PurplePaste

I just made my first real purchase from an online music download store.

I've had an iPod for five years. I use iTunes on a daily basis, as a media player and to manage my music collection. Nearly every (physical) album I own has been ripped to MP3. I subscribe to over two dozen podcasts.

I've even downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, on the few occasions that I've been credited with free downloads in some sort of promotion for purchasing concert tickets. And I found the iTunes experience to be a positive one -- except for the restrictive DRM (Digital Rights Management) on the audio files.

Now I know there are ways around the iTunes DRM. I can burn audio CDs and re-rip them to MP3. But I'm a bit of a purist and I hate the idea that I'd be sacrificing sound quality, even if I might not hear the difference. And I'm aware that Apple is starting to offer DRM-free downloads, though this option is never available for the tracks I want to buy.

Plus, it's the principle of the thing -- I don't want to support DRM, a system that is designed to restrict the rights of the consumer. But if I can purchase my media legally, easily, and without being treated like a criminal, then I will.

So today, when I heard that Amazon.com had opened their online music store and was selling high-quality, DRM-free MP3 files -- real MP3 files that will play on any media player -- I ponied up a few bucks to test the waters, and found the experience to be easy and quite satisfying.

I purchased a copy of El-P's "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" for $7.99. I've been waiting patiently for this album to be available in a DRM-free format on iTunes for months now, especially as it is on Def Jux, and independent record label. But no dice, it's still not on iTunes without DRM, and so I made the plunge and bought it from Amazon.

The one annoying aspect of the new AmazonMP3 store is the downloader application. While I was happy to see that there was a Mac version of the app, I am less than thrilled that it is required to purchase full albums. However, the application itself is simple and unobtrusive, and didn't require an admin password for installation, which at least makes me slightly less paranoid about running it. The downloader displayed a progress bar for each of the MP3 files, which downloaded quickly and were automatically added to my iTunes library.

The audio quality is quite respectable, Lame-encoded VBR files in the 230kbps range. Overall, I was very impressed by the experience -- from searching for the album, installing the downloader, making the purchase, and downloading the files, the whole process took less than five minutes. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I'm hoping this shakes things up a bit and persuades more retailers to dump DRM.