Comparing Online Music Offerings

the last line says it all by squarefish · 2003-10-23 04:13 · Score: 0, Redundant

"I'm sure all three services will evolve and get better, and others will enter the fray. But, for now, iTunes is the best choice on Windows."

--
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.

Re:the last line says it all by cK-Gunslinger · 2003-10-23 04:25 · Score: 1, Funny

"I'm sure all three services will evolve and get better, and others will enter the fray. But, for now, iTunes is the best choice on Windows."
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[ waiting for my +Insightful mod points for simply repeating the last line I just read =P ]
Re:the last line says it all by Night+Goat · 2003-10-23 04:25 · Score: 2

Yes, the last line does say it all, which is why it was quoted in the article writeup. I can read, don't bother parroting Slashdot's writeup for me. Who modded this insightful?
Re:the last line says it all by Hieronymus+Howard · 2003-10-23 04:26 · Score: 1

So what's the best one for the Mac?

Seriously, do any of them work on Linux?

HH
Re:the last line says it all by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:28 · Score: 2, Informative

Considering all the errors and omissions in the article, I wouldn't put too much stock in this review.

iTMS lets you re-download music you've already purchased. It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install, which some may see as a drawback. ;)

MMJB doesn't work with the iPod? Somebody better tell Apple that they shouldn't have shipped it with all the iPods up until now.

The other thing he doesn't cover is that Napster and MMJB downloads will work directly, without laborious circumvention techniques, on many different portable players and also on the computer itself on MMJB, WMP, and Winamp.

iTMS only plays on iTunes or iPod. iThink unless you have an iPod, you're better off with another service.
Re:the last line says it all by devphaeton · 2003-10-23 04:29 · Score: 1

Until the next Microsoft monthly patch which will intentionally break it in some manner.

Are you suggesting that it even takes Microsoft a few tries to break something too? ;o)

--

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Re:the last line says it all by squarefish · 2003-10-23 04:33 · Score: 2, Informative

It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install

An updated version (4.1.1) became available for windows yesterday and it addresses the known issues from the initial release last week. read about it here

--
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Re:the last line says it all by larry+bagina · 2003-10-23 04:34 · Score: 1

gnutella, dc++, and eDonkey all work under linux.

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Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Re:the last line says it all by ChuckleBug · 2003-10-23 04:34 · Score: 3, Funny

Are you suggesting that it even takes Microsoft a few tries to break something too?

When they're trying to do it on purpose. They then need a patch to make their bug work, because it's too buggy.
Re:the last line says it all by momerath2003 · 2003-10-23 04:52 · Score: 2, Informative

iTMS lets you re-download music you've already purchased.
Not true. Once your download has completed, you can't download a song again unless you purchase it again. Apple recommends that you burn a backup of the downloaded song to CD or anything.

It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install, which some may see as a drawback. ;)
As someone just said, they released a version that takes care of that.

MMJB doesn't work with the iPod? Somebody better tell Apple that they shouldn't have shipped it with all the iPods up until now.
MMJB's DRM-infected^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprotected songs are WMA's, which will not play on the iPod. Regular MP3's and such work just fine, but you can't copy the songs you purchase from their music service (which wasn't around when Apple first packaged the two together).

The other thing he doesn't cover is that Napster and MMJB downloads will work directly, without laborious circumvention techniques, on many different portable players and also on the computer itself on MMJB, WMP, and Winamp.
So they work with anything that can read protected WMA. And I wouldn't call burning and re-ripping laborious.

iTMS only plays on iTunes or iPod. iThink unless you have an iPod, you're better off with another service.
At least one company (I can't remember the name) has said that if the AAC format (the one that iTunes/iPod uses) catches on, then their players will support it. So don't be too sure about the strictly-Apple requirement in the not-so-distant future.

--
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Re:the last line says it all by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:57 · Score: 0

mod parent up : +1 insDUHghtful
Thanks to the asshat mod who gave him the mod he expected :D
Re:the last line says it all by momerath2003 · 2003-10-23 04:57 · Score: 1

Judging by the last three words, the parent post should be modded Redundant! Ha ha, get it? All three of those words mean the same thing?

