Ubuntu One Music Store has arrived
This morning I woke up to write an article for Ghacks. I was searching around for inspiration while I was updating my Ubuntu 10.4 beta install. Near the end of the update I thought "Let's just check to see the status of the Ubuntu One Music Store". So I fired up Rhythmbox and, to my surprise, there it was...all ready for me to start shopping!
So...with that said, in this article I am going to introduce you to the Ubuntu One Music Store and how it works. It's time for the real fun to begin.
Traditionally when I want to download music, I would hop on to Amazon and enjoy their MP3 download tool. I gave up on iTunes a long time ago (due to DMA and then the difficult to migrate the music to other devices.) Now, I have a new source - one that is well integrated with my operating system - to rely on for music purchases.
Ubuntu One
In order to enjoy the Ubuntu One Music Store you will first have to have a Ubuntu One account. You will, of course, also need Ubuntu One installed on your system. If you are using 10.4 just make sure you've updated recently. Once you have Ubuntu One installed and an account, you are ready to go.
Rhythmbox
Fire up the Rhythmbox music player and you will notice the Ubuntu One link in the left navigation. Click on that link to open up the store (see Figure 1). As you can see, the store is laid out very easily. Either search for the song, album, or artist you are looking for or click on the genre you want to peruse.
When you have found something you want to purchase, you will see Download links associated with either individual songs or entire albums (see Figure 2). Of course you can also preview each song. And what I like about the Ubuntu One Music Store preview is that it's quite longer than the snippet you get on iTunes.
When you click on a Download button you will then have the choice to Add More, Enter Voucher (not yet implemented), or Checkout. At the checkout portion you can use either Credit Card or Paypal to purchase your downloads. Thanks to the newly integrated browser in Rhythmbox everything will occur inside of thythmbox during your transaction (even Paypal purchases).
What is really great about this system is that the downloaded files go directly to your Ubuntu One account. So any of your systems that have Ubuntu One installed (and are logged into your account) can sync that music you just purchased. That means you can purchase once and sync to many. That feature alone is worth it's weight in learning Linux! And, with Ubuntu 10.4, Rhythbox will work with iPhones out of the box. Now more having to work over night to get that Apple product syncing.
Final thoughts
It's about time a Linux distribution released a product like this. The Ubuntu One Music Store should certainly change the way many people think about Linux. And hopefully, this tool with have more people migrating from those "other" operating systems.
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where is this available? online music stores like itunes and amazon are restricted to certain countries. is the ubuntu music store similarly restricted?
Unfortunately the music selection in remote European countries is rather poor if not pathetic. :(
@zelrik
So it’s completely wrong for some other company to create proprietary software locked to a single OS, but it’s OK for Canonical to do this?
I think people need to honestly wake up, and take a look at the whole picture.
There’s a road that’s already well traveled, and not liked by most FOSS, GNU/Linux users. Sadly, Canonical is traveling down this same road.
If Canonical continues to burn it’s bridges, there won’t be many outlets left for them to suck dry.
There’s a far more important community besides the community that screams “OMG Spinning Cube! Ubuntu RULEZZZZ”. It’s the community that created the software that Canonical is repackaging and giving to those users.
@granada
FOSS has nothing to do with money. They could give the service (which is only DropBox, and IS distro/OS agnostic) and music away for free – it’s still a bad idea.
Many FOSS companies makes oodles of money without incorporating or relying on Microsoft business practices.
Hey, let’s not give up on itunes altogether
That´s a great idea, they should put another store too. Nothing it´s free, Ubuntu needs money too.
Kind of strange an OS tauting open source, based on Debian (the FOSS Nazis) is selling MP3’s locked into another non OSS system.
This is just Itunes for Ubuntu, not even Itunes for Linux – as you have to have Ubuntu or something like Ubuntu to even use it.
To top it all off, this post even has a category of Open Source.
@Bob, it’s very logic that it is bound to ubuntu, at least for now.
They need their OS share to grow and if they just launch a cross-platform music store, it will not affect the share of the OS.
I’d assume they’d build crossplatform compatibility features eventually depending on market pressure…
If they want to make a buck, they need a bit of control. I’d totally use that music store.
Nice to see something like this being added to Ubuntu!
Btw do you mean DRM not DMA?