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Amazon US only store open to the world
By Martin English | September 26, 2007
Amazon has released its new music store. As predicted, it’s DRM free music, from two of the four major labels — Universal Music and EMI, meaning that a large amount of popular music will be available in the DRM-free format. However, Sony and Warner are still absent from the line-up, and they’re not commenting.
Obviously music purchased from Amazon will work on PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens, iPhones, RAZRs, BlackBerrys, many car head units and all sorts of other devices, and the music can of course be organised in iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, Linux, or customers can simply burn songs to CDs.
DRM makes digital music unusable. In theory, and in practice, Amazon are making a painless (i.e. quick and simple) and safe (i.e. the files should be virus free) way to for you to ‘do the right thing’.
Supposedly, the store is currently unavailable outside the US. However, I have managed to download an album. Note that you actually download the MP3’s via an Amazon DownLoad Manager. It’s only available for Windows and OS-X.
I used my usual Amazon account and credit card, but Amazon asked me to change my billing address to a US address. Everything in the address is fictitious, except for the State, the Postcode – spot the cultural reference – and the Phone Number (which I found on an IBM page).
Once the purchase was completed, I was prompted to save a file with an amz extension.
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This is used to trigger the Amazon Download Manager…..
which opens Windows Media Player, which (I think it’s because WMP is set to monitor folders) is busy adding the Album to my Windows Media Player library.
The download manager stored the MP3’s in a folder called Amazon MP3/Artist/Album Name, and appears to be using the folder / file naming convention I’ve specified in Windows Media Player. A nice little extra is that it appears to clean up the amz file afterwards.
Topics: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
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September 28th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
So you basically lied to allow you to download tracks. Who cares?
September 30th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Well, thats the point isn’t it ?
How much of their business model (i.e. licencing) is based on the presumption that the store is restricted to the US ?
October 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Does this method change your billing address in your Amazon account, so that you have to go and change it back to the right one if you want to buy a book or something? Or is the fake thing just for the purposes of the transaction, to make sure that you are a US customer?
I thought of doing the same thing, until paranoid ideas of fraud starting popping into my head…
November 4th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I live in Brisbane Australia.
My first attempt to download an album a few weeks back took a frustrating hour or more onlt to be told at the final step that it could not be completed because of “geographical restrictions….” etc.
A short time later I noticed the announcement “only available to US…..” at the top of the download page.
I have tried everything, even opening another email account and an another Amazon account with ficticious address etc, but, when I select “Buy with 1 click” I immediately get the “Unable to complete…” message. Maybe they are pinging the IP address or something to detect where the PC is located.
November 5th, 2007 at 10:56 am
It appears (perhaps because of the concerns i’ve already expressed) that Amazon have plugged the hole.
I’ve tried using a proxy service in a US based server that I have access to, but I am having problems accessing this proxy from work. I don’t have shell access to this server (yet), so I haven’t been able to run directly the server.
I will continue to investigate……..
November 26th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Secure Tunnel (not free) has been recommended to me as possible work arounds;
Essentially, the method is to use a proy (any proxy) as long as the service that you use will not be spilling your IP but use it’s own IP address (which of course has to be from the United States). However, my experience is that many proxies are under powered and / or disabled from work sites. Certainly, the later is the case for me. I will try from home and let you know