Amazon MP3’s recent UK launch is something of a mystery; the app has been available in North America practically since the dawn of the Android platform and why it’s taken this long for this excellent piece of software to make the trip over the pond is anyone’s guess. Still, it’s here now and us Brits can finally savour Android’s answer to iTunes.

As you may have already realised, Amazon MP3 is an application that links into Amazon’s online store and allows you to purchase and download more than nine million different songs from a wide range of popular artists, with some tracks going for as little as 29p a pop. That’s less than the price of a Mars bar, and arguably more enjoyable.

An Amazon account is obviously required before you can let yourself loose on all those lovely music tracks, but if you’ve used the online giant’s web store in the past then this won’t be an issue. Browsing the audio repository is a mercifully straightforward affair, largely because the store itself is a lot less bloated than Apple’s iTunes.

One of the reasons for this is because Amazon MP3 only offers music, whereas Apple’s digital shopfront has expanded to podcasts, videos, TV shows and even feature-length movies. This plethora of content is all well and good but mobile users are largely going to be concerned with music and music only, so in this case Amazon MP3’s lack of choice actually works in its favour.

Finding the track you want takes a matter of seconds, but if inspiration isn’t coming easily you can opt to browse the top albums or the most popular individual tracks. Download speeds are naturally at the mercy of your phone’s connection, but on the whole you can’t fault Amazon’s service.

Visually though, the app could do with some work. Amazon has made an attempt to tidy things up and this iteration of the software does at least look marginally better than its North American counterpart, but it’s still a long way off matching the clean interface boasted by iTunes. This naturally has zero bearing on the quality of service or navigation, but sometimes you can’t help but yearn for a little pizzazz.

Despite this extremely minor issue, Amazon MP3 is fantastic. This is a fact that is already well known amongst American Android fans, of course. While it’s taken an unforgivably long time for UK-based users to feel the benefit, now Amazon MP3 is available on this side of the Atlantic, you really should download it at the earliest opportunity.