Waiting for iTunes to come to SA? Don’t. Use Amazon MP3!
27 September 2007 Internet, Raves, South Africa
We have all bitched and moaned about iTunes not being available in South Africa, and that we currently have to put up with Pick n Play or Musica Digital to buy MP3’s, who have the worst search features and have a really small MP3 collection. Well no longer! Amazon are now selling DRM free (yeah baby!) MP3’s cheaper than iTunes, and us South African’s can buy them!
Amazon MP3
Amazon’s digital music portal features 2 million songs from 180,000 artists and 20,000 labels all without DRM. They even include songs from EMI and Universal, which iTunes no longer sell. The top 100 tracks will cost $.89 (Just over R6), with the rest costing $.99.
In order to download songs, you must install the Amazon MP3 downloader, which converts the .AMZ file you download to .MP3 and then automatically imports that song into either iTunes or Windows Media Player for you. So it literally is a glorified download manager.
I downloaded Makes Me Wonder by Maroon 5 to test the service, and it worked perfectly. The screenshot above doesn’t show the downloaded song in the queue, because after I closed and then reopened the application after downloading the song, it no longer listed it there.
The songs are encoded in 256Kbps which is not CD quality, but you won’t be able to tell the difference. It’s those audiophiles that will be the only people complaining. ;-)
So now no more sulking about not being able to buy international artists MP3’s in South Africa anymore, just use Amazon MP3!
Disclaimer: I’m not 100% sure if this is legal from SA, or because I am buying it outside of America causes trouble, I don’t care. The person that made the song is getting paid. ;-) That is all in my mind that counts!
Please bookmark this post:
Adii
Henré Rossouw
Mike Stopforth
-->
8 comments so far...
I couldn’t agree more! I downloaded my first song from Amazon the other day. What a pleasure! It’s really nice to be able to buy the individual songs I want, have them in good quality and not be restricted to a specific number of devices or number of written cd’s. What an amazing price scheme aswell. R6 per song? I don’t think it can get much better than that.
All they need to do now is get the rest of the record labels onboard. Somehow I don’t see that taking very long assuming Amazon MP3 takes off…
1:56 pm
When last did you buy a song from Amazon, when I try to do it, it gives me some location error and Amazon help says the service is only avalable to US customers?
6:15 am
Hi Marthinus, I bought a song on Friday when I wrote this post.
Mmm, I had so jimmy the payment slightly in that I included a US state and zipcode I found off the net, so it probably is US only, but as I said, I am sick and tired of SA and its lame excuses for not being able to provide a decent base of songs to buy online.
There will be a way round to buying on Amazon from SA, and even if its not meant for us, the artists are getting their share! So all has to be good?
8:36 am
I was also incredibly excited when I heard this announcement. I searched the Amazon site to find some country restriction, and then saw their Digital Terms and Conditions where it says that digital content is limited to the US.
There are many parties involved in getting music on to your laptop or iPod, more than just the artist. One of the reasons artists sign up with big record companies rather than going indie is that they want their music distributed internationally. The record companies then sign agreements with other companies in each country to do the distribution there. The South African distrbution companies do not get a piece of the action when you download from iTunes or Amazon, and this is contrary to the agreement that they have, which makes it illegal for you to download here. Unfortunately our market is too small for Amazon/iTunes/record labels to bother correcting this.
I don’t mean to be a party-pooper, but If it is illegal to download from AmazonMP3 or iTunes, why not just get your music illegally from Bit Torrent? Illegal is illegal at the end of the day. Sure, the artist might get a few cents extra, but their share of the pie is tiny. Most of the money is due to the record and distribution companies.
8:30 am
Huh? I got all excited for nothing? Are you saying that if I provide an American address I will be able to d/l the MP3’s, even though I am located in SA and will be paying with an SA credit card?
I saw some albums on there that I am just unable to locate in SA (without enriching fat cat bastards who did nothing to create the music).
I’m all for the muso’s. Why do we have to put up with this BS in SA? It’s like the PayPal nonsense…
11:24 pm
Nope, doesn’t work, I provided the address that I was staying at in new York and tried to use a SA credit card and got the “We are sorry…
We could not process your order. The sale of MP3 Downloads is currently available only to US customers located in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”
So I guess if you managed to buy before you were just lucky. Back to buying iTunes gift certificates on eBay
10:02 pm
Share your thoughts below...
Trackbacks