Too bad the moderators weren't quick enough to catch that and mod it that way. :-(

--
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Re:the last line says it all by ryanvm · 2003-10-23 05:26 · Score: 1

And I wouldn't call burning and re-ripping laborious.

That's because you're an Apple zealot.

All DRM-locked forms of music distribution are a waste of money. What do you do in in the year 2030 when nobody makes players for your multi-gigabyte collection of AAC files? I guess it'll be a good thing that you burned all those CDs. Oh wait, I guess they rotted didn't they?

Or what do you do when you switch to a new OS and Apple/Microsoft doesn't support it? Shit outta luck huh?

Once you buy it, you should be able to do whatever you want with the file. Any service that doesn't adhere to that simple principle is giving you an inevitably worthless product.
Re:the last line says it all by SpaceLifeForm · 2003-10-23 05:40 · Score: 1, Insightful

Keywords: 'But, for now,...'
Until the next Microsoft monthly patch which will intentionally break it in some manner.
OK, maybe it will take a couple of months.
To the astroturfing moderator that marked this troll the first time...
This was not a troll. It's a fact. So waste some more mod points again. Go ahead, make my day.

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You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Re:the last line says it all by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:42 · Score: 0

A MAC zealot modded it as insightful, probably just confused the meaning of insightful with redundant or troll. Remeber, on /., you get instant mod points for saying something good about Apple and apparently now even quoting the writeup word for word with no other input even gets you mod points as long as Apple is mentioned in good terms. Hell, you'd even get +1 insightful posting something positive about a G5 in a article about the cotton gin.
Re:the last line says it all by woozlewuzzle · 2003-10-23 05:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

"What do you do in in the year 2030 when nobody makes players for your multi-gigabyte collection of AAC files?"

Hmm - 27 years in the future. All the 45s I had from 27 years ago, I could play them if I still had them, and if I still had a record player, oh and if I still listened to the same music.

What was your point again?
Re:the last line says it all by ryanvm · 2003-10-23 06:43 · Score: 1

Yeah, your record player is a physical device. WTF are you going to run WinAmp on in 30 years, retard?
Re:the last line says it all by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:00 · Score: 0

My 30 year old iMac.
Re:the last line says it all by woozlewuzzle · 2003-10-23 07:02 · Score: 1

Uhh - same thing I run WinAMP on now. I don't.
Do you really think WinAMP is going to be around in 27 years? C'mon think about it. AAC, OGG and WMA will all be antiquated and replaced by better things in 10 years, never mind 27. Technology moves too quickly.
Hard media lasts a bit longer (Records, CDs, etc) because of the investment users make in hardware. Software (especially when the media players are cheap or free) can be swapped out quite rapidly and there are often upgrade paths to take your existing media with you.

Oh, and unless WinAmp runs in the ether, it also runs on a physical device. Nice use of the word retard - 5 points to you.
Re:the last line says it all by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:11 · Score: 0

What about buymusic.com
Re:the last line says it all by ShavenYak · 2003-10-23 07:47 · Score: 1

Don't know about these, but Emusic works fine on Linux.

--

Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Re:the last line says it all by gordgekko · 2003-10-23 08:14 · Score: 1

Does it fix the "issue" where iTunes dictatorally modifies the entire directory structure to impose its own idea of how my music files should be stored? No? Until then, iTunes stays off my PC. It will take me days if not longer to get my files back to how they were before iTunes was installed.

--
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Re:the last line says it all by laird · 2003-10-23 08:20 · Score: 1

"All DRM-locked forms of music distribution are a waste of money."

While I'm not a fan of DRM for many of the reasons you mentioned, realistically you could burn your music to CD's, at which point it's as "eternal" as any other CD's. Which is to sat that you'll have to copy them onto whatever format replaces CD's, the way we went through LP's, 8-tracks, cassettes, MiniDisks, 45's, ...

