Now you can buy whole DRM-free albums!

Mar 4, 2008 10:06 GMT  ·  By

Amazon.com has released its MP3 Downloader for Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and OpenSuSE. This will allow Linux users to download - legally - whole albums. Before this release, a person had to download songs one by one, resulting in a bigger cost.

In the B.D - Before Downloader - era, a Linux user had to use a web browser, go on Amazon.com and buy songs individually. The problem was the high cost that resulted from this type of transaction. The advantage offered by Amazon's application is that you can buy entire albums or queue up multiple songs purchases for download. The songs are DRM-free, so you can play them on any device or media player you might have.

The MP3s are encoded using variable bit rates for the best audio quality and smaller file sizes, targeting a 256 kbps bit rate. When you will purchase for the first time from Amazon MP3, you will be prompted to open or save an .amz file, in case you have the Amazon MP3 Downloader set up. This activates the Amazon MP3 Downloader and starts downloading the songs.

The service is available only for customers who have a credit/debit card issued by a bank from the United States, with a U.S billing address. The service might be available for other countries in the future.

On the site, you can listen to 30-second samples of songs, a very good feature if you are searching for new artists. Thus, if you like how a song sounds, you can download it at the cost of a small fee. Keep in mind that your purchases can only be downloaded once, so make a back-up copy of your files after you download them, unless you want to pay again for the same songs! Amazon won't replace the files you delete or lose due to a system or disk error.

Download the Amazon MP3 Downloader 1.0.2-1 right now from Softpedia!