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[ed boy]

There is a certain album of music that I want to buy. Unfortunately, it only seems to be available by downloading it at one of three different locations, and each of them are rather unappealing. The reason for this is that I very rarely buy music, as I'm not usually very bothered about it, and the stuff I like I can normally find all of it on youtube or something. In fact, the only music that I've bought before has been the previous albums by the same group, though I was able to buy it through a much nicer website.

1-Itunes. I am not interested in buying it through itunes as they go to great lengths to ensure that I will only then be able to listen to it through itunes, or an ipod. I also don't like that I have to go through an elaborate account set-up for just one album. I don't plan on buying any more music for quite some time if at all, so having to keep an account active would be undesireable.

2-Emusic. Emusic seems to work off a pay-per month model, as well as charging for individual downloads (The album I want would cost £15.54 to download there). It would probably be good value for someone who would be downloading a lot, but I'm not going to be doing that.

3-Amazon. I'm rather hesitatant to use Amazon's digital download service, as I know little about it. It looks suspiciously similar to itunes, however, in that I'm required to download a piece of software by them in order to download the music, and possibly to play it. I also don't know whether I will need to keep an active amazon account linked to my computer to be able to play it.

So, can someone with more experience with some of these sites educate me/point out glaring inaccuracies? I'm rather inexperienced when it comes to downloading music, so I'm afriad that I've very likely gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere.

[MorleyDev]

1) If memory serves, iTunes has dropped the DRM, although everything is still in AAC format.
2) Dunno about e-music at all.
3) Pretty sure Amazon's music is downloaded in MP3 format without DRM.

[celebrinborn]

Yes, itunes has dropped all DRM on most of their songs. Also, when I transfered the songs to an mp3 player (cheap $15 mp3 player from costco, no apple connection once so ever), the songs were automatically converted into either mp3 or wma files. Also, if you are still having problems with DRM or the strange file types, just play the songs in itunes and re-record them using audacity and stereo mix. Fraps also works well (just delete the video part and you have the songs).

[Tellemurius]

Zune marketplace got it too, drmfree

[ed boy]

I ended up getting it off amazon (cheapest one, only £5.99). Intrestingly, when I initially tried to download it from the main amazon.com site it told me that downloading it was US-only and I couldn't do it, but when I tried from the amazon.co.uk, it was fine.

[Stargrasper]

I ended up getting it off amazon (cheapest one, only £5.99). Intrestingly, when I initially tried to download it from the main amazon.com site it told me that downloading it was US-only and I couldn't do it, but when I tried from the amazon.co.uk, it was fine.

When you buy things like this, you're buying a license.  The license you bought is only good in the UK (or possibly the whole EU).  Point is, it probably wasn't good in the US and thus you couldn't download from the US site.