The public beta — woohoo, no invites required — of the Amazon MP3 Store (note: all links in this post to Amazon are affiliate links) has been released offering the biggest amount of DRM-free, MP3 encoded (256k) music available online, via their press release:

Amazon MP3 has over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels … Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents. The top 100 best-selling songs are 89 cents, unless marked otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100 best-selling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise.

On the main Amazon MP3 page pictured at the beginning Amazon had recommendations for me. Clicking it, I see the MP3 full album recommended — singular recommendation, not plural — was April Wine’s Nature of the Beast for $8.99 I like that album and have owned it on vinyl and cassette tape in the past; it’s a solid recommendation for me. No other recommendations yet.

Online music achille’s heel: selection
Once you cast aside DRM, the biggest problem with buying music online is selection. Yeah, they have millions of songs, but noticeably absent are artists like The Beatles and ACDC. Amazon MP3 Downloads doesn’t have these artists either — yet.

Although the price offered for April Wine was fair, I decided to pass and look at CDs I’ve bought recently and test the selection there, seeing if I had waited I could have bought and downloaded from them instead . I’ve been listening to Iron Maiden’s CD A Matter of Life and Death which I paid $13.99 at Best Buy. Amazon MP3 has it for $8.99.

Two of my favorite Iron Maiden albums are Piece of Mind and Live after Death. Both are not available yet on Amazon MP3. The only two Iron Maiden albums available are Brave New World and A Matter of Life and Death.

Another CD bought recently was Heaven & Hell live. I tried several different searches — and somebody please tell me why there is no artist search in the dropdown menu? — and couldn’t locate it. Trying Black Sabbath, the only album available via MP3 is a single Karaoke song.

Amazon MP3 was now 1 for 3. Next up, the most recent CD purchase, just last weekend, James Blunt Back To Bedlam Expanded Edition for $14.99 from Wal-mart. It includes the complete original Back To Bedlam album plus the bonus CD: Live in Ireland. There is also the video for the song Goodbye My Lover and a making of Goodbye My Lover. Is this available on Amazon MP3? Nope, make that 1 for 4 (batting average: .250).

My final search was for Kiss Double Platinum. Kiss is everywhere, right? Gene Simmons takes heat (rightfully in many cases) for over marketing Kiss. You’d expect they’d have every, or at least most Kiss albums on Amazon MP3. And you’d be correct, Amazon MP3 has a pretty extensive library of Kiss albums

Clicking to sort from low price to high, I saw Kiss Creatures of the Night on MP3 selling for a very desirable $7.97. Nice. We’re …. creatures of the niiiiiiiight. Cha-ching.

Before using Amazon 1-Click, I noticed they offered a small helper app (Windows XP, Vista or Mac OS X) to download called the Amazon MP3 Downloader.

Noticing the text: “It automatically adds your music downloads to iTunes or Windows Media Player” I decided to pass. I don’t use Windows Media Player, I use Zune. Strange, that the application wouldn’t support adding the tracks automatically to the Zune (or maybe not, if you listen to all the Zune bashers).

But wait — it turns out customers have no choice buying an album — you have to use the download application for albums.

Nice gun to my head, Amazon. Thanks — not.

Then I was remembered that the iTunes Music Store works the same way. The difference I’d learn is the Amazon MP3 Downloader doesn’t try to be some comprehensive music system competing with your favorite music player. Since I didn’t want to piecemeal downloading the tracks and pay 0.80 more, so I downloaded and installed the application. The installation process was flawless and fast relaunching a browser window asking me confirm I wanted to download Kiss Creatures of the Night. I chose to “download” and then was brought to a window that looks like this:

In the lower left corner, blue with white ‘A’ Amazon MP3 Downloader went to work downloading the album. It went impressively fast and smooth, launching Windows Media Player and loading the album art and track list in place.

I was able to click play and start listening quickly. Now back to my earlier gripe: what about Zune? I needed to move the MP3 tracks from the location where the Amazon MP3 Downloader saved them on the hard drive. Right clicking on properties I found the save location:

My Documents -> My Music -> Amazon MP3 -> ARTIST -> SONG.mp3

Next, using Windows Explorer I copied these tracks to my shared music directory. Then I fired up iTunes on the Mac, clicked on the tracks and they were added there. Nice process. Things are getting close to my online music service of dreams.

At this point I was curious what other folks were saying about Amazon MP3 Downloads. Started with Techmeme, skipping a number of shorter, bony posts that didn’t answer what we really need to know about Amazon MP3 Downloads and most important to me: what was their customer experience like? Smooth or rough? Anybody on a Mac give it a try and compare to iTunes? Did someone find more of the type music they actually wanted to buy than me? What did others learn that I missed during my review? If you wrote an in-depth review with your actual Amazon MP3 Downloads please make a comment below and leave a link to your review in your signature space. If you decide to try the service out and write your own customer review after reading mine then trackback over.

External Amazon Mp3 Downloads output
Hypebot lists the cons and pros including: “Not only does it have all of the major label DRM free product that [the other online music stores have] do. It has hundreds of thousands of indie tracks that the others do not.” Ed- Nice, didn’t realize they had indie tracks too.
A.L Friedman, perhaps a little too excited, sees this as a date to remember: “Mark September 25 on your calendar. We may very well may celebrate it as the beginning of the end of our national nightmare under the oppressive bondage of the iTunes Music Store.” Ed- this is the best offensive I’ve seen to date.
Real Tech News: “Though it won’t make a serious dent overall because of the lack of some of the big record labels, it will most likely dent the DRM-free sales at iTunes.”
ARS Technica points out the importance of backups of the MP3 purchased: “There are a few restrictions … there’s no redownloading of tracks; you’d better make a backup, because if you lose a song, you’ll have to purchase it again to get another copy.” Ed- this advice is worth repeating and emphasizing: backup the tracks, there is no do-over.
Marshall at Read/Write Web: “This is definitely a service I’ll use when I want to buy whole albums and can’t make it down to the local, independent record store.” Ed- agreed, and bonus points in the comment area for Michael Trythall who points out the cleaner URL to remember for the service: amazonmp3.com.

Other detailed customer reviews (updated)
Om Malik figures he saved about $8 using Amazon MP3 Downloads instead of iTunes. I think he shows a bias for Apple though with some of the low ratings. 8/10 for 256k MP3 files? What gets 9/10? 320/44?
Scott at TUAW pits Amazon against iTunes screen vs. screen.

Summary and grade
Once you get past the all important selection question of Amazon MP3 Downloads, it’s too easy remembering the existing competition — Apple iTunes — and the fact that they are known patent hounds. And at least in our household they managed to irritate and alienate my wife who does most the online shopping and has sworn off using them any more. Maybe someday she’ll tell that story, but whenever I mention using Amazon, she frowns. Let’s hope they haven’t done that to too many other customers out there.

By creating a DRM-free MP3 online music library that has a better selection than competitor eMusic and iTunes, Amazon MP3 Downloads comes close to the online music service of our dreams. The one day where we won’t have to get into our cars to go get a CD that we can rip as often we like for play anywhere. The people who like having the physical CD, can still order the physical CD which is something iTunes doesn’t offer. I will be checking Amazon MP3 Downloads for the music I’m interested in before hitting the store. Selection, however, still seems to be the major stumbling block for all these services with them only batting .200 (1 for 5) in this review. Grade: B

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