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Amazon MP3 store or Google Play MP3 store???

Kazaam

Kazaam

Well-Known Member
Sometimes I'll justify buying a lossy MP3 download versus the physical CD.

For instance, I'm planning to buy the band Ash's "A-Z" collection sometime today. To buy the two CDs brand new, it'd cost me almost $30.00. (And still over twenty bucks used.) OR... I could buy the MP3 download for about $9.00. PLUS get about 30 extra bonus songs with the download!

So the download gives me twice as many songs for significantly less money than the CD versions. But then the question becomes which store to buy from. Whose service offers the best overall package and is most deserving of my meager financial support?
 
Here's some Amazon vs. Google stuff that I gathered. I split the post in two because it was just too much a wall of text and looked boring to read, even to me! Maybe this is slightly more digestible now. (Maybe.)


Amazon MP3s are usually at 256 kbps.

That is a lower bitrate than Google Play. But Amazon also has great customer service. To my knowledge, they don't restrict the number of times that I can download an album (I don't think they do, that is). Plus, I suppose I could always hold out hope that should Amazon ever get into the high-rez download game that they might offer free upgrades to prior purchases. Kind of like when Amazon recently gave everybody a bunch of MP3s for past CD purchases when they introduced their AutoRip service. Granted, this kind of potential for upgrade doesn't mean it's a given to ever happen.

Google Play MP3s are usually at 320 kbps.

The higher bitrate theoretically could sound better than Amazon's, which is good. But Google only lets you download single albums (or single tracks specifically) just two times from a web browser. After that you have to download your purchases using the "Google Music Manager" software, which sadly doesn't allow you to download just a single song. You might be able to download only your "free and purchased" Google Play MP3s. But most times it appears that option is only available to recent purchases. So if I've used up my 2 web page downloads, then---if I need to re-download a lost album---I am forced to download my entire music collection of over 14,000 songs stored in Google's cloud. But on the other hand, Google is giving me a good deal with all that free cloud storage. Plus Google more frequently offer free MP3 downloads that interest me far more than Amazon does.
 
Bit Rate
Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bit rates for optimal audio quality and file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bit rate allows us to allocate a higher bit rate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bit rate for the less complex sections.

Link
 
Rope said:
Would you prefer to own the CDs?

Rope
Click to expand...

Sure, always. And buying CDs is what I do in most cases. But sometimes due to price and/or the lack of physical media availability, I'm willing to do downloads. It's not like Ash's recordings are exactly audiophile grade, anyway.
 
Rope said:
MP3 LAME.

Rope
Click to expand...

From a quick check of the few downloads I have in my library, it appears that most of the files from either Amazon MP3 or Google Play MP3 were encoded with either LAME 3.97 or LAME 3.98.
 
Kazaam said:
Rope said:
Would you prefer to own the CDs?

Rope
Click to expand...

Sure, always. And buying CDs is what I do in most cases. But sometimes due to price and/or the lack of physical media availability, I'm willing to do downloads. It's not like Ash's recordings are exactly audiophile grade, anyway.
Click to expand...

Hold the phone. I'll go a witch hunt.

Rope
 
Still gonna be paying more and still gonna be missing 31 extra songs. But that eBay price for vol. 2 is a lot better than what the Amazon sellers had.
 
I very rarely buy mp3 downloads as I still buy CDs (only when they're less than $10), but If I had to choose, I would go with Google Play simply because Google will store up to 20,000 songs in their cloud even if you didn't purchase any songs from them.
 
lulimet said:
I very rarely buy mp3 downloads as I still buy CDs (only when they're less than $10), but If I had to choose, I would go with Google Play simply because Google will store up to 20,000 songs in their cloud even if you didn't purchase any songs from them.
Click to expand...

Kind of like me. I guess if I were to make a habbit of buying downloads, it might become more of an important decision on where to buy. But I was just kind of curious if others had any place to buy they were set on as being the best. So far I've done kind of a mish-mash of Amazon, Google Play, and even iTunes (but only because I sometimes get iTunes cards as gifts at Christmas).

fwiw... in the end I decided to buy the album from Google Play.

I figured 62 songs at 320kbps for $9.50 wasn't a bad deal, even if it is still just an MP3. And, like you mentioned, I am using their free cloud storage. So I paid 50 cents more for the guaranteed higher bitrate today and also to say thanks for the cloud storage, I guess.
 
I honestly can't tell the difference between most high bitrate lossy tracks and lossless tracks, even on my main system.
 
Haywood said:
I honestly can't tell the difference between most high bitrate lossy tracks and lossless tracks, even on my main system.
Click to expand...

Use headphones.

Rope
 
Headphones and really well recorded music.

Most of today's music sounds awful in terms of accuracy and fidelity, but a good jazz or classical recording can be very revealing.
 
Flint said:
Headphones and really well recorded music.

Most of today's music sounds awful in terms of accuracy and fidelity, but a good jazz or classical recording can be very revealing.
Click to expand...

There's a reason I said "most." I predominantly listen to rock, pop, blues, etc. With that type of music, I am VERY hard pressed to hear the difference between a well encoded 256k AAC file purchased from iTunes or a high quality 320k MP3 file created with LAME and a CD.

With some acoustic music, such as bluegrass, jazz and classical I can pick out encoding artifacts on the lossy files. Even then, it is not often glaringly obvious. I have to be using good speakers or headphones and really listening carefully. There are certain specific recordings that I've come across that do not encode well to lossy formats, but that's much more the outlier than the norm.

90% of my music listening is in my car, on headphones or playing in the background while I do other things. I still sit down and listen to music occasionally, but not very often. On the rare occasion that I want to sit down with a great album and listen to the whole thing, I'll put in the disc. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with well encoded, high bitrate lossy files.

I gave up on lossless awhile ago, because compatibility was such a pain in the ass across the many devices I use for playback. High bitrate lossy was the best compromise.
 
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