Amazon MP3 Downloads

For the first time in my life I downloaded music off the internet legally.

Let me qualify that statement:

1. I've never downloaded music illegally.
2. I've never used iTunes, or any other DRM-laden "service" to buy music.

For the first time in my life I can download music off the internet legally using Amazon's new MP3 service.

I've been waiting for this day for a long time.

While I know that there are plenty of independent music sites out there I've never had luck navigating their interfaces or getting good recommendations out of them. Besides, what I really want to do is recapture my mis-spent youth by creating a playlist that I would have constructed when I was twelve years old. Of course, we didn't have 'playlists' when I was twelve, nor 'mp3's, nor the web. What I'm doing is creating my ultimate 'mixtape'.

Speaking of which, one of the first songs I went looking for was Iron Maiden's "Aces High". Now I didn't find the original there so I had to settle for a cover, but what I also found was a bunch of - shall we say "unconventional" - covers, including two albums by the Vitamin String Quartet, who did an entire album: "Anatomy of Evil: The String Quartet Tribute to Iron Maiden", and appears to have done many such tribute albums. Oh, and if you're not into string quartets, they also have a Piano tribute series.

But I digress, the point is that Amazon, and in turn some record companies, now have money that they never got from me previously. I hope Amazon makes buckets of money off this, and I hope the artists do too, but that's not likely, and that's a completely different story.