The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a proprietary application which allows one to download MP3 files from Amazon, a major internet retailer.
However, there are some difficulties installing it, specifically the current package (amazonmp3 1.0.9-1) (current as of 2012 May, released in 2009 or earlier, infrequently updated). Specifically:
- Old dependencies – the depended libraries are lenny (currently oldstable), not squeeze (or later).
Missing dependencies – there is a packaging error: the package actually depends on libboost-regex1.34.1 (and thus libicu38) but forgets to list this dependency this, so this package must be manually installed.
- Not available for all platforms, notably 64-bit.
A Free Software alternative is pymazon, which does not have these problems.
Installation
Most easily:
Download all dependencies from amazonmp3.tar.gz (packaged by redDEAD)
- Install these
Download and install the .deb file from the Amazon MP3 Downloader page
Alternatively:
Download and install libboost-regex1.34.1
(this should download and install libicu38)
- Add lenny/oldstable to your repository list (so old dependencies can be fulfilled) (alternatively, can download dependencies manually)
Download and install the .deb file from the Amazon MP3 Downloader page
- Remove lenny from repository list
You may also wish to:
Mark libboost-regex1.34.1 and libicu38 as Manually installed, so they are not automatically removed by “remove unused libraries” functions
- If you use deborphan to monitor unused libraries, add --exclude lines so they libraries avoid being flagged, as follows:
deborphan --libdevel \ --exclude=libboost-regex1.34.1 \ --exclude=libicu38
External links
Install Amazon Mp3 Player In Debian Squeeze, Debian + Xfce, redDEAD, January 1, 2010
“Debian Squeeze - install Amazon MP3 downloader”, Secret Ham Shannon Eric Peeve, September 30, 2010
Amazon MP3 Downloader for Linux”, Martin's Ubuntu Blog, Martin Cooper, 6 August 2011