Amazon MP3 Download II

Amazon are obviously trying to aggressively expand their MP3 download side of things as they've just given me a free £2 to spend on MP3s because I bought a £7 album last month. Not one to avoid being persauded to spend money to save money, I just purchased another Toxic Holocaust album, getting it for the bargain price of £5. The 12 tracks only run to 30 minutes again, but it sounds good so far, despite being an earlier record, I think the recording is slightly better quality than Hell on Earth which had a bit of an echo to it.

Also picked up the opportunity to get "Killing in the Name of" for 29p for no other reason than it will be funny if it gets to be Xmas number 1.

Amazon seem to be doing a thing at the moment where if you spend money on CDs you get money off downloads, £5 gets you £1 back, £10, £2 and £15, £3. Might have to order a couple of CDs just to get the free MP3s :)

Amazon MP3 Download

I've never really been convinced about buying music downloads, ever since the days of iTunes only doing DRM'd songs I've always preferred to buy CDs and get something physical to hold. I like owning stuff, I like being able to flick through CD artwork and if my house burns down my insurance company will pay out to replace physical property but probably won't cover downloads to my computer.

With all that in mind, I was a bit disappointed to be unable to find Toxic Holocaust's 2005 offering "Hell on Earth" anywhere to buy on CD in the UK. Amazon were selling the MP3 download for £6.99, so I thought what the hell.

I have to say, user experience was pretty good, downloaded a small app from Amazon, clicked buy this album, entered my Amazon password, confirmed and I was already starting to download the songs. The Amazon app automatically adds the tracks into iTunes, which is pretty cool and I guess means it's as easy as buying from iTunes itself. (BTW, digging the iTunes taskbar integration in Windows 7).

The whole experience was pretty painless. Although, I didn't realise that the 11 tracks only run to 27.5 minutes, which makes the £6.99 seem a little less of a good deal. The album is good, not as good as An Overdose of Death, but still pretty rocking. I need to listen to it properly, but at 27.5 minutes, I'm sure I can get 16 rotations a day in at work ;)

I did get a bit panicky that maybe it's cheaper in iTunes, after some iTunes connectivity issues I'm glad to report it's £7.99 on iTunes. Although I don't know how bitrate compares and not sure if the iTunes version is DRM'd or not.