The UbuntuOne Music Store Now Open

The long-awaited UbuntuOne Music store has finally opened its doors for Ubuntu 10.04 Beta users to try out.

The store is "built in" to Rhythmbox meaning you don’t need to install any extra add-ons to use it – simply start Rhythmbox and click the ‘UbuntuOne’ sidebar entry to load up the store and do some browsing.

Finding Music
Browsing the store is a straight-forward experience. You can search by artist, title or album titled or and navigating around the store is extremely easy. Previewing tracks is a one-click affair.

Sadly Rhythmbox’s seeker doesn’t work with previews but then there isn’t much use seeking a 30 second preview clip anyway!

Buying Music

Purchasing a song is as easy as clicking the ‘Download’ button followed by ‘Checkout’ and entering your payment information (all of which can be stored in your UbuntuOne account meaning you don’t need to enter it again).

Payment options accepted are Credit/Debit cards, Paypal and Click&Buy.

  

So far so good.

Once you’ve completed the above your track is then prepared for download. This is the only part of the experience where I’ve (so far) found issue. Having purchased a track, the download proceeded to "process" for a good 20 minutes. I’m hoping this was just a bit of server strain as if preparing a single 320kbps .mp3 for download takes this long, I’d hate to be buying an entire album… 

Once done, the UbuntuOne part of the store comes into play – your purchased tracks are downloaded to a ‘special’ "UbuntuOne" music folder which then syncs back to your UbuntuOne account.

Once downloaded and "synced" and all of that jolly stuff you’ll find your UbuntuOne Music Store purchases easily accessible via the ‘Music > Purchased from UbuntuOne’ sub-menu.

 

As New Found Glory (no mocking at the back) are my all-time favourite band I had to – had to – make my first purchase an NFG song.

Being helpful
If you encounter and bugs, issues or find the UbuntuOne Music store chewing down small children then there several ways to help.

1. First make sure it is a bug. Walk yourself through the steps again to see if the ‘bug’ happens again.
2. If you’re sure something is definitely up then the easiest way to report your bug witjh lots of helpful information is by using the following command in a terminal: ubuntu-bug rhythmbox-ubuntuone-music-store
3. Check out #u1msbeta on FreeNode for any other queries you might have.

What are you thoughts and what will be your first purchase through the UbuntuOne Music Store?