec. Of course, I don't think they really care about owning the digital download market as long as everyone is DRM-free, but they're in a good position to compete.

Re:Major Labels?

[fishybell (516991)]

The downloader appears to only be necessary to download entire albums, not individual songs. If you click "Buy MP3 Album" you get the download or cancel purchase page. If you click "Buy MP3" you get a page that recommends you download the downloader (to download the song), but you can click "Skip Installation" and download the file directly.

Now, if only they could get the price down...

[bigtangringo (800328)]

I'd be all over that, but as it is, their competition is fierce.

Re:

[fishybell (516991)]

Well, I don't know what you think a fair price should be. Do a search for "50 cent" and you'll see that the prices vary slightly, but are overall pretty good. Either 89 cents or 99 cents per song, albums weigh in at $5.99, $8.99, and $9.99. All of these prices trump are on par with the competition or slightly better. Don't forget a major competition piece: the $16.95 brick and mortar cd price.

Decent Selection

[Scootin159 (557129)]

Maybe I'm not 'mainstream' in what I listen to, but I just checked, and the first 6 albums I could think of were all available there. I really hope this will take off, and then the 'major' music labels will soon feel the threat if they don't offer DRM-free.

256k mp3s

[CottonThePirate (769463)]

Something that no one has mentioned so far is that these mp3s are 256k bitrate (at least the few I checked). I'm not an audiophile with tubes or anything, but I do think that straight mp3 at 128 sounds off. I for one welcome our new DRM-free music overlords.

Re:256k mp3s

[Volanin (935080)]

You are right.
From Amazon's MP3 FAQ [amazon.com]:

"Bit Rate: Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bitrates for maximum audio quality and smaller file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bitrate allows us to allocate a higher bitrate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bitrate for the less complex sections. The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality. Some of our content is encoded using a constant bitrate of 256 kbps. This content will have the same excellent audio quality at a slightly larger file size."

Joint Stereo defined

[tepples (727027)]

The only problem I see with the encoding is that it's done in "Joint Stereo" rather than regular ol' stereo. I don't know if it makes a difference in perceived stereo separation at that high of a bitrate, but I told Amazon to cut that out.

All lossy audio codecs introduce noise. The goal of MP3 is to keep the noise at some fraction of the signal so that listeners do not notice it, with "noise level" determined per some psychoacoustic model. Joint stereo [wikipedia.org] means that some audio frames are encoded as the sum and difference of the two channels rather than as the channels themselves, in those cases where mid-side would represent the audio frame at an acceptable SNR with a lower bitrate than left-right. And don't think that mid-side necessarily diminishes audio quality; some material is actually miked mid-side [wikipedia.org], and matrix surround follows in essence the same equation.

How does it compare?

[internic (453511)]

But this is hardly the first DRM-free music download service. I've used eMusic [emusic.com] off and on for years. How does this compare and how does it improve on the other DRM-free services that already exist? In the past, the main complaint about such services was the lack of mainstream music from major labels. Won't this be the same for Amazon's offering?

Download Manager

[LMacG (118321)]

According to a response on the Washington Post blog post about this, the download manager is required for album downloads, although not for single tracks. And ... "In addition, the download manager only works on XP, Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4 (or higher)." Unfortunately, I can't get to the Amazon site to check right now.

Re:Download Manager

[Guttata (35478)]

I use Linux almost exclusively, and I checked it out. Initially I feared that to buy a whole album, I'd either have to wait for a Linux version of the download manager, or I would have to pay extra by downloading tracks individually. Luckily, it appears that the download manager works fine under Wine (although it tries to launch iTunes after the download, and that fails somewhat gracefully). I end up with my music in a directory under ~/Amazon\ MP3. BTW, looking at the file with xxd, it appears the files are encoded with Lame 3.97.

Good selection of classical music, I think.

[blind biker (1066130)]

I had a quick look at how much music by Sibelius I can find, and it's over 200 albums, which, I think, is eccellent.

