I’ve been buying quite a bit of music through iTunes because it’s so easy, and relatively inexpensive, but I just became aware of Amazon.com MP3 Downloads—and in some ways it’s a better deal than iTunes.

First, Amazon’s even cheaper than iTunes Store, about a dollar less for an entire album.

Second, Amazon’s MP3 files are not copy-protected, which makes backing up and creating playlists for the iPod, car, laptop, whatever, extremely simple and painless. This is a big improvement over the iTunes DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection method, which allows you to copy (or share) your songs to 5 machines, but makes you go through an annoying authorization process for each new player platform.

And Amazon provides a little helper application that works with both Mac and PC to manage downloads and automatically add the songs to iTunes.

Check it out. Very nice alternative to the iTunes Store. I just purchased %%AMAZON=B000VZC4NA|the new Andy McKee album%% there, and the MP3 files are very high quality, comparable to or better than Apple’s AAC format.