Amazon's MP3 Service is Simply Simple

Much has been written about the inaccessibility of some of the legal services for downloading music. But with the debut of Amazon's new MP3 category, we can confidently recommend it as one of the simplest we've seen.

This review will be rather short because, well, the process for downloading an MP3 on Amazon is about as short.

Basically, when searching for a CD on Amazon, there are now links to buy a track next to each song and options to buy full albums. Most tracks are either 89 or 99 cents like other services. But Amazon's tracks are free of digital restrictions. In other words, they are delivered as 256K MP3 files.

The links may seem a bit confusing at first. Just remember that the link to hear a sample of a song is before the title, and the link to download it is after. You'll receive a confirmation page just in case you forget this, however.

Once we found the song we were looking for, the confirmation page appeared with a chance to download Amazon's MP3 download software. Since it was offered as an optional download, we opted not to use it.

After paying for the song, the usual dialogue box appeared asking us whether we wanted to save or open the file. Be sure to select save in order to keep your download. The file was received within a few seconds.

all in all, we found Amazon's service very simple to use. The buttons to continue on some of the pages were graphics without alt tags, but they were easily recognizable by their filenames (i.e. next.gif). Amazon's prices and ease of use make their offering very competitive and one we'll use again.

Try Amazon MP3