Amazon music vs iTunes

I've always only put advertisements on here from companies I support, use and believe in. Which is one reason you won't find many ads on this site. And as you can see I have Amazon MP3's on here now.

The reason I have them here is they are better than iTunes and I hope they catch on. First off, let me say I'm not an Apple hater. I started out with an Apple ][+, which I loved. I made the switch to PC's because Apple quit making the Apple II's with the Apple ][GS and when the Macs came out, they were $5000 and a PC could be had for around $1000. I also use Macs at work to edit video for our TV news broadcast as well as any other video editing I do there. So I don't hate Apple. Now that I've cleared that up, let me tell you why I like Amazon.

All the MP3's at Amazon are DRM free. That means Amazon's MP3's don't have that nasty digital rights management, that keeps you from playing the music you've paid for, on more than 1 computer or portable music player, at a time. I really hate the fact that you have to "Deautorize" a song before you can move it to another computer or player. I have several computers, a Sony PSP and a couple of mp3 players. When I want to transfer a song, that I bought, I want to just transfer it. Not go through the hassle of "deauthorizeing" and removing it from my other computers or music players. If I get a song from Amazon, it's .89 or .99 cents and I can put it on all all my computers, and media players. They are also encoded at 256k. iTunes are not mp3s, but aac and they are encoded at only 128k. Apple has responded to the Amazon "threat" by offering some music, EMI's catalog is the only ones I see currently, in a DRM free, 256k AAC file, for $1.29. You get the same thing on all of Amazon's mp3's for $.89 or $.99

What iTunes does have over Amazon is convenience of buying. The iTunes program makes it pretty easy to buy songs. iTunes also has a bigger library of available music. If you're capable of downloading music and copying it to your portable player than I suggest checking out Amazon first, if they don't have what you're looking for, than you might want to try iTunes. For me, the choice is easy, less expensive, higher quality and DRM free, that's how I like my music.