Amazon’s iTunes-Compatible DRM-Free Music Store
The new Amazon Mp3 store gives you 256 Kb/s MP3 files without any DRM, for generally $8.99 an album. They are already ripping iTunes up on quality, price, and digital rights management. Expect them to continue to improve their selection (Amazon is famous for long tail) and interface, at which point no one will buy Steve Jobs’ crippled music.
Even better, Amazon’s system integrates cleanly with iTunes. You can one-click buy an album from Amazon, and their downloader will pick up the .amz file, grab your tracks, and automatically add them to your iTunes library. I’m also a big fan of the cover-flow like Album pickers they float on some of the mp3 pages:
Paul has it right when he says “Amazon MP3 is kicking ass and taking names.” You can also check out the official blog post or Techcrunch, who notes they are carrying 2,000,000 songs.
Pink Zune Released in 100,000 Units
The once exclusive Pink ZUNE has come, and they are legion! 100,000 units of the elusive pink zune will be product, according to Engadget. It’s not quite the same as the magenta zune, though, whose quantities limited less than a 1000:
Now the Zune comes in colors of white, black, brown, and pink. I’d personally hope for a metallic purple, silver, green, and blue set as well, but it seems that Apple has a monopoly on pretty mp3 playing devices. Phooey.
iTunes Duplicates, Triplicates, and Quadruplicates
If you thought having a few duplicate files was bad, imagine the hell of a quadruplicate U2 album:
