Easy access to the Billboard top charts makes shopping easy for the fickle or forgetful. Also, items are listed in best-selling order on artists' pages but can be resorted alphabetically or chronologically. The few customer reviews are unhelpful, while the biographies provided by All Music Guide are interesting yet useless. The similar artists and roots and influences lists are fun to explore, but that's about it. Perhaps you are better off buying books here instead of music.
Borders is one of the newer entrants.
More focused on books, the site doesn't offer the goodies other web sites do but makes up for it in other ways. You can search in all of the usual methods, as well as being able to weed out unwanted results by searching by combinations of artist and song or artist and album. Jazz fans will find Borders' jazz newsletter, The Jazz Times of interest. The site also offers a helpful staff of music lovers manning the information desk, who can help you find that CD you've always wanted but can never remember the name of. Unfortunately, the physical stores and the web sites are separate entities and you can't count on the same prices at both locations, but you can order regular Borders gift certificates from the online store.