Go Amazon! And KILL iTUNES
Amazon, for those of you who do not know are offering MP3's to be downloaded for $0.99. Whoop de fucking do right?
Well, as it happens, it is superior to iTunes in everyway. Well, the catalogue is smaller, that I will admit, and that's unfortunate however, unlike iTunes, which encodes all their stuff at a constant 128 kbps, Amazon encodes everything at VBR, which is better as I understand it, and it usually averages out to be 256 kbps, so about 2 times the quality of an iTunes song.
Another benefit? Its in mp3 format, and its not DRM'd, meaning you can play it on any computer, any mp3 player, and can make back ups of it willy nilly. You can download through a browser, or to download an album, you have to download a client. Currently, one does not exist for linux, but at least they admit that there might be Linux users out there and say they are developping a Linux client. (I'm LOOKING AT YOU APPLE). Their files download fast, and easily, and they are wonderfully large, which usually means either someone was an idiot during encoding or that's what was necessary to get epic sound quality. And from listening to this bitching tune at the moment, I'd say its the latter.
Go die ITMS, Amazon ftw!
Well, as it happens, it is superior to iTunes in everyway. Well, the catalogue is smaller, that I will admit, and that's unfortunate however, unlike iTunes, which encodes all their stuff at a constant 128 kbps, Amazon encodes everything at VBR, which is better as I understand it, and it usually averages out to be 256 kbps, so about 2 times the quality of an iTunes song.
Another benefit? Its in mp3 format, and its not DRM'd, meaning you can play it on any computer, any mp3 player, and can make back ups of it willy nilly. You can download through a browser, or to download an album, you have to download a client. Currently, one does not exist for linux, but at least they admit that there might be Linux users out there and say they are developping a Linux client. (I'm LOOKING AT YOU APPLE). Their files download fast, and easily, and they are wonderfully large, which usually means either someone was an idiot during encoding or that's what was necessary to get epic sound quality. And from listening to this bitching tune at the moment, I'd say its the latter.
Go die ITMS, Amazon ftw!