Buying Music Online

[Rock]

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this when I did it back in 2003, but I can't remember if it was at the old Pub, or the Roundtable.  I bought the latest (back then) Chemical Brothers album online through the newly launched Walmart.com.

Each track only cost $0.88, and the album cost $8.80

I was curious about the online music purchase thing because of the popularity of iTunes, so I went for it.

Well, fast forward to three years later, and I was pretty impressed since I expected to encounter more problems.  Windows Media Player kept track of the licenses for me.  I was allowed to play the track on 3 computers, and burn 10 CDs from them.

Unfortunately, they were 128kbps WMA files, so I could only burn Audio CDs at the time using WMP (windows media player), which is notoriously bad at burning CDs.  After 6 coasters, I was really getting nervous because the whole point was to listen to the CD in my car.  But the 7th burn was good. 

From that burnt CD, I did rip mp3 tracks at a high encoding, but those tracks were of considerably lower quality and weren't really nice to listen to.  So the original 128kbps wma files were the ones I listened to on my computer.

Since then, I've made a few changes to my computer.  Once I completely changed everything on the machine:  Motherboard, cpu, video card, memory, all at once.  I even had to reinstall windows because it was so confused.

But everything turned out ok.  My music licenses seemed to work just fine through WMP.

Then last week, my video card (GeForce 4) burnt out because of a bad GPU fan.  I installed my old Geforce 2 from my old computer.

And now guess what?  Apparently that's all she wrote about my music licenses.  I guess my computer now has gone through "3 computers", and the licenses are no longer valid.

WMP refuses to play the files, saying the licenses are no longer valid, and it can't get permission to play them. 

So bah.  I knew what I was kinda getting into when I bought the album back in 2003, and I really expected problems sooner than this, but I guess I just didn't expect replacing a video card to be the final straw that broke my music.

I guess I should order that album from Amazon now, since I've decided no more digital music purchases for me anymore.

The biggest drawback, in my opinion, was the fact that they were 128kbps.  I've seen that Hybrid sells their music online at 320kbps, and honestly, at that quality, that's probably worth it, because no matter how restrictive their license is, you can get around it by burning the audio CD, and then ripping the music to un-encoded mp3 files.  That process just didn't work well for stupid 128kbps files.  Even though I like that quality when just listening to it, the whole process of burning, then ripping reduces the quality quite drastically. 

Does anyone know what quality AAC files from iTunes are?  128kbps?  192?  320?

[Brummbar]

128 kbps (Based on my most recent iTunes download, "Coma" by Portion Control)

[Rock]

Thanks Brummbar.  That's a shame though.  Hopefully more and more digital download services will switch to higher quality files.

I just end up changing my computer's components too often over the years to be happy with re-purchasing my music over and over. 

[Brummbar]

I still buy CDs - often used - for just that reason. Even with all this digital foofaraw, there is still no better way to have an easily accessed, universal-format, high quality library of music.

[Geo]

Bah. I buy my music on deteriorating wax cylinders and play them on my Alexander Graham Bell monophone with the Ram's Horn speaker. True fidelity!  Just check wikipedia...  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder

[Rock]

Arrrgggh.  I hate this dilemma.  The new Chemical Brothers CD is due out on June 21.  Right now its May 24th.  That's almost a month away.  I know I'll buy the album.  I own not only all their albums, but also all their singles.  But its killing me knowing that their album has been leaked to the net, and I could be listening to it right now, if I'm willing to pirate it.

So should I do it?  It's not like I'm not going to buy the album anyway.  Normally I try not to pirate anything that I'd normally buy anyway.  For example, it's really easy to pirate the latest CD from bands I love, but the whole point is that I love those bands, so why would I want to pirate them in the first place, since I want them to do well in the marketplace.  But then something like this always happens with these early leaks.  The worst part is, you usually don't even know if the leak is legit.  Maybe its the RIAA trying to entrap people. 

[Jaded]

Amazon has opened their MP3 store:
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=dm_ty_home/102-5519738-7968105?ie=UTF8&node=163856011

Songs are typically $0.89 and albums $8.99. They're 256 kilobits and DRM free.

Clearly Amazon is out for iTunes' blood.

The first time you buy one you're prompted to download a little Amazon MP3 widget thingie, though you can bypass this if you like. The widget pulls down the MP3s for you and migrates them into iTunes, if you're an iTunes user.

Pretty huge... since they are literally .mp3 files they should play anywhere on anything.

[Rock]

Wow, that is awesome.  DRM was definitely the biggest hurdle for me for sites like Walmart.com and iTunes. 

Now I just hope the next thing that'll make it perfect is if its like Steam/Xbox Live purchases.  Logging into your account hopefully means you can download anything you bought in the past onto a new machine?  Pretty please Amazon?    Maybe I'm hoping for too much.

[Jaded]

Nope, sorry. They don't track what you've purchased, which is a shame. Maybe they'll add that later.

Also, it looks like you DO need to install the Amazon MP3 widget in order to buy a whole album. Which means no album buying for linux users since the widget is only available for Windows and OS X.

What you initially download is an .amz file, which I bet is just a tiny script that's fed to the widget in order to d/l the MP3. When you buy an album, that .amz file probably has the links to all the individual songs, which is why you need to use the widget. I assume if you don't install the widget, you d/l the mp3 directly.

[Rock]

So I just used Amazon for the first time to buy an album.  "Sam's Town" by the Killers, which has the Killers track both from the latest Pet Shop Boy's remix album, and the song that's in Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. 

I'm really happy with it so far!  The files are a really nice 320kb/s, absolutely clean and crisp.  I already transferred them between two computers with no problems.  There's definitely no DRM, and unlike the tracks I bought from Walmart, these are really good quality.  Good purchase I think.  I'll report back if I have any problems. 

[Jaded]

Sorry for the ugly link, but here's a list of 1300+ free tunes available from Amazon MP3. Lots of it is junk but there's some stuff worth downloading, and there seems to be a good selection of Christmas Carols if you pick and choose and want to make an "album" of said music.

Lady Gaga has a Christmas song... who knew?

Incoming fugly link!

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1259624037/ref=sr_hi?ie=UTF8&rs=334897011&bbn=334897011&rh=i:digital-music-ss,n:!195211011,n:!251258011,n:318768011,n:334896011,n:334897011