Nothing by the less-known composers like Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (the more talented son of J. S. Bach) but still, pretty satisfactory.

Sh*t - and just when I decided to save up some money for next summer.

Top 100

[markg11cdn (1087925)]

The Top 100 tracks http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-track [amazon.com] are $0.89 each. I only had to go down to #17 to find one that I recognize (but wouldn't buy) - Blondie/Heart of Glass. A few steps down at #21 I found one to buy, Floyd/Comfortably Numb. All the other tracks (not top-100) on the double album are $0.99 or you can get all 26 tracks for $8.99. All 256 kbps non-drm'd files. This is how music buying should have been from day one.

Wine

[ShedPlant (1041034)]

The Amazon MP3 Downloader installs and (seems to) run fine on Linux with wine. However, since I can't provide a USA billing address, I haven't been able to purchase an album and see if it downloads.

Still, cool :) . I expect they'll bring this to Amazon worldwide soon.

Cross platform!

[no_opinion (148098)]

I've purchased from the store on both the Mac and the PC and have to say it's a breeze to use. If you buy an album they've got a download manager for both platforms. Once that's installed, it's dead simple to buy & download. Somehow I've already spent $45... Seems much better than the competition. And no, I don't work for Amazon, I'm just a fan of the legitimate MP3 store. Good job, guys!

This works outside the US

[Gossi (731861)]

Yep, it says US only, but I'm in the UK and I just purchased a song. When you are asked to confirm your billing address, put in a dummy US address. I used this:

"
1 Infinite Loop
New York
Cupertino, CA 95014
"

(Apple's US headquarters address - it's valid).

When asked for your phone number, put in your full international dialing number.

Result? It works. Raw MP3 downloads. Legal. I'm using a Mac, and it works fine with Firefox, Safari and with my iPod and on iTunes.

Re:This works outside the US

[Snowgen (586732)]

Result? It works. Raw MP3 downloads. Legal.

Provided that your definition of legal means "obtained in violation of the terms of service and by providing fraudulent information to bypass the compliance checks."

Re:This works outside the US

[Petrushka (815171)]

Violating terms of service is not illegal. It merely gives the other party grounds for voiding the contract (and/or litigation, if it's serious enough to make it worthwhile ... and you're both in the same country).

Re:This works outside the US

[rkanodia (211354)]

1 Infinite Loop
New York
Cupertino, CA 95014

Look's like it's not just Americans who can't be bothered to learn geography.

Re:

[nosaj72 (615582)]

They seem to be high VBR - around 210-260 according to iTunes, and encoded with LAME 3.97

Re:

[jZnat (793348)]

So they're using the same encoding scheme that eMusic (and some other online music stores) use: lame --preset standard (or fast standard). That's excellent news.

Re:89 cents a song....Not bad

[adpowers (153922)]

256 kbps VBR

Re:

[nevali (942731)]

The software doesn't have to tell Amazon anything, by virtue of you, um, buying stuff on the site, it already knows what you like, just like when you buy anything else from Amazon.

Re:Haha - Bill Gates and the Rolling Stones

[Dogtanian (588974)]

Bill Gates paid $12 Million for the right to use "Start Me Up" to use with Windows.

From the "Top 100 Best Sellers", I see that Linux users can get it for 89 cents.

Nice one :-)

But seriously, Bill Gates didn't pay $12 Million for "Start Me Up". He paid 89 cents like everyone else.

What he paid $11,999,999.11 for was the right to leave out the line "You make a grown man cry".

Hideously out of context

[jareds (100340)]

-- From Amazon's MP3 Music Service: Terms of Use --
"you agree that you will not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, sub-license or otherwise transfer or use the Digital Content."

That sentence starts out, "Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you agree..." Section 2.1, in its entirety, says, "Upon your payment of our fees for Digital Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Digital Content for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use, subject to and in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. You may copy, store, transfer and burn the Digital Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use." This is exactly what you'd expect, except maybe the non-transferrable part.

Quoting a partial sentence the way you did, I'm tempted to think you're just trolling.