Amazon #2 in digital music sales | Hacker News Reader

Amazon #2 in digital music sales

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6 pointsprakash11 comments

As someone who buys a LOT of music, Amazon's DRM-free .mp3s are what finally got me to switch to digital music for most of my purchases. It's awesome to be able to buy a single I like, or an album from an artist I'm not familiar with yet without having to go out and lay down $15+ for a CD.

I WOULD prefer it if the downloads were direct (they use a client downloader that you have to install on your machine), but I'm still pretty impressed with the offering.

And it's nice to see the major labels starting to really come around to digital sales.

I have not used Amazon's client, typically, client downloads are used to give you a lot more control (pause, resume), and to do optimizations between the client (e.g. multiple http connections) and the server (this could be amazon S3 or a CDN).

It is a good client. My personal preference is for direct downloads, but if you pressed me on why, I would be unable to give a reason other than simple preference. I kind of like cutting out the middleware and not needing Yet Another App on my machine.

Still, as clients go, Amazon's is excellent. As another poster pointed out, it is quite lightweight and unobtrusive.

Have you considered illegally downloading your music instead?

I know almost no one in their mid twenties or younger who doesn't. The, unsolved, problem is that music worth listening to is few and far between.

I would have to respectfully disagree on that score. While there is no accounting for taste, I think that there's a lot of excellent music being done these days. I've even heard a few albums in the past few months which are among my all-time favorites, would highly recommend to anyone and everyone. Iron & Wine's latest album, The Shepherd's Dog is, in my opinion, the best of the last year.

http://www.amazon.com/Shepherds-Dog-Iron-Wine/dp/B000TQZ7O4/...

So yes, there's a lot of dreck out there, but I don't think it's fair to say that one has to search very hard for music "worth listening to".

I have, but most of the music I listen to is music that I review, and I insist on paying for that music.

The download client is pleasantly lightweight and unobtrusive.

It's a far cry from the standard Windows crapware that sits uselessly in your tray, wants to be always running, and bothers you to ask about downloading inconsequential 0.0.1 incremental updates every week.

You are completely correct.

Amazon's client, as clients go, is fantastic.

I've been using eMusic for years, and absolutely love it (I think it was #2 for quite a while). But now that Amazon offers DRM-free MP3s that I can play on my Linux boxes, I'll use it for major label stuff that I can't get from eMusic. It's pretty rare that I have the urge for mainstream stuff...but it does happen. Their prices are reasonable, as well. Nothing to complain about, actually.

But, I certainly won't be letting my eMusic subscription lapse.

Are the MP3s available as a web service? It would be cool if there was a kind of wholesaler for MP3s, so that competition for the best shopping experience could arise.

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