I want to buy a song, and it is available as an MP3 on Amazon, and it is also available on iTunes. Which should I get? Is there a difference in audio quality between the two?

Go with Amazon. It's DRM free (which Apple charges extra for) and it's NOT in a proprietary format that ONLY Apple software/hardware can play.

I read that last year Apple converted all their music to "iTunes Plus", which is supposed to be DRM free.

Pretty much all of apple's music is DRM free now (and they don't charge to remove it anymore). So the format is pretty much the only difference now.

Oh, and the fact that almost any song that is even remotely popular is now $1.29 instead of $.99 on iTunes.

Actually correct; I haven't used iTunes to purchase music in years. I was going by their two-tier schema from the last time.

I would *still* go to Amazon. You get MP3 format from the get-go, rather than some ridiculous m4a garbage that you can convert to MP3 if you don't mind further file degradation by going from lossy-to-lossy, and MP3 is more cross-compatible with other hardware.

Amazon. You can then import it into iTunes, play it on your iPod, etc but you can also play it on your non-Apple products like a Sansa .mp3 player or your car stereo.

Amazon is cheaper, the quality is the same, and MP3s will play on anything.

m4a/AAC is a superior compression scheme to mp3, I can hear the difference.

But hey if you are the one person out there with a Zune, then go for the mp3.

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but are the mp3/aac files always created from 16 bit CD wav files, or is there a way to compress from a higher quality (e.g. 24 bit) master for possibly higher quality sound than the CD version? To me, that would be the future of compressed music, something compressed directly from the original 24bit 96khz master.

Completely agree. I have a Zune and it works great.

If given the choice. I would go with Amazon even though MP3 isn't as good a format. Amazon has a very good history of being very consumer friendly with their digital music offerings. I would rather give them my money.

amazon.

The only reason to get .aac is if you use an iPod all the time, and want the album art associated with the song.

They both sound inferior; but at least one of them is more portable.

The album art is metatagged to the files you download from Amazon as well.

Amazon. Works great with my SANSA.

I would say Amazon because their download app is lightweight compared to iTunes. Unless you have other reasons to use iTunes, of course.

PerryD, they are created from 44/16 so that they will decompress to that rate. Some players wouldn't be able to handle 24/96 audio, compressed or not. I don't know if the sound would be any better, but it would probably be an unpopular middle ground. For the average consumer it wouldn't be worth the larger file size and potential compatibility issues, and those who want top quality would insist on lossless anyway.

Yeah, if it's not backward compatible, I can see that a new higher quality mp3 format wouldn't take off at this point. But regarding the file size, to increase the sample rate from 16bit -> 24 bit, at the same compression rate, the size of the file shouldn't go up more than 50% (by my math), or a middle ground would be 20 bit 48 khz sample which would only be slightly larger but significantly better audio quality. Obviously, I'm not an expert on audio compression though, so it's probably not a one-to-one gain.

The same Amazon who deleted a book off of Kindles without the customer's knowledge? That doesn't sound so consumer friendly.

For god's sake, let it go. They made one stupid decision, apologized for it, and put procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. Weigh that one incident against the vastly positive reputation Amazon has for customer service.

I'll take one overblown mistake on an unrelated format over the years of locking people into a single platform w/ DRM on audio.

Have to vote for Amazon also. Great deals that pop up and no worries once you've downloaded it. At least so far.

I vote for amazon. My wife and I have ipod's but got my son a sansa as it's his first player (cheap in case he lost it). At one time stuff from itunes was drm free as there was an option to create a mp3 version of any download from itunes. With the latest update from apple, that function has disappeared

Now, I have to go back to the old way of burning a cd for a song my son wants and adding that converted mp3 to his sansa

Of course, my email to apple asking about this has gone MIA. Why am I paying 1.29 again if the music isn't truly DRM free?