Despite my regular use of iTunes for playing and sometimes purchasing music, I’m not necessarily an iTunes-lover. I think iTunes is a nice music organizer/player. It certainly has its issues and I can’t say I’ve been 100% happy with it, but it does the trick. But then there’s the music, by far the biggest wrinkle in the sheet. Damn their DMA songs!

Even though I use iTunes as my main music player, I hate having my music locked down. My solution around it has been what most people have probably been doing too…burning the iTunes songs to a CD and then ripping them back as MP3s. Tedious and stupid, but it works.

When Amazon announced their MP3 service would be cheaper and offer standard MP3 files I told myself the next time I plan on getting a song or album I’d use it. Well, with money sitting in my iTunes account thanks to gift cards and redeeming, I hadn’t not followed through on that promise until today when I found a good reason to go elsewhere.

Much to my happiness I discovered that one of my favorite groups, The Presidents of the United States of America, did not disband as I had once thought. Actually, they did back in 1998 and then reformed a few years later to release a handful of albums.

“Peaches” - The Presidents of the United States of America

I remember buying The President’s first album at Media Play. I thought the album cover was strange, and the music was pretty nutty too, but that’s why I like it so. It’s poppy, fast, it rocks, and has a heaping helping of fun and humor. That first record was really solid. The follow up album II was 50/50. A third release just before their break-up had even fewer singles. After I heard they broke up I had pretty much written them off and had just accepted I’d have 2.5 albums to enjoy for the rest of time.

I was at YouTube watching some Weird Al videos and that led me to The Presidents’ Wikipedia page where learned they regrouped and have been making new albums. It’s great to find out they’re still making music and still keeping it fun and light. I went the web site and listened to a few tracks from newer albums and decided to go ahead and download one of the “lost albums” I had missed. I decided on Love Everybody and headed over to iTunes to make the purchase.

Now most albums at iTunes are $10 regardless of the number of tracks. But low and behold this one album from an essentially nobody band was $12. Sucko. But wait! I have an alternative - Amazon MP3. A quick jump to Amazon found the album for $9, so I was ready to dive in.

Although a bummer, I was not surprised to have to install Amazon’s MP3 Downloader, a desktop client that does the downloading for you. After a very quick install I was faced with something I did not expect at all - something helpful - a free song to download. This is very smart because not only is it a great bonus for a new user, but Amazon presents as a way for you to learn how the downloader works before you pay any money. It told me, “Hey, watch the downloader in action by getting this free song.” I happily took their recommendation. Very smart on Amazon’s part and much appreciated as a customer.

So with the downloader installed I click the Buy button and after a quick authorization the downloads came in swiftly. And surprisingly enough, the Amazon Downloader even added the songs to iTunes for me. How considerate. And as advertised, the tracks are straight MP3s (high 256 bitrate too) and I can use them as I see fit and burn them as often as I’d like.

I can’t speak on the depth of Amazon’s MP3 catalog as I was looking for something specific and found it, but if you’re looking for an iTunes alternative for music then I will happily recommend Amazon MP3. It’s easy to use, good quality tracks, and even cheaper than iTunes. Even the single songs are $.89 instead of $.99 - I’ll certainly be back.

(Oh, and the President’s album I downloaded is pretty solid too. Nothing earth-shattering as far as they’re concerned, but it’s great to have some new songs to bust out on the way to work. They’ve stuck with their original formula and it’s very welcome in today’s vast pit of otherwise shotty music.)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 9:54 pm and is filed under All, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.