Christmas comes early with Straight No Chaser and Amazon MP3 downloads

A good friend of mine, Jason Bean, recently wrote a blog post titled Straight No Chaser Delivers the “Holiday Spirits” which caught my attention. Straight No Chaser is a local [Indianapolis] 10-man vocal group that got its big break when the Chairman/CEO of Atlantic records just happened upon on of their videos on YouTube.

Jason included a link to Straight No Chaser’s web site which I visited and instantly fell in love with their music. If you haven’t heard this group before, do yourself a favor, go to their web site and listen now.

Despite Jason’s offer to randomly giveaway a free copy of the “Holiday Spirits” album to a commenter on his blog, I couldn’t wait. I had to have the album right away.

I did a quick search on Amazon.com and immediately found the CD for $11.99. But I also noticed it was available for Amazon MP3 download for only $8.99 for the entire album. Talk about instant gratification!

But just to be sure I was getting the best deal, I quickly fired up my iTunes software and checked the digital download price in the iTunes Store. It was $9.99 so back to Amazon I went.

The Amazon MP3 download process was a breeze. I just clicked the “1-click purchase” button on Amazon.com and it walked me through downloading the free Amazon MP3 Downloader software (a step that will be skipped on future purchases). Then it immediately started downloading the MP3 files to my computer.

The best part? Once the MP3 files were downloaded, the Amazon MP3 Downloader automatically transferred all of the music files into my iTunes library so I didn’t have to do a thing to listen to my new music in iTunes or on any of my iPods. And because the Amazon files are in MP3 format, there are no digital rights management to contend with. I can play the songs on any device I own with ease.

Is November 13 too early to listen to Christmas music? I think not.