Books on The Knob: Songs For Japan and MP3 Bargains

Some of you may have noticed the small ad on the right side of the screen that lets you make a donation towards the relief effort in Japan. This is, like many in the past, being administered by Amazon (and I feel confident it all goes there, unlike some places that collection donations). However, if you want more to show for your support than a warm feeling, you might want to look at the Songs For Japan album in their MP3 store. I first saw this at Starbucks, via an ad on their internet access welcome page to buy it from iTunes for $9.99. I was tempted, but only had my iPad with me (and now that the CloudDrive is at Amazon, I'm even more likely to get my MP3's from Amazon). I'm glad I waited, as the price at Amazon is $7.99 (looks like Amazon is dropping their profit on this one). I thought I paid $9.49 for it a few days ago, but my receipt shows that they dropped the price, even though it was higher when I clicked. I've been listening to this all afternoon (literally; there are 38 tracks total, with a run length of 2:44:34) and it's a good album, even if the artists and record labels were not donating a portion of the proceeds to the relief effort (there are a lot of labels on this one and some are donating all of their proceeds). Remember, if you purchase any MP3 album from Amazon for the rest of the year, you get a free upgrade to 20GB on your Cloud Drive (and your MP3 purchases at Amazon never count towards your total, if made after the CloudDrive was introduced).

While I was working on this post, I noticed that Amazon has brought back several of their 99 Most Essential albums at rock bottom prices: 4 at 99 cents and six more under $2.50. One of the best features of the Cloud Drive is that I no longer have to wait for these huge albums to download (I lost one, once, as the download didn't complete and I could not get the download reset, only my money back as the price had gone up in the meantime), as they literally would take hours on my slow connection in some places. These are, of course, all Amazon Exclusives, so you won't find them elsewhere at any price. Five of these are newly discounted (How can I tell? Those are the five I don't already have! LOL!), while four have been discounted in the past (these generally sell for $5.99 to $7.99, it appears).