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Amazon skewers Apple with MP3 store
AMAZON IS taking the fight to Apple today, with the launch of its new AmazonMP3 music store. Unlike the Itunes store, which mostly sells songs DRM'd up the wahoozle, the AmazonMP3 store sticks to its name selling, you guessed it, MP3s.
You can check out the store here.
Standard MP3s have no copy protection, and this means they can be played on any device you own - Ipods, Zunes, whatever. This, Amazon thinks, is a compelling proposition.
The songs come in 256-kbit format, making them as good quality as the non-DRM songs that Apple sells from EMI on the Itunes store, and significantly better than other paid downloads.
However, Amazon has a much better choice of music than Apple - over 2 million tracks without the copy protection, including the full catalogue from Universal. This means that top albums from artists like Amy Winehouse and Kanye West are now DRM free for the mere sum of $8.99.
Of course, as with the vast majority of these online stores, purchasing is left to US citizens only - clearly, those who live outside the States don't matter a jot to Amazon or its partners. So, for all the good this new service heralds, it's useless to the majority of the world. Oh well. µ
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Some car HU's (and even some MP3 players) that support USB drives do not support VBR. Could be a deal-breaker for a lot of people.
Yay! 256kbps! Yay! Something I may now play on my stereo without cringing!

Next stop, FLAC or SHNs please (or WAV)...

Now, Can I trade-in all the crap I paid for from iTunes to get a better sample rate?

Now I did notice that the selection is kind of dicey, but I grabbed a bunch of singles that iTunes wanted me to buy the whole album to get (those 10+ minute spaceouts I love so much)...
I'm reliably informed that they don't actually check the address. So you can pay with your UK credit card and put in a fictitious address such as
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
and it works.
Haven't these morons heard of VBR?

Typically a better quality rip for the same file size (if not less). And we all know smaller files means greater battery life.

I bet they use some shonky ripping software to boot.

They should seriously take some lessons from the "scene," with regard to their quality standards.

Needless to say I'll stick to buying CDs (no, seriously) and ripping them myself.
It IS VBR! And I've seen downloaded mp3s that are encoded with LAME. not too shabby.

From the FAQ:
"Bit Rate: Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bit rates for maximum audio quality and smaller file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bit rate allows us to allocate a higher bit rate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bit rate for the less complex sections. 

The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality. Some of our content is encoded using a constant bit rate of 256 kbps. This content will have the same excellent audio quality at a slightly larger file size."