It's entirely possible that AAC+FairPlay, as pure software, might be a longer lasting format than the CD medium. I know that .doc files have lasted longer than 5.25" floppy disks. :-)

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:the last line says it all by squarefish · 2003-10-23 08:20 · Score: 1

Update: What's New: iTunes 4.1.1 includes improved performance when using your iPod, addresses an incompatibility with Windows 2000 and older third-party CD burning software, and improves support for non-standard mp3 files. Also, the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" preference is now turned off by default.

--
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Re:the last line says it all by ryanvm · 2003-10-23 09:04 · Score: 1

You're right, I should have reserved the word "retard" for this response. I didn't realize your logic was going to get even muddier.

No - WinAmp won't exist in 30 years. That's my point. You said you can still play 30-year-old records on your 30-year-old turntable. My point was that digital formats are different. You have to have archaic software that runs on the available hardware. Unfortunately for iTunes users, nobody is going to be making "AAC Player" for MacOS XXVII.

You Apple fanboys don't seem to see anything wrong with the AAC DRM. I'll lay it out for you one more time:

Apple is going to eventually stop supporting AAC and, since you're technically prohibited from copying it to another format, you'll be up shit creek when they do. How are you going to listen to all your AAC songs when Apple has moved on and you were never allowed to copy them to another format? Maybe this won't happen for 30 years, maybe it will happen in 5. Who knows.
Re:the last line says it all by d34thm0nk3y · 2003-10-23 09:29 · Score: 1

And I wouldn't call burning and re-ripping laborious.

You wouldn't call two completely pointless steps laborious?? Now it takes three steps to burn your songs instead of one. How is that NOT laborious????
Re:the last line says it all by nat5an · 2003-10-23 10:15 · Score: 1

Well, really it takes one step to burn. Three steps to convert protected AAC into an unprotected MP3/OGG/Whatever. That is, unless you just hijack the audiostream and put it straight into a WAV or whatever. Which is ultimately the problem with DRM anyways. If you can actually listen to the music, then it will be possible to copy it to some unprotected format and distribute it.

--
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
Re:the last line says it all by d34thm0nk3y · 2003-10-23 10:55 · Score: 1

agh...yeah...you got me. The main point ..kinda.. remains.
Re:the last line says it all by gordgekko · 2003-10-23 10:56 · Score: 1

Too little, too late.

--
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Re:the last line says it all by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 11:11 · Score: 0

what are you talking about? it hasn't even been a week and the option was already there, it also offers several different ways to import the library, rather then convert it. is it apple's fault you didn't RTFM?
Re:the last line says it all by woozlewuzzle · 2003-10-23 12:47 · Score: 1

OK, the issue is one of the following:

1. You are not a native english speaker. I recommend you don't insult people when you don't understand what they are saying. It makes you look like an idiot.

2. You are a native english speaker. You are an idiot.

My comparison to 45 RPM records (those were small, round platters of black material used to contain music, if you aren't familiar with them) was that technology from 30 years ago isn't even relevant anymore. The records I used to listen to, I no longer have. The player I used to utilize to play those records I no longer have. The tastes I had in music 30 years ago, I no longer have.

The concern that these AAC files will be a waste because you won't have an AAC player in 30 years, or 10 years is silly since, even with a player, the likelihood that you will still want to use them is slim. You can always store them on CD for long term storage (just buy CDs rated for long term storage). The music you know you will want for a long time - music that stands the test of time can still be purchased on *real* media (Basie, Beatles, Bach)

This is not unlike current media distribution on CD - the CD may have higher quality sound, but the majority of music on these CDs is horrible.

So Apple and others are giving you the chance to purchase just the songs you want, albeit at a lesser quality level (but still high enough for *most* listeners).

So yes, I don't see anything wrong with DRM (Apple's or otherwise). Right now the music industry has the right to control how their product is distributed. If their DRM efforts results in them losing money due to fan backlash, then they will either change or die. That's the way the market works. So far, based on the numbers of people buying this stuff, you anti-DRM fanboys are pretty much in the minority.

Personally, I don't buy music online and am unlikely to. I am old fashioned enough that, if I want something, I don't want to have my only copy in an ephemeral state (bits on a fragile hard drive). I'd rather buy the CD and rip a copy for conveniently listening on my MP3 player.

