
Anyone using Amarok can now easily listen to all of Magnatune's albums in their entirety, just as you can on the Magnatune web site, but the experience is friendlier and easier since it is within the audio player itself. Users can also buy the music directly from inside Amarok, with the credit card form in Amarok passing the data to Magnatune. The music is then automatically downloaded and added to the user's Amarok library, in the same style as with iTunes.
What is different about this offering from iTunes is:
a) full previewing of all music before buying, not just 30 seconds.
b) No DRM on anything (previews or downloads)
c) Open-source friend audio formats, such as FLAC and OGG Vorbis, in addition to WAV and MP3
d) full CD-quality (lossless) files included with purchase
e) musicians get 50% of the purchase price and
f) 10% of the purchase price goes directly to Amarok.
Below are screen pictures of the integration in Amarok. Notice how easy the browsing is, and also how artist bios and photos are directly available inside Amarok.
This Amarok/Magnatune partnership was done by Nikolaj Hald Nielsen by using the Magnatune API http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2006/06/embedded_purcha.html. The blog world is buzzing about this, including the Word Blog, Boing Boing and Digg: http://magnatune.com/info/press/coverage/amarok
Comments