Amazon Unbox

I'm typically not a huge music buyer. I think part of that is that I really can't stand the time it takes to go find a song, go to the store, buy a CD, rip it, put it onto some music software, sync to a device.

Ugh.

So I'm still mostly listening to stuff that I had from 10 years ago - I purchase maybe 1 CD per year.

I liked the idea of iTunes - but couldn't really get behind it because I used multiple device - my computer runs Linux, my phone has MP3s on it, my Car has a CompactFlash card slot (which I love), and I now have an iPod Touch. But only the iPod can play M4Ps.

Well, I just tried Amazon MP3 Downloads for the first time today - because it lets me download 256kbps MP3s - for $0.89 each (or less if I get the entire album). I used their downloader to get two new albums - really really simple. I one-click shopped to download two albums, and poof! There they were in iTunes.

Plugged in my iPod and they were sync'ed - and they live as MP3s on my drive - so I can copy them to anything I want.

This is totally the way that music should be. I'll be going to Amazon for all of my music from now on.
This is both a "easy to use" and a "meets my needs" thing as well as a thing based on principal. A lot of the new music that I get I find from Pandora - and I want to send a message to the labels that making their music available without DRM is the right way to go!