SwingDJs

Amazon announced the public beta of a new service called Amazon MP3, a music download store that sells MP3 music downloads that do not include any Digital Rights Management (DRM).

"Amazon MP3 is an all-MP3, DRM-free catalog of a la carte music from major labels and independent labels, playable on any device, in high-quality audio, at low prices," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music. "This new digital music service has already been through an extensive private beta, and today we're excited to offer it to our customers as a fully functional public beta. We look forward to receiving feedback from our customers and using their input to refine the service."

Songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, and albums from $5.99 to $9.99. All MP3s are encoded in 256kbps format and are now available at Amazon.

A quick look has shown lots of great swinging jazz from quality labels such as HEP, JSP, Retrieval, Decca/GRP Records, Capitol, & Blue Note are already available. Whilst I still prefer to have the actual disc with the liner notes, this could be useful for that song that you absolutely have to have now!

Looks good. Unfortunately, US customers only at the moment

Loving it so far! I am also a huge fan of buying CDs (for the liner notes, the physical item, etc...), but as far as digital downloads go, Amazon has the right idea! I have already bought a few albums, so they are definitely on the right track.

Jesse

I bought some tracks too. It's great! It works great in combo with emusic. Since emusic don't carry popular/major labels.

It looks pretty cool. I hope they add some obscure stuff (not holding my breath).

Thumbs up.

The process of actually getting the tracks is little tedious (or maybe I need to play with it more, the process for downloading is a little bit like buying a book or CD on Amazon). Also, it is a chore to search for items unless you have an idea of what you are looking for to begin with.

However, the delivered product (MP3s without DRM or Apple's format) is much more suitable to my needs than what iTunes sells. As others have pointed out, Amazon is a good place to download major label selections when you don't want the entire album. A place to visit after eMusic and before iTunes.

Nathan