Amazon MP3

I'm a pretty loyal eMusic downloader, but the new music-download service from Amazon is good news because, like eMusic, it's DRM-free. No limits on how many times you can burn a song onto a mix, no restrictions on mp3 players, etc. I imagine I'll use it mostly for major-label releases that eMusic doesn't carry (right now the only two participating are EMI and Universal). And yeah, I do miss having the actually CD and artwork in my hand, but downloading is just too darn easy, and it saves me a trip to the record store, which is an even better perk when trips involve lugging a 3-month-old and a carrier.

An interesting tidbit on pricing from a New York Times blog:
Apple is generally charging $1.29 for its MP3 unprotected files in the AAC format, in an attempt to differentiate them from its 99-cent restricted files. Amazon, however, will charge 89 cents and 99 cents for most songs, and it will offer albums at significant discounts. Indeed, to test this out, I purchased an MP3 download of a Philip Glass album for $6.93 from Amazon. It would have cost $11.99 to download from iTunes in Apple’s DRM format and $18.99 to buy as a CD from Amazon. Moreover, Amazon’s software put the music right in my iTunes folder, so there was almost no convenience sacrifice.