Amazon.com Review

Oh, the problems I have had with the iTunes store! Even with simultaneous downloading of songs, it is at agonizingly slow dial-up speed. Then, their most downloaded songs started creeping up to $1.29 instead of $.99. By accident, I found out that amazon.com has a huge selection of MP3 downloads! 

They have albums on special every day, and a section of "MP3 Albums Under $5.99," they also offer free selections every day, not just one obscure song like on iTunes. I got five free easy listening songs for free at once, and they were popular AM Radio Gold ones. Their selection is just as good as the iTunes store, and many times I can find the $1.29 song on iTunes on amazon.com for $.99.

To download songs to Windows Media Player or iTunes, download the "amazon.com MP3 downloader tool." It is a small program that bridges the website to your music library. You need to follow the instructions on how to set your web browser to enable downloads. It is super easy and my songs download at broadband speed. A little bubble pops up in the toolbar, that says "adding (name of song) to your download queue (iTunes)" then right after "your song has finished downloading and can be found in your iTunes library."

OK, some annoying things. MP3 downloads use your 1-Click settings. If you want to switch payment methods, you need to update your 1-Click settings whenever you want to switch credit cards. 

Something that is not clear: on iTunes, you can choose to have a shopping cart, then check out a few songs at once and get only one charge on your card. Buying MP3's on amazon.com are done one-by-one. The way you buy them makes it seem like you are getting charged separately for each song you buy. If you buy a bunch of songs at once, amazon.com only charges your card once for all of the songs. It would be much more clear if they gave you a shopping cart.

Downloading issues: amazon.com is mindful that people coming over from iTunes may have issues with downloading the songs this way. They are very forgiving, and one time I accidentally navigated away before the song went into the queue. They refunded it to me and let me re-download. 

I had a huge issue with a movie soundtrack I was trying to download. Only 11 of the 23 songs downloaded. I emailed them. They said I could have one-time access to my amazon.com library where I would find the rest of the songs and could download from there. I went there. Only songs 1 - 11 were on there. I emailed them back: "hey, thanks for trying to help me, but the songs are not in the library to download." After a few emails back and forth and giving them the error code I was getting when trying to download, we finally figured out that the problem was that the album file was corrupted on the amazon.com servers. They refunded me for the whole album (essentially giving me songs 1 - 11 free), and said to come back in a few weeks to see if the album was up there again.

I have never had any issue with downloading MP3's from amazon.com that was not resolved within an hour. They are very understanding about everything. Even when one time something was completely my fault (I downloaded the song twice, which is not easy to do), they worked with me.

Amazon.com suggests songs based on your previous purchases, and what songs other people buy who bought the same songs as you. It's similar to iTunes' Genius, but it doesn't take evaluation of all of the songs in your library, which on my machine takes FOREVER and again is slow. iTunes is a huge memory hog on my computer. I turned off the Genius and now use only amazon.com for my MP3 downloading needs.

I do have to use Internet Explorer to use the downloading tool (I am sure other popular browsers are supported, but I almost exclusively use Google Chrome). Downloading MP3's on amazon.com is just as easy as iTunes, and sometimes cheaper.

I much prefer amazon.com music downloads to iTunes.