You also seem to forget that most kids buying this stuff have been brought up on instant gratification. They know nothing about saving for the future or recognizing these transient desires. They just gotta have it now. Apple, et al are feeding a market - it is what they are in business to do. Good for them.
Re:the last line says it all by gordgekko · 2003-10-23 16:17 · Score: 1

It's Apple's fault that it reorganized an entire partition on my hard drive without any advance notice.

--
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Re:the last line says it all by ryanvm · 2003-10-24 01:44 · Score: 1

Okay, so we all agree that the point I was making all along is correct: DRM results in an ultimately disposable product.

As soon as Apple decides it's had enough of the music biz, media player support for AAC files is going to wane, and shortly thereafter all these downloaded files become worthless.

Your other points are irrelevant. Yes - you can burn and rerip, but that's a lot of work for 1500 AAC files. Yes - you probably won't want to hear Justin Timberlake in 30 years. But the point remains - someday all your AAC files are going to be worth $0.
Re:the last line says it all by jr87 · 2003-10-26 03:24 · Score: 1

everything will eventually be worthless those cd's will get lost, scratched, records scratched, lost, or in one interesting case melted... I don't see your point still. I guess some things will last longer then others but it still loses value over time. mmmmm.entropy.....

Unfortunately... by Lidless+Eye · 2003-10-23 04:15 · Score: 0, Troll

None of them are as good as just buying the damn(hopefully non-copy protected) CD's and ripping them yourself. (Hopefully with the good, sweet, cleanness of Ogg Vorbis). Fuck DRM.

Re:Unfortunately... by MaximumBob · 2003-10-23 04:28 · Score: 0

Actually, that really depends on what you're looking for. If you're not concerned about DRM, or you want instant gratification, or you'd rather pay 99 cents for a single track rather than $14 for an entire album, maybe downloading IS the way to go.
Re:Unfortunately... by Oculus+Habent · 2003-10-23 04:31 · Score: 1

With the exception of the ability to rip into Ogg Vorbis, iTunes is probably the best choice for this in Windows. It's abilities as a jukebox are well-established and it's interface was not cluttered or damaged by the addition of a music store (like MusicMatch). You can rip to AAC, which isn't free (as in libre) like Vorbis, but at least sounds better than MP3.
However, I'm sure plenty of people will disagree.

--
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Re: Unfortunately... by jjh37997 · 2003-10-23 04:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

None of them are as good as just buying the damn(hopefully non-copy protected) CD's and ripping them yourself. (Hopefully with the good, sweet, cleanness of Ogg Vorbis). Fuck DRM

Yeah because I love having to buy a whole CD when I just want one song for $12! I don't know about you but I'd prefer to spend that money on 12 individual songs that I actually want and burn those songs to a CD then buy 12 separate CD.
Re:Unfortunately... by mtfbwy · 2003-10-23 04:36 · Score: 1

What is it with all of you Ogg Vorbis fanatics? Unfortunately, my iPod and my set-top player only like AAC or MP3. Does anyone make a portable Ogg player?
Re:Unfortunately... by falcon5768 · 2003-10-23 04:36 · Score: 1

and the Ogg suport is only a temporary setback, once someone writes a plug -in for quicktime on the PC you will be able to bask in the same Ogg goodness the Mac users can

--
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Re:Unfortunately... by Yunzil · 2003-10-23 04:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

Except you just paid $17 for 1 or 2 good tracks, a couple that are so-so and nine that are garbage.
Re:Unfortunately... by Raunch · 2003-10-23 04:41 · Score: 1

Yet even more unfortunately, purchasing anything from a major music label makes me feel really really dirty anymore. I have stopped buying CD's altogether.
Before you ask, no I have not replaced my CD purchasing with mp3 downloading, from itunes or anywhere else. I have a moderately large (if now aged a bit)collection of CD's that have all long since been transfered to a RAIDed 60Gb file server.

--
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
Re: Unfortunately... by TwistedSquare · 2003-10-23 04:54 · Score: 1

Depends if you're an albums or a singles man I guess :)
Re:Unfortunately... by mahdi13 · 2003-10-23 04:54 · Score: 1

Then the "artist" you purchased sucks and will have a crappy follow up album if at all.
Seriously, if there are only a couple 'good songs' on an album that tells you something about the person/people that made it and their future...

