Anjunabeats review
Anjuna Beats Digital website
| www.anjunabeats.com | April 2004 |
The AnjunaGuys recently re-opened their AnjunaDigital online store and ditched the DRM protected WMA format for MP3 (a good choice, if I may add). The catalog is obviously limited as they only sell music released on the AnjunaBeats label, but everything from old tunes to future classics are there as 256 Kbps MP3s.
The tracks are sold at £1.11 but checkout reveals VAT is not included, so the actual price is £1.30. This is a bit confusing for European users, but I hear the majority of sales go to USA and Japan who don't have to mind VAT anyway. There is another small caveat as well: the minimum credit card payment is £5.00. If you want a single £1.30 track now you can buy £5 of credits and spend them remaining £3.70 later. AnjunaBeats also lets you collect AnjunaPoints
which basically work like the bonus points in markets. A hundred AnjunaPoints earns you £1 to use in the store and thousands of points give you other benefits.
| Format | Quality | Price |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 | 256 Kbps | £1.11, (£1.30 including VAT) |
There is a small gray preview player for each track. The Flash-based preview players don't talk to each other, so you have to manually stop the previous player or the next preview will play on top of the last one. The players include a position slider to skip through the preview, although this function seems a bit buggy at times. Sound quality is acceptable.
Overall the site is pretty straightforward to use. The minimal, no thrills design looks like a template from an off-the-shelf web store application with it's basic 3-column layout. Help with all the basic information can be found on the left column on every page. Once again frames are in use for no good reason, though. People really do know how to scroll back up to reach the navigation, you know! You don't need to screw up the browsers' ability to bookmark pages for that.
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