Amazon MP3 Store now supports Ubuntu

So, I noticed that Nine Inch Nails released their new album, Ghosts. The official web site that sells FLACs was slashdotted at the time but I noticed that they were also selling the album on Amazon MP3. Clicking around randomly for a while I noticed that they finally released their downloader software for Linux, including packages for Ubuntu. I think previously it was impossible (or at least hard) to buy and download entire albums without this downloader, so this is basically the first time that Linux users can use Amazon's MP3 service.

I had a problem with it, though: when I downloaded one of the .amz files to run with the downloader app, the application failed to do anything but display a blank download window. Long story short: it refuses to open files that it doesn't have write permission to. I guess firefox 3 or Hardy saves downloaded files as mode 400. Amazon downloader fails to report any error, unfortunately, so the only way I figured this out was by stracing it. Just chmod u+w foo.azw and then the downloader will happily work. I've reported the bug to Amazon support, hopefully there will be a fix soon before they start losing loads of customers who waste their money on something they can't download.

Other than this technical glitch I'm very happy with Amazon's MP3 service so far. It's great that there's actually a high-profile DRM-free music service. I just wish they would do the same thing with their eBooks.