Marktopia

I am finally getting around to testing out the Amazon MP3 store, as referenced by Techory (among lots of others) last week,  and figured it would be best to compare experiences with iTunes as well. For this I am planning on purchasing 2 albums, one from the iTunes store and one from the Amazon store. Pricing, availability and features will determine which I buy from which. The two albums are

• Chicane - Far from the Maddening Crowds (chosen by recommendation of Ben Arnold)
• Immaculate Machine - Fables (Chosen because allmusic.com says they are similar to The Shins)

Chicane - Far from the Maddening Crowds

I decided to start with iTunes and did a search for Chicane. I did not find the particular album I was looking for from the artist, so I tried a search on the album name, also to no avail. I then tried the Amazon store and also did not find the album. iTunes did have a number of Chicane albums, whereas Amazon only had one song, so in availability, iTunes does win, however no music purchased.

Immaculate Machine - Fables

I searched Amazon first, hoping to give it a win, however Amazon could not find the artist at all. I then tried iTunes and we had success finding the album for$9.90 for 10 tracks. Note, I didn’t buy it because I listened to some of the 30 second samples on iTunes and didn’t care for it. Sorry Immaculate Machine.

Since the first two attempts were wins for iTunes, I figured I should go for something for sure on Amazon.

Office - A Night at the Ritz

I searched for Office and was successful in finding the band, however Amazon didn’t have A Night at the Ritz in mp3, just a CD purchase for $12.99. To be fair, I then checked iTunes and found the album right away at $7.99 for 14 tracks. I did buy this cause it was a deal, and after entering in my password to iTunes, the album was bought.

Determined to try the Amazon store, I decided to browse their selection of Indie& Lo-Fi to find something to get. After some searching, I decided on

A Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters

for $8.91, the same as iTunes. I should note that previewing music was a piece of cake from the Amazon interface, just as easy as iTunes.

I tried the 1-Click download and had to install the Amazon Downloader, which I did. I was pleased to see that the instructions worked with Firefox and not just Safari. I downloaded the .amz file and it automatically opened in the Amazon Downloader and started downloading.

As each file completed, it was automatically added into iTunes for me. One disappointing part is that it also didn’t get added to the Purchased playlist. After added, I checked the ID3 tag info and it was all there, at least as much as iTunes includes. It also has good quality artwork, important in this Cover Flow world.

Conclusions

I have to say that with my small sampling of albums, I was rather disappointed by Amazon. Their interface is not bad, and the lack of DRM is nice, however for someone like me who has drank the juice from Apple, it just isn’t as nice as the iTunes Music Store experience. I was actually really surprised at this because I had really high hopes for the Amazon store, but when it doesn’t have as much music as iTunes and it doesn’t integrate quite as nice as iTunes, it will be tough for them to knock down Apple.

I don’t like my cell phone that much, a Motorola v220, however I have another year of it due to contract stuff. One of the things I hate is the address book. It is a pain to enter phone numbers in it and I can’t categorize them well. The phone is also a couple of years old and when I got it, I had a bear of a time trying to sync it with my Windows laptop. I have had my MacBook for almost a year now and didn’t think to check Apple’s site to see if the v220 works with iSync before today. Much to my pleasure, it does work with iSync! Now I can sync with the iMac at home and have lots and lots of phone numbers I am missing on my cell phone. Kudos to you Apple, my cell phone is just a little less miserable.

Over the course of the next 72 hours or so, the world of digital entertainment will change somewhat. This started last night with the keynote of CES being done by Bill Gates. He introduced a bunch of new stuff from Microsoft, which I will get to in a moment. The other big news comes from Steve Jobs doing the keynote to Macworld tomorrow morning. Rumors continue to swirl before the event, however one device that will be featured is the iTV (or whatever they call it after tomorrow). I will comment more about the Apple stuff after the keynote tomorrow, so for now I will tackle the Microsoft announcements.

The biggest release that I can see is the Windows Home Server. It appears to be a standalone device that allows for sharing of content between different computers and backups of the data as well. This sounds like a wonderful device, however I have some skepticism about the ease of use knowing how difficult it is to network two Windows machines on a home network. That being said, the most troubling thing that I took from the announcement is the following quote from Gates, “It’s plug and play?Äîthe software automatically sees the new storage and moves the data around.” No offense, but I don’t want my data just moving around wherever. I know this probably isn’t the case, but if there is any sort of “data movement” without the user’s knowledge, how can that be a good thing? I typically put my data where I want it, not where the computer wants it to be. There is one major exception to this, and it shows some of the differences I see between Microsoft and Apple.

Apple does move some of my data around for me. iTunes is the offending program that moves stuff around without me asking. I will admit that I was a bit of a neat freak with Winamp about keeping my music directories clean. Then when iTunes came out and made everything fit it’s lifestyle, I got pretty upset. I balked at first, then settled down to realize it wasn’t a big deal and now I like that I don’t have to think about folder structure for my music. But the bottom line is that Apple never really told anyone about this until after installation and iTunes did it’s thing. Some people still don’t use iTunes to this day because they are mad at Apple for this. I actually think that Apple is smart for doing this. Apple saw this as something that might peev some people, but did it anyways, knowing that the end product is going to make more people happy than piss them off. Now Microsoft comes out and tells me that it is going to start moving my data around. By telling me upfront this, I am not going to buy it initially. Sure it might make things easier in the future, but I am apprehensive about letting other devices move my data, just as I was with iTunes after I found out. With iTunes it would have taken a lot of work to go back, so I left it and tried out Apple’s way. With Microsoft, I have the knowledge ahead that my data will be moved, and so I won’t get the device. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, and if Microsoft had said nothing about moving data around, I would have been much more inclined to look at that server.