The Amazon MP3 Store delivers music in MP3 format—the most widely compatible music file format supported by most media player applications, hand-held music devices, and some CD and DVD players.
Here's more information about music files from the Amazon MP3 Store:
Bit Rate
Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bit rates for optimal audio quality and file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bit rate allows us to allocate a higher bit rate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bit rate for the less complex sections. The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality. Some of our content is encoded using a constant bit rate of 256 kbps. This content will have the same excellent audio quality at a slightly larger file size.
File Size
A typical 3-minute song takes up approximately 5MB of storage space.
Download Times
A single MP3 file 5MB in size will download in less than one minute on a typical broad-band Internet connection. A similar download on a 56k dial-up connection can take up to 30 minutes.
Album Cover Art
Album cover art is included with each song you purchase.
Lyrics
At this time, lyrics are not available for Amazon MP3s.
Amazon Cloud Player supports the import, playback and download of non-DRM files in the .mp3 and .m4a formats.
Amazon Cloud Player also supports the import of eligible .wma (Windows only), .ogg, .wav, Apple Lossless (Mac OS only), .aiff, and .flac files where we have rights to provide you access to high-quality 256 kbps .mp3 files using variable bitrate encoding from Amazon's MP3 catalog.
Files uploaded from your computer are stored in their original codec and bit rate. Files downloaded using Amazon Cloud Player are downloaded in the bit rate and codec they are stored in.
