Amazon MP3 vs iTunes

I must admit to not being a huge fan of downloading music, basically because I like the hardware of the CD and the knowledge that it is mine. But I do own some iTunes downloads, just because my sister had an account and wanted me to try it out. So I made a few downloads and it was all jolly good, syncing with my iPod and everything. But it isn't great. Until recently its songs were full of DRM and that sucks!

But recently I changed my online download service to Amazon MP3. This is because I had spent over £15 on music (CDs) and they gave me £3 of downloads. And I have to say I was impressed by it all. It was very swift and easy to do and entered my iTunes library easily and without fuss. It did need a tiny app (I mean 2MB) but that was it. It was at a nice 256kbps which is good enough for most people. But it only did music, no videos, TV Shows, podcasts or anything like that. What was good though was the 29p songs which were great, and that most songs were cheaper than on iTunes.

iTunes does benefit from all those Films, TV Shows and podcasts but there is something else in its favour: its ease of use. Since 80% of the market is dominated by the iPod, iTunes is the place to buy music since it goes straight onto your iPod without you having to do anything. Nobody wants to have an extra app on their computer just to put music onto iTunes, they want music from iTunes.

Amazon MP3 will do well, but nothing compared to iTunes has and will keep doing. However, I will continue buying CDs until lossless music is available to download online, which will not be until there is super-fast broadband out there.