There’s finally some real competition on the DRM-free major label music store front. Amazon.com launched their amazonmp3 service today; selling DRM-free music both from major labels Universal and EMI and from independents. The price is certainly right, with single tracks going for 89 or 99 cents, and albums selling for anywhere between $5.69 and $9.99. Compare this to Apple’s iTunes Plus store, where tracks are $1.29 apiece and albums are generally between $9.99 and $15.00. I look forward to trying the new service, and will certainly prefer to use it over iTunes for tracks that are available on both stores. If you want more information, Ars Technica has a fairly comprehensive overview of the store at in their news pages.
Interestingly enough, as I’m writing this the #2 most popular song on Amazon’s store is Feist’s 1234, recently featured in a commercial for Apple’s new video-capable iPod Nano.
After my first on-call rotation at work a few months ago, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the requirement of constant connectivity. Along with my my personal BlackBerry Pearl, I had to carry a BlackBerry and pager for work 24/7. I foolishly ditched the BlackBerry Pearl for a Motorola Z3 slider, but quickly remembered why I had a PDA phone in the first place–I actually like being connected all the time when it’s not work-related.
Within a few days, I picked up an unlocked HTC Dash for cheap on eBay and sold the Z3 so I just about broke even. After about a month, I was starting to grow weary of the Dash. Windows Mobile 6 is pretty slick, but you have to have a Hosted Exchange server in order for push e-mail to work, whereas the BlackBerry just works with my existing GMail account and can be set up to receive messages according to my existing GMail filters (instructions from Jeff Keen).
So tonight, I find myself back where I was three months ago: with a BlackBerry Pearl. I was foolish to ever give it up, it’s the ideal phone for me. And at $120 on eBay, it was such a great deal that I’ll be able to sell the Dash and walk away with about $85 in my pocket!
Coming Soon… for real this time, I promise.
Photo by Flickr user shoebappa. Used under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 2.0 license.
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