Amazon MP3 Downloads: THE Music Store For Linux

I just now delved deeper into Amazon's new music store, which I mentioned a few days ago, and I was quite impressed with my experience.

I made my first purchase One Night in Bangkok by Murray Head. Yes, I'm an 80's kind of guy. I'm probably the only man under the age of 18 in Cooke County, Texas who has Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders, AND Haddaway on my iPod. C'mon, I challenge you.

Anyway, buying was simple and quick. I just clicked on the buy button, passed up the MP3 downloader software offer, and then was taken to a screen where I could download my song. Once I downloaded it, I loaded it to my iPod and listened to it in all of it's high-bitrate, non-DRM, sickeningly-over-the-top synthesizer goodness.

Oh, and did I mention that I did all of this in Linux?

Uh-huh. Because of the lack of DRM, and the help of some special applications, I was able to take the downlaoded song and sync it to my iPod with no fuss.

What do you think I paid for this little gem of a song? $1.99? Nope. Unlike iTunes Plus, this song only cost me 89 cents. Pretty sweet, huh?

The only downside to using Amazon MP3 with Linux is that if you want to buy a whole album, you're out of luck, as you'll have to download the Windows/Mac OS X compatible downloader client. I'm sure you could get it running in Wine, but I haven't had the chance to try. For now, I'll just have to download my music singularly.

So for anyone looking for a new music store, especially the Linux crowd, you need to take a look at this place. iTunes might want to keep an eye out for these guys.