Picked up my copy of “Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust” (geez!) over the weekend. After a couple of play throughs it’s another solid release by the Icelandic group. A bit of a departure from their previous work, but still distinctively “Sigur Rós”. Interestingly the last track is sung in English which is a first for the band. Granted, I still couldn’t understand a word Jonsi was singing even after looking up the lyrics today and following along, but I think that’s for the best. Hearing a Sigur Rós song in English just doesn’t feel right.

Sigur Rós has the album for sale on their site for $8 as a digital download, but after realizing that I’d have to create an account with some random company, I decided to check the Amazon MP3 Store to see how much they were listing the album at. As luck would have it, Amazon were selling it for the same price. In all of my music downloading days I’ve been a predominant iTunes user (outside of a few downloads from that infamous Russian site), but I’ve been intrigued by Amazon’s service mainly after hearing that they offer DRM-free MP3s encoded at 256kb, not to mention at a few cents cheaper than iTunes. They also provide a free downloadable application that automatically adds the tracks to your iTunes library which is a huge plus.

So in the end I believe I’m a convert. I still love Apple and iTunes is the best way for me to manage my music and podcast subscriptions, but with buying music now I’ll definitely be going to Amazon first.