Amazon.com not only has an outstanding collection of digital downloads in their music section (as covered by Martin in his insightful article “Amazon DRM Free MP3 Store“), they offer a completely cross-platform tool to make this process simple. The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a very simple (as well as required) tool that enables you to purchase music from Amazon.com and use it at your leisure. And since the files are DRM-free, you aren’t limited to putting them on one device and only one device. Instead you can download your music, burn it on to CD, copy it to your device, copy it to your friends device…what have you.

But in order to take advantage of this service, you MUST have the MP3 downloader installed. That’s where this tutorial comes into play. Here you will see how to install and use the Amazon MP3 Downloader on your Linux box.

Getting and installing

Point your browser to the download page and download the proper file for your distribution. As of this writing you have the choice of files for the following distributions:

• Ubuntu 8.10/9.04
• Debian 5
• Fedora 10
• OpenSuSE 11

Yes, Amazon is a bit behind the times, but you can get around this (at least on Ubuntu 9.10). Below you will find the steps to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader on Ubuntu 9.10.

Download the .deb file for Ubuntu.

Open up a terminal window and issue the command (from within the directory the file was saved) sudo dpkg -i amazonmp3.deb.

You will see a bunch of errors that will end with the warning: Errors were encountered while processing: amazonmp3.

• Issue the command sudo synaptic.
• You will get a warning that you have 1 broken package.
• Go to the Edit menu and select Fix Broken Packages.
• Click Apply in the new window.
• Close Synaptic when the packages have been fixed.

Using Amazon MP3 Downloader

There are two ways you can use the downloader. The first is to start up the application by clicking on Internet submenu of the Applications menu. From within this menu click on the Amazon MP3 Downloader entry.

When you first launch it your default web browser will start up with a “congratulations” page informing you that the Downloader will launch the next time you download a song from Amazon.com. You also will get the chance to download a free song. When you click on the button (on Amazon.com) to download a free song you will taken to the Amazon.com login page. Log in and then you will have the chance to download your free song.  Go ahead and download your free song.

What you will download is an .amz file that links to your download. Your browser, by default, will ask you what to do with the file. Go ahead and let the Amazon MP3 Downloader open that file and the download will being.

But where did that file go? The Downloader will, by default, download all files to ~/Music/Amazon MP3/. If you open up that directory (after you download your file) you will see the sub-directory containing your new download.

Figure 1

Another way to use the Downloader is to open up the tool and click the

Configuring the Downloader

There aren’t many options in the Downloader’s preference window.  From within that window you can click the button “Shop Amazon MP3 Store”. This will automatically open your default browser to the store.

In order to configure the tool click on the File menu and then select Preferences. From within this window you can configure the following:

• Download directory.
• Automatically check for updates.
• Proxy settings.

And that’s it. But what more would you need to configure for such a simple tool? The only option I always change, by default, is the Download Directory. I tend to change this to the directory used by my multimedia player so I don’t always have to add the new media to the player when I download something. Of course, in order to have this work you have to have your media player set up to automatically scan for new files.

Final thoughts

If you are a Linux user, and a purchaser of digital music, you should do yourself a favor and give the Amazon MP3 Downloader a try. If for another other reason, all Linux users should give it a go in order to show support for Amazon’s support for Linux.

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The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is better than fighting illegal music downloads.

Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.

Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world cannot.

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ESP is a software program that combines both concepts. It makes use of the Shoutcast directory of Internet Radios that the user can listen to online. It provides the means to record the active stream right away. Other applications that handle this well are Streamripper, Musicy and several music players like AIMP2 or XMPlay.

ESP would not be special in this regard if it would not offer a more or less unique feature in addition to being able to record Internet Radio. The software can automatically search for music that has been publicly made available by the artist or the record company. The developers say that ESP looks only for music that has been uploaded by the artist to social networking websites. The software itself will not display the source of the music download which could be reason enough for cautious users to not use the feature. Tests revealed that it pulled songs from websites like MySpace.

ESP is available for most Windows operating systems including Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

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Currently the site is still in the early stages and the range of (DRM-free) mp3s available for download is still quite small (I counted 8 artists and 19 tracks, but I guess you have to start somewhere).

If you’re looking to get your music distributed be sure to check them out; part of We7’s vision is to showcase new musical talent (Oh and by the way, We7 artists get paid).

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Electrobel features a nice looking interface that makes it very easy to listen to mp3 music on the site itself using a great player. It is possible to create playlists, look at playlists from other users, export the music to m3u files. You can download music from Electrobel as well, everything can be done without registration. It offers however more than just music downloads; Members share information about upcoming concerts, new releases, music production, music hardware and software.

The community is pretty active and you can find lots of royalty free music in the different music categories on Electrobel. Everything is devoted to electronic music of course which means that the dominating genres are Techno, Trance, Electro and variations of that music. They even got a chiptunes category which I remember from the time that I produced some music with my Commodore Amiga for some demos and intros.

So, let me sum it up: Free Music Downloads + Free Music Streams + Royalty Free Music + Great Community =  excellent website that gets a recommendation.

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