Amazon Music to Audacity

Can I make cds, for personal use only, from Amazon Music through Audacity,or would this be illegal?

Yes, it’s illegal and a violation of your streaming agreement. There’s a reason why they don’t give you a “download” button. :wink:

The artist (or copyright holder) gets paid a fraction of a penny every time the song is streamed, or a few cents if you buy a download.

Amazon Music is also a music store where you can buy and download individual tracks or whole albums as MP3 files (I’ve bought a few albums from Amazon Music in the past), and you can legally burn those MP3 files to a CD for personal use if you want to.

But Audacity doesn’t handle CD burning; you’ll need a separate application for that.

I believe iTunes still sells downloads too. They are AAC (MP4 or M4A) rather than MP3.

Yeah, I was a little surprised that Amazon is selling MP3s rather than AACs. It could be a licensing issue for Amazon (AAC requires a license while MP3 does not anymore), or it could be a compatibility issue, so that people can still use their music players from the '90s. :person_shrugging:

IIRC they’re 320 kbps, so they’re close enough to transparent to me (I actually bought them for my son, and he hasn’t complained about the quality).