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Jul. 3rd, 2008 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roadrunnertwiceSo I've been loving the Amazon MP3 store in general, but I just this week discovered (h/t Daring Fireball) the MP3 Deals section of the site. It is fantastic. Never mind the stuff at the top and front of the page; the real meat is at the bottom and in the sidebar—that "Daily Deal" box has already netted me Rocket to Russia for $2 and The Best of Talking Heads for $4. They've also got a Twitter feed, if you'd rather not load the page every day.
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Date: 2008-07-04 04:49 am (UTC)I've gotten 24 songs off amazon and 19 from itunes in the past 5 months. But part of that is because I got a ten dollar credit at itunes from the writers strike cutting into production for Supernatural. And the other part is Amazon doesn't have that great of a selection (yet?). I'm not counting any of the songs I get free, but I think itunes wins for finding the best ones to give away.
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Date: 2008-07-04 05:01 am (UTC)Amazon's had most of what I've gone looking for lately. But the crux for me is that the experience of shopping is much better over at Amazon, mostly because I don't have to waste effort figuring out which files are free of DRM. (I have a pretty firm policy of not spending real US currency on anything with DRM—the exceptions would be movie rentals or cases where I have a need for a particular song RIGHT NOW, i.e. too urgent to quibble about who actually owns the file.)
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Date: 2008-07-04 05:13 am (UTC)I'm not sure I view it as supporting drm to buy music protected by it the same way people view buying meat as supporting big business farms. For me, I just think its sneaky, and I don't like it because if you pay money and own something you should own it. I'm not really good at explaining it, I'm not an activist about it.
And really, I was pretty pissed at how Amazon handles their video and movie sales, but I think I'm over it now. I don't think they are less sneaky than other companies I would look down on, and I don't think they are above drm and practices like it.
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Date: 2008-07-04 05:50 am (UTC)And yeah, man, Amazon Unbox was pretty crap. Their track record on non-tangible goods is, to put it kindly, shaky.
I think my feelings about DRM are best described as "religious, but not fundamentalist." I object to it partially on principle (i.e. I bought it and can bloody well do what I please with it), but mostly for practical reasons: there's always a way to circumvent it, but it's a pain in the ass and totally unnecessary. My time is valuable, which means a format that requires complicated bullshit to be used with anything from a non-blessed vendor is fundamentally worth less than a format that doesn't—a $15 cd is a better deal than a $10 DRMed download.
Anyway, that extends to stores that ask me to be on constant lookout for stuff I consider a ripoff—unless there's some compelling attraction, I'm just not going to shop there.
I reckon we probably have different opinions about what constitutes a pain in the ass, which is fine.
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Date: 2008-07-04 07:59 pm (UTC)My attitude on things: I've learned from work how valueless my time really is, and sometimes the only thing that keeps me from being monstrously bored is for something to go wrong so I can fix it. Or find someone who can fix it. And then the day is more fun than it was before. And because I don't make a lot, I will go wherever I can get an actual monetary deal, (which was iTunes on Wednesday when I got 10$ in credits from the writers strike cutting into production for Supernatural- and then getting free songs like Different Breed and Black and Gold).
I understand what you're saying though. High school economics, everything has a price and it comes down to how you're willing to pay and all that. So yes, we're different.