Fighting to stifle one-hit-wonders before they happen!

--
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Re:Unfortunately... by Oculus+Habent · 2003-10-23 04:58 · Score: 1

But iTunes doesn't rip Ogg Vorbis, even on Mac, or did I miss something? Sure, you can rip it with another program, but that takes away from the integrated iTunes experience. You also can't play Ogg Vorbis on the iPod. It doesn't seem like it should be too difficult an option to add...

--
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Re:Unfortunately... by Paul+d'Aoust · 2003-10-23 05:06 · Score: 1

Rio Audio makes a player that support Ogg. I can only find one, but I could swear they made more than that.

--
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Re: Unfortunately... by zerocool^ · 2003-10-23 05:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

I love having to buy a whole CD when I just want one song for $12!

Just to make sure, does every one know why this is a problem?

The big record lables, in conjunction with the RIAA, MTV, Clear Channel, et. al. etc, market a product which DOES NOT EXIST!

They market the one or two good songs on the CD. However, they make no product by which you can purchase the one or two good songs. It's like marketing a wheel and requiring you to purchase a car in order to get it.

I know that, technically, there are CD singles, but they're hard as crap to find, they're still $5, and most of them are import bootlegs.

~Will

--
sig?
Re:Unfortunately... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:16 · Score: 0

Neuros.

Drastic price cuts before their next product offering. Right now 128CF/20GB HD unit costs $229US. It _will_ play ogg. Download the latest beta firmware and you are off and running.

They have desktop management software for Linux. In fact, their desktop management software is opensource. They have indicated that the firmware will be open source as well.

I just got mine last night. Pretty sweet little unit. The biggest thing I like about it is the FM transmitter built in. Can listen to my oggs/mp3's over my car radio with no fangled wires!

http://www.neurosaudio.com

Get it. Play it. Develop it.
Re:Unfortunately... by dasmegabyte · 2003-10-23 05:18 · Score: 1, Redundant

Right, but when you buy a CD you have the ability to rip to AAC, WMA, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc. That's a lot of flexibility for $15. AAC at 128 is good, but you can hear the difference at AAC 192, and I'd rather err on the side of my ears. Plus I can use the tracks I rip in as many of my monthly mix cds as I like. This is assuming that you aren't buying some "copyright protected" pop CD. But of course, if you make that assumption you kind of also assume that more than 2 tracks will be good.

Numbers to prove this last statement (generated by checking the track count of an automatic playlist made by adding anything with a 3 star rating that was purchased in 2003 or 2002):
Of the cds I've bought in the past year, 87% of the tracks have been well worth it. Then again, only a few of these albums were really popular...the big three were the last Queens of the Stone Age record (at 100% because i am such a Mark Lanegan fan), Audioslave (which offsets the average with only 6 tracks marked as three star or better) and the new Radiohead (100%).

So anyway, assuming 13 tracks, a CD costs about $1.50 per good track. That is 50% more than the files at 128 kbit AAC...so you make the call, flexibility or value?

Oh, and if you're one of these cats who goes online to find JUST the radio song and never even really listens to the rest of the album...maybe you should step back and ask yourself what you're really looking for out of music. There's more to sound than just pop hooks and clever choruses, you know, and if there weren't we would still be playing Bluegrass.

--
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Re:Unfortunately... by EricWright · 2003-10-23 05:25 · Score: 1

... and? If you like a song, you like a song. It doesn't matter if you think everything else someone has done is crap. The fact of the matter is that you LIKE THAT SONG. Downloadable music for $0.99/track a) avoids paying $12-17 for a whole album, b) gets you the song you actually like, and c) is legal.

For instance, as a general rule, I loath hip-hop/rap/r&b/etc. but every once in a while (like, say, every 5 years) a song comes along that I really like. Now I can pay $0.99 for it an go merrily on my way.

