You may have noticed that nowhere on Spook Central, be it on the Store page or elsewhere, are links to iTunes, Rhapsody, or other places where you can legally purchase and download music. This is because I detest DRM-encumbered media files. However, I am happy to report that there is finally a way to legally purchase DRM-free music files. Well-known and well-loved (or well-hated, depending on who you ask) internet retail giant Amazon.com has just launched a new digital music service called Amazon MP3. This one is supported by some, but not all, of the major music companies, so you *might* find your favorite well-known artists, plus lots of indy artists. (Please note: From what I've read on the Amazon.com site, their "Unbox Video Downloads" is DRM-encumbered, so only their music download service is recommended.)
Before I get to the list of Ghostbusters songs and albums available, let me give you a quick rundown on how the service works based upon my experience and from what I've read in the documentation on the site. This will give you the good and the bad in a quick, brief manner.
Availibility: Amazon MP3 purchases are limited to U.S. customers. (source)
Pricing: Most songs are between $0.89 and $0.99, and most albums are between $5.99 and $9.99. (source)
Quality: Every song on Amazon MP3 is encoded at 256 kilobits per second, which gives high audio quality at a manageable file size. (source)
How Purchasing Works: Each song or album purchase is done instantly through the 1-Click ordering system. Each song or album must be purchased individually. So you can't add a song to an order containing physical goods, nor can you select multiple songs and make one purchase unless you purchase an entire album. Each purchase of a song or an album is an individual order, and you will receive an order confirmation e-mail and see individual orders in Your Account for each item you purchase. However, consecutive orders for songs/albums that cost less than $5.00 may be combined into one charge and appear as a single charge on your credit or debit card billing statement. Your Amazon MP3 Music purchases can only be downloaded once. After you have successfully downloaded the file to your computer at the time of purchase, it is recommended that you create a backup copy as Amazon is currently unable to replace any purchased files that you delete or lose due to a system or disk error. (source #1, source #2)
How Downloading Works: The first time you purchase a song or album from the Amazon MP3 store, you will be asked to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader application (see below) before completing your purchase. When purchasing individual songs, you have the option of downloading them directly without using the Amazon MP3 Downloader. To do so, select "Skip installation and continue" when prompted to download the MP3 file directly to your computer. However, to purchase an entire album, you are required to use the Amazon MP3 Downloader. (source)
Amazon MP3 Downloader: The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a download manager designed to streamline the process of downloading and organizing the music you purchase. Using the Downloader allows you to download entire albums with one click, queue up as many songs or albums for download as you like, and pause, cancel, and resume downloads. As an added benefit, you can configure the Downloader to automatically import/transfer the songs you download from AmazonMP3 into iTunes or Windows Media Player. The program is available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista (v1.0.1, 607 Kb) and Mac OS X 10.4 or higher (607 Kb). (Please note: the site repeatedly just says that the Windows version is for XP & Vista, but I can confirm that it works in Windows 2000 as well.)
Downloading To Amazon MP3 Downloader: The way the files are handed over to the downloader is as follows: Amazon will tell your browser to download a .AMZ file. Your browser might pop up a box asking you if you want to open the file with the associated program (.AMZ files are associated in Windows with Amazon MP3 Downloader) or if you want to download it. This is an encoded file that can't be read by itself, so there's no reason to "download" it - so "open" it with Amazon MP3 Downloader.
A Note About Amazon MP3 Downloader: Something I found out that I have no other place for, which may or may not be useful for you to know: Each time the program is run, these files are created in your Temp directory (locations below are for Windows 2000):
C:WINNTTempAlbumArtError.gif
C:WINNTTempAmazonMP3AlbumArt.gif
C:WINNTTempAmazonMP3Logo.gif
When you select Help Show Help in the program, this file is created and shown in your default browser: C:WINNTTempAMZHelpFile.html
Free Songs: In order to test out the service and/or the downloader program, Amazon has made some songs available for free. The list below is current as of 10/23/2007, but pricing may be changed at any time, so get them for free while you can. There may be more free songs, and free songs may be added or removed weekly, so don't take this list as definitive. By the way, you must have a valid credit/debit card on file in order to download the free songs. The "checkout" process will ask you to choose a credit/debit card to pay with, but no charges will actually be made to it.
