The Last Octet

Since converting to a Linux based desktop I've not downloaded any commercial music from any of the various music sites. Tonight I wanted to listen to an ablum pretty badly, but didn't want leave the house or spend retail rates. Downloading the album was the only route that made much sense. I did a quick search for a music service that met the following requirements:

1. Reasonable prices
2. Linux friendly download routines
3. 256 kbps Bit Rate (or higher)
4. No subscription
5. MP3 or Ogg Format

That was about all I was looking for in a download site. I did a quick search or two to see who had the artist I was searching for. Amazon's MP3 site had the artist I was looking for and it looked like the bit rate and price was right as well. The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out how they managed their downloads. As it turns out, they have prebuilt Linux packages to install their "Amazon MP3 Downloader" utility. This was a plus. After firing up the getlibs script to fixup the fact that the 32bit download utility didn't play well with my 64bit install I was all set.

Overall I'm happy with the Amazon MP3 site. They've done a good job at making the site fairly easy to navigate, and a snap to purchase tunes especially if you've purchased from them previously.