Try spending less time in your sheltered little black and white world. There's a wealth of shades of gray out here!
Re:Unfortunately... by falcon5768 · 2003-10-23 05:30 · Score: 1

no I know there is a way to rip to Ogg in iTunes, it was posted here over the summer (least last time I saw it on slashdot)
but yes the iPod non-support is a bit of a annoyance, It would be nice if someone hacked the firmware to allow it to support it (and maybe DRM .wav files ) but until that time its only really usefull on your computer and the one or two players that actually play them.

--
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Re:Unfortunately... by ncc74656 · 2003-10-23 05:42 · Score: 1

What is it with all of you Ogg Vorbis fanatics? Unfortunately, my iPod and my set-top player only like AAC or MP3. Does anyone make a portable Ogg player?

AeroPlayer actually supported Ogg Vorbis before it supported MP3.

--
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Re:Unfortunately... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:47 · Score: 0

Neuros.

Great Price. Great Sound. Open Source.

http://www.neurosaudio.com
Re:Unfortunately... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 05:49 · Score: 1

But when it happens that an artist (And I use that term loosely here) puts out one track you like on a otherwise horrbile album, chances are you'll hear it enough times to thuroughly tire of it soon. That's what happens to me. If I find that I don't like the album something is on, I don't think it's worth my investment. Sure cry me a river is a decent song, but I gurantee I won't feel the need to listen to it a month from now. Would you ask to just buy one scene of a DVD and expect a discount?

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:Unfortunately... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:52 · Score: 0

Why don't you just buy albums from more talented artists then?
Re:Unfortunately... by Telepathetic+Man · 2003-10-23 06:27 · Score: 1

Oh, and if you're one of these cats who goes online to find JUST the radio song and never even really listens to the rest of the album...maybe you should step back and ask yourself what you're really looking for out of music.

Or maybe just go buy a greatest hits CD instead.

--
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Re:Unfortunately... by mahdi13 · 2003-10-23 06:32 · Score: 1

Would you ask to just buy one scene of a DVD and expect a discount?

Isn't that what porn is? One scene cut from a terrible movie to save you the torture and get right to the good part? =)
Dang, I just killed my own argument!

--
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Re: Unfortunately... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:40 · Score: 1

The solution to this is easy. By music from artists who care enough to put out a quality album. They're not hard to find if you look.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:Unfortunately... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:44 · Score: 1

Call me old fashioned, but I get a kick out of whole porn movies too :) I love the movie Latex!

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re: Unfortunately... by GospelHead821 · 2003-10-23 07:34 · Score: 1

Thank you, sir, for making this point. For the longest time, all I saw around Slashdot were complaints that you have to buy an entire CD to get the one or two songs you wanted, but that if there were a legal means of getting burned CD's for $1.00 per track, people would be all over it, like white on rice. Now that said legal means is available, people are complaining that it's easier/more effective to buy the CD's and rip their own tracks. If, for one, fully intend to get myself ITunes, once I can get some broadband action going. I might even buy an IPod to take full advantage of it.

--
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Re:Unfortunately... by homer_ca · 2003-10-23 07:52 · Score: 1

PocketOGG or Winampaq on a PocketPC work great. Prices are down to $200 now for low end models (or less for refurb). A CF or SD card will be about $50-70 for 256MB. $250 is getting up to iPod territory so value for your money isn't the best, but you do get a PDA too.
Re:Unfortunately... by laird · 2003-10-23 08:15 · Score: 1

My understanding is that iTunes will RIP and play any format supported by QuickTime. QuickTime is extensible, so there are Ogg Vorbis and DivX codec's packaged for QT, for example.

Of course, you still can't play Ogg Vorbis on the iPod. But perhaps some day...

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:Unfortunately... by whatch+durrin · 2003-10-23 09:13 · Score: 1

That is 50% more than the files at 128 kbit AAC...so you make the call, flexibility or value?
I jumped on the iTunes bandwagon last night and downloaded an album. The music I purchased is filled with rich guitar and a wealth of higher frequency sounds. It sounded ok playing from my PC, so I burned it to CD and listened to it on the way to work.
It sucked. To me, it sounded just slightly better than a 128 kbps mp3. Cymbals would sound washed out at times and the rich guitar that was supposed to be there just didn't cut it. Also, the volume level was extremely low.
I'm guessing there are some settings I can tweak, but I have some doubt as to the quality aspect. Anyone else have a similar experience?