Ghostbusters Songs: None of the soundtrack or score albums are available, though you'd probably want to buy them on CD anyway. A few of the individual songs are available, though of course if you own the albums, you own those songs (they're still listed below anyway). There are a few remixes and covers (a TON for Ghostbusters, Disco Inferno, and Higher & Higher) that fans might be interested in... and that's pretty much all there is. Songs that are recommended are in bold.
I've already stated my distain for DRM, so it might seem a bit odd that I'm going to write about a new ad-supported legal music download service called SpiralFrog. Well, I'm writing about it because A) it's free, B) they have several Ghostbusters albums, and C) there *might* be a way around their DRM. More on that later.
Before I begin, let me make it perfectly clear that I have not (yet) tested out SpiralFrog, and actually CAN'T test it out right now because I'm using Windows 2000 and SpiralFrog ONLY supports Windows XP & Vista (due to the Windows Media Player 10 requirement). So not only are Windows 2000 users screwed, but so are all of the Mac and Linux users.
I did some research by going through all of the documentation on the SpiralFrog website, mostly to figure out how the service works, and below are my notes. With the exception of one or two things, this is all based on the documentation and NOT on my personal experience.
Step 1 - Register: The first thing to do is create an account on the website.
Step 2 - SpiralFrog Download Manager: At the bottom of every page on the website you'll see a link labelled "Install Download Manager", which points to a small (83 Kb) file (http://www.spiralfrog.com/spiralfrogstore/client/setup.exe). You'd think this was the Download Manager, but you'd be wrong. It's only a system checker and downloader. It checks your system and if everything is kosher, it downloads the actual program (1.4 Mb). Since the actual program also does a system check, and even dial-up users can handle a 1.4 Mb file, why the nonsense of using the setup.exe files? Anyway, once you download and run the actual program, it will install an ActiveX control in Internet Explorer and a plug-in in Firefox (hopefully it'll be smart enough to also work with Firefox's sibling SeaMonkey). If you try to install the SpiralFrog Download Manager with anything less than Windows Media Player 10 (such as WMP 6.4 that comes with Windows 2000), you get this error message: "Error 3006. Microsoft Media Player version 10 or later not installed. Please install Media Player before installing SpiralFrog Download Manager." Since WMP 10 requires Windows XP at a minimum, this means that you can't use SpiralFrog with Windows 2000.
Step 3 - Browse For Music: Once you've installed the SpiralFrog Download Manager, all you need to do is browse through the pages on the website and find the songs you want to download.
That's the simplified version that I learned by reading through the support and faq pages. There might be a little more to it, I really can't say.
The Downside Of Free Legal Music: Don't get too excited by the prospect of free legal music because there are a LOT of restrictions on what you can do with that music and several hoops you must jump through in order to keep enjoying that music.
A Possible Way To Defeat The DRM: So which one of those three points sickens you the most. Personally I think that #3 is far worse than the other two. Anyway, it *might* be possible to convert the files from DRM-crippled Windows Media format into DRM-free Wave or MP3 format. There's a great little shareware program called Total Recorder that allows you to record any digital or analog audio playing through your speakers. It installs itself as an audio driver, so the audio that comes from Windows Media Player 10 playing one of SpiralFrog's DRM-crippled files *should* be able to be recorded digitally by Total Recorder (where it can then be saved as either WAV or MP3). I, personally, have never had a problem getting Total Recorder to record any audio I threw at it, but since I've never used it on Windows XP with WMP 10, and it's always possible that Microsoft changed the media player so that it WON'T work with Total Recorder, I can only offer a theory that this might work with SpiralFrog's files. XP and Vista users feel free to try this out and post your results in the comments. (Please note, as mentioned on the Total Recorder website, the unregistered version will insert an audible noise about every 60 seconds throughout the recording.)
Ghostbusters Albums: A search for "Ghostbusters" reveals the following. Please note that none of these pages have "Play Sample" or "Download" links, so I'm not even sure if these albums are available for download.
Ghostbusters Songs: They probably have all of the songs that AmazonMP3 has, but since I don't want to bother looking (I spent almost 12 hours already writing this post), I'll just leave you with these few. Please note that most of these pages don't have "Play Sample" or "Download" links, so I'm not even sure if these songs are available for download. The only song with Sample and Download links is The Ventures.
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