{"id":1705,"date":"2007-09-25T21:42:40","date_gmt":"2007-09-25T21:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1705"},"modified":"2007-09-25T21:42:40","modified_gmt":"2007-09-25T21:42:40","slug":"comparison_shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1705","title":{"rendered":"Comparison Shopping"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent the last hour exploring the public beta of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/b\/ref=gw_br_mp3\/102-9166805-0596163?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;node=163856011&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&amp;pf_rd_r=0M6VTSSRCSY8RKH840ZF&amp;pf_rd_t=101&amp;pf_rd_p=311588501&amp;pf_rd_i=507846\">Amazon&#8217;s digital music store<\/a>. One of big selling points of the store is that its tracks are recorded at 256 kbps (the iTunes standard is 128 kbps) and they are DRM-free, which means they can be played on any music device without restrictions. The few songs I downloaded sound crisp and vibrant, but it&#8217;s difficult to distinguish any difference in quality on my mid-range computer speakers. The interface isn&#8217;t as polished and the selection isn&#8217;t as extensive as what you&#8217;ll find on iTunes, but I suspect that will change in time. Amazon&#8217;s entry into the music download business should offer some competition to Apple and force it to drop the higher prices for its DRM-free songs. In the best of all possible worlds, DRM will become a thing of the past and these stores will compete on price and selection alone. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent the last hour exploring the public beta of Amazon&#8217;s digital music store. One of big selling points of the store is that its tracks are recorded at 256 kbps (the iTunes standard is 128 kbps) and they are DRM-free, which means they can be played on any music device without restrictions. The few <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1705' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-rv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}