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***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Re:Unfortunately... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 11:35 · Score: 0

Yeah. If you buy neapolitan ice cream and only eat the chocolate you're paying for 3 times as much ice cream as you're using! Or, you know, you could just buy some fucking chocolate ice cream.
Re: Unfortunately... by turgid · 2003-11-01 07:32 · Score: 1

...and if you like Billy Corgan, you sometimes get 7 (different) sings on the CD single, and it only costs 3.99 or whatever :-)

--
Stick Men

What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by corebreech · 2003-10-23 04:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

To my mind this is by far the superior service. I get to listen to anything I want as often as I want for ten bucks a month ('cept for the Beatles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Elton John's Blue Moves.)

The only downside appearas to be that I can't take the music on the go, unless I pay 70(?) cents to burn a track, but since I'm a shut-in who's always sitting in front of his computer anyways, what's the diff?

--
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?

Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Basehart · 2003-10-23 04:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

If you have no real reason to burn tracks to a CD why don't you use iTunes to listen to one of the many free radio stations, and save yourself $10 a month?
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by illumin8 · 2003-10-23 04:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

To my mind this is by far the superior service. I get to listen to anything I want as often as I want for ten bucks a month ('cept for the Beatles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Elton John's Blue Moves.)

What about the 99.99% of people that want to own their music and not "rent" it? I don't want to worry that the music I've paid $10 a month for 10 years will all of a sudden be gone if Rhapsody goes belly up. Over time those monthly fees add up and most people want to keep their music.

You can have your "music rental" service. I'll stick with a service like Apple's that lets me own the music I buy.

--
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:19 · Score: 0

You sit in front of the PC all day ? Like, day after day after day... jesus, how do you get an exercise, or meet people, or take a walk in a park , or like, you know, get a life ?
No offence, just curious.

I download my wma's from musicmatch at 99centys a piece, then convert them to MP3 ( yes you can do that, use Advanced Encoder Decoder - no hassles ), then transfer them to Audiovox & take them to the gym. In the past 1 week, I have run 30 miles on the elliptical. One day, I ran 19 miles nonstop - the songs were so good I just forgot about my aching glutes.

See that's an example of how you combine your life and your music - not by chaining yourself to the PC like a slave in Lincoln's cottonpicking era, or these Indian H1B slave code-coolies who've taken over my work and sit in front of the PC all day long. Fat slobs.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by dreamchaser · 2003-10-23 05:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

You obviously missed the part about him being a shut in. Unless he misused the term, it usually refers to people who CAN'T just go out due to one sort of (usually physical) disability or another.

Whatever works for you, I say. I try not to tell anyone to 'get a life', because I realised a long time ago that everyone marches to a slightly different beat than everyone else. If this guy likes to pay $10/month to listen to music, and doesn't need to burn any tracks, who are any of us to judge?
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by nate+nice · 2003-10-23 05:30 · Score: 1

You can get software that will record ay sound sent into your soundcard. This way you get your music and they are none the wiser. :)

--
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Alan · 2003-10-23 05:42 · Score: 1

This is a workaround, not a solution.... also IIRC the quality of music captured through the soundcard sucks compared to an actual digital copy of it.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:50 · Score: 0

If I wanted to pay $10/month for music, I'd get a satellite radio subscription.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Saeger · 2003-10-23 05:56 · Score: 1

Hmm, and here I thought most shut-ins had social phobias, like I do, but not to the point of being a shut-in.
I realised a long time ago that everyone marches to a slightly different beat than everyone else.
But if you march to the beat of the extroverted mainstream, that's license to mock.
--

--
Power to the Peaceful
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by BigOTeeToe · 2003-10-23 05:56 · Score: 2, Informative

I also am a huge fan / customer of Rhapsody. I also tried out iTunes when it came out, and it doesn't look like there is any way to build playlists or play tracks "on demand" as I can with Rhapsody. Also, Rhapsody has superior radio stations, and I can build custom radio stations based on entering a sampling of artists. Perhaps iTunes has these features, but I am not aware of them.
Another thing Rhapsody does it create a featured playlist / mix each weeek on the main page.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by sirshannon · 2003-10-23 06:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

because, for example, last night, when I went to bed, I wanted to hear Christoper O'Rielly's True Love Waits CD. Then, when I got up, I decided to play the entire new Outkast CD set, then a few Slick Rick songs. All on demand, almost no buffering time (2-3 seconds, tops) and higher quality than 99% of Kazaa downloads (I have compared) and the iTunes radio stations (which are lower quality and not on-demand).

