Yeah, I could have just bittorrented the new Dashboard Confessional album, but I wanted to throw a little cash at the new Amazon mp3 Store to give them the little “thumbs up” for doing a music store the right way. 

I’m sure they are thrilled.

I liked it, and it beat iTunes in almost all cases:
1. It was cheaper.  The Dashboard Confessional album was at the iTunes Music Store for $9.99, I got it for $8.99.
2. Better quality. Regular iTunes downloads, I believe, are 128kbps; Amazon comes down with files at twice that bitrate.
3. No DRM.
4. A point for iTunes in that I couldn’t download the album directly to my iPhone from Amazon.  The wireless iTunes Store is so damn cool.

On final note: Interestingly, even though the full album was a dollar cheaper on Amazon, the separate songs were a full $0.27 more a song than the $0.99 on iTunes (There was not a iTunes Plus option for this album).

Oh, and I haven’t listened to the whole album yet, but so far, its pretty good.