Hi,
So here’s the mp3 download service for Linux. I’ve used it to test, and it works a treat on my Fedora 10 64bit machine….
Here’s and email I sent to Amazon about their service:
As a user of the Fedora operating system for the last 10 years, I am delighted to come across a service such as yours. Today, I was looking to a way to download DRM free music. The days of torrent (illegal!) shared music it seems are over. For people like me, it was never an issue of getting music for free, it was a case of getting music for a very reasonable price (anything under a single less than 89p), in a unrestricted form (DRM free). Today I found the Amazon mp3 downloader available for Fedora. I must applaud such a mutli-OS stance taken by Amazon on this. Good news!
The bad news… it could be better. You may realise that the Linux community demand more thana multi-OS releases of software. They also shout out loud for open sourcing of code and, of course, lossless music format. the Amazon downloader does not achvieve the following:
1. It is not open source. – Do this, and you will get a great deal of respect and custom from the rapidly growing Linux community.
2. It’s not lossless – You only allow mp3 downloads. The mp3 format is a closed technology – proprietary software, with licensing restraints. So for those of us who want to stay as close to the term “Free” (and “legal”!), i.e. fedora users want to see FLAC file format, not mp3.
What are the chance of either of these?
——————
So I blind email, not many companies would reply to that… Despite this, below is their honest and sincere response:
First of all thank you for writing to Amazon.co.uk with your kind comments and feedback which we greatly appreciate.
We want to provide a download service that customers will remember, and we really appreciate receiving such nice compliments.
We also acknowledge that our downloads are not open source and are available in MP3 format only at this time.
MP3 is the most widely compatible music file format and is supported by most media player applications, hand-held music devices, and some CD and DVD players. We encode our MP3 files using variable bit rates for maximum audio quality and smaller 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. The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality.
It is unclear whether either of your suggestions will come to fruition in the short term however, I will certainly pass your message on to the appropriate department who will be glad to review your suggestion. Customer feedback such as yours helps us to continue improving the selection and service we provide. This is a rapidly changing area and we appreciate the time you’ve taken to write to us.
If you have any other suggestions for us or would like to make a comment at another time, simply send us an e-mail. To do this, you can visit our Help Desk at the following URL:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/contact-us
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One thumb up to Amazon. If we see FLAC, i’ll give them two !
Comments
It’s great to see a company respond honestly to this sort of enquiry and not just ignore it. I doubt they will implement these things any time soon, it at all. I do like the honest approach though, it’s refreshing. Nice article
Dan
how did you install it to a 64bit operating system?
Follow up on this… I had it working on Fedora 10 as well, but no dice on Fedora 11 64-bit? The boost libs seem to be missing some of the files and I’m trying to sort out the issues with linking. Have you had any luck with it on F11?
Ken, you’re quite right. I also have the same problem now. I actually resolved all the library issues. e.g. amazonmp3 was looking for lib_boost*.so.3, but I have lib_boost*.so.4, so I created a soft link from *.so.4 , creating the file *.so.3.
I needed to do this for about 6 library files, then similar stuff for libssl* and libcrypt* .
Alas, when I eventually get to run amazonmp3 I get the following error:
amazonmp3: symbol lookup error: amazonmp3: undefined symbol: _ZN5boost5mutexC1Ev
So Amazon will need to recompile the amazonmp3 application against the Fedora 11 libraries. Bad times!
Fedora 11 x64 Amazon MP3
This is my fix, your mileage may vary. -Bob
yum install libcurl.i586 gtkmm24.i586 gtk-nodoka-engine.i586 libcanberra-gtk2.i586 PackageKit-gtk-module.i586 bug-buddy.i586
wget mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/9/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/boost-1.34.1-13.fc9.i386.rpm
mv boost-1.34.1-13.fc9.i386.rpm /
cd /
rpm2cpio boost-1.34.1-13.fc9.i386.rpm | cpio -ivd ./usr/lib/libboost_thread-mt.so.1.34.1 ./usr/lib/libboost_iostreams.so.1.34.1 ./usr/lib/libboost_signals.so.1.34.1 ./usr/lib/libboost_date_time.so.1.34.1
ln -s /usr/lib/libboost_thread-mt.so.1.34.1 /usr/lib/libboost_thread-mt.so.3
ln -s /usr/lib/libboost_iostreams.so.1.34.1 /usr/lib/libboost_iostreams.so.3
ln -s /usr/lib/libboost_signals.so.1.34.1 /usr/lib/libboost_signals.so.3
ln -s /usr/lib/libboost_date_time.so.1.34.1 /usr/lib/libboost_date_time.so.3
http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/help/amd.html?&forceos=LINUX
(use browser to accept and download to /software)
rpm -Uvh amazonmp3.rpm –nodeps
ln -s /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8k /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.6
ln -s /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8k /usr/lib/libssl.so.6
@Bob Brush – WOW! this is excellent, thanks !
Hi,
Firstly, a very interesting post, i’d like to echo Dan’s comment about Amazon’s honest reply.
Secondly, many thanks to Bob Brush for his excellent fix for Amazon’s Downloader. I too discovered that after my upgrade to Fedora 11 the downloader had broken. I found that additional libboost libraries needed to be copied into my /usr/lib, namely: libboost_regex and libboost_filesystem. Also i noted that the current version of the downloader requires libssl.so.7 and libcrypto.so.7
Finally, i hope amazon realise that the majority of people would rather download a single zip file with their mp3s in, than battle against its download application!
I’m seriously impressed at this! BTW, your post on the Ubuntu Forums where you share this blog link is one of the highest ranked items on Google for “amazon flac”. =P
@Conor – Thanks for letting me know about the Google ranking!
+ I agree, I was impressed with the openness of Amazon’s reply, it’s honest, and also accurate!
[...] wanting to know about Amazon’s policy on mp3 vs FLAC and open source vs closed source, click here for their very open reply they sent to me in response to these [...]
[...] wanting to know about Amazon’s policy on mp3 vs FLAC and open source vs closed source, click here for their very open reply they sent to me in response to these [...]