How much would it cost me to listen to high quality full song versions of Nora Jone's CD on iTunes and decide I didn't want to buy it today? It cost me nothing on Rhapsody (I've gotten my $10 worth this month by far), and when I give it a second chance next week, it will still have cost me nothing. Some of my favorite CDs are ones that I hated on first listen, sometimes second listen. Listening to a few 30 second samples of songs will not allow me to make up my mind for good music, Rhapsody does.

--
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:15 · Score: 0

"lat night, when I went to bed, I wanted to hear Christopher O'Rielly's True Love Waits CD"

Homo
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:31 · Score: 0

Homo

Puritan
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:36 · Score: 0

You seriously need to take a look back at iTunes.

Not only can you make playlist, but it also has smart playlist that it can make itself, based up your rating, number of times a song is played, genre, etc, etc...
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Ricwot · 2003-10-23 06:47 · Score: 1

communist
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:55 · Score: 0

Just FYI- one of the things that palladium does is create secure memory allocations that cannot be accessed by other applications or even other hardware (and this is enforced by chipset modifications). This can be used to create a secure "path" from your music software to the soundcard, so no digital copies could be made by 3rd party software that do what you describe.

Of course, palladium does not prevent you from holding a microphone in front of your speakers to make an analog copy.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by gregholt · 2003-10-23 06:57 · Score: 1

Why? So you can listen to their playlists instead of your own? So you can listen to the commercials on most stations when it has been advertised as commercial free? So you can have no interaction with the music source?

I think the $10 for Rhapsody goes much farther; assuming you are a shut-in like this poster states. Admittedly, Rhapsody does not tune in the car well.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by RestiffBard · 2003-10-23 07:01 · Score: 1

Not being a jackass Mac zealot (normally I am), but am I misinformed regarding listen.com policy that if you end your subscription you won't be able to listen to that music you've paid for? I could be right or wrong, I seek clarification.

--
- /* dead coders leave no comments */
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by BigOTeeToe · 2003-10-23 07:11 · Score: 2, Interesting

I just tried this. It looks like it can only create playlists for mp3s that I imported into the iTunes library. Is there a way to create playlists for music that I have not purchased or ripped myself?

If so, then I would consider switching from Rhapsody.

To me, it is worth $10 / month to be able to make playlists of (almost) the entire Rhapsody library and not have to pay $1 for every song. I probably listen to about 500 songs per month, 80% of which I probably won't ever listen to after 6 months.

Also the custom radio station is more appealing to me, so if I enter Wilco, Flaming Lips, Cursive, etc... I get to hear songs by them along with similar sounding bands (not just the bans I etnered). I also do not need to buy the songs by these artists or import their music files. It looks like in iTunes I can only listen to pre-defined radio station streams.

If iTunes has these capabilites, would somebody be kind enough to explain how? I would be quite grateful.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by sirshannon · 2003-10-23 07:17 · Score: 1

you're correct, just like if you stop paying your ISP bill, you don't get to surf Slashdot anymore and if you don't pay your cable bill you don't get to watch MTV and if you stop paying rent, you don't get to hang out in that house anymore.

They do have a "burn to CD" option, 79 cents per song. I tried it just to see if it actually worked (it did) but I don't see myself using it at all. I have no need for a CD of music, I don't even own a CD player except for the CD-RWs in my computers and my DVD player.

This isn't the case with many (most?) people, but storing music was a pain in my azz. My normal listening habit was to rip songs I wanted to hear, listen until they bored me (weeks, months, depending on the songs), then delete to make room for others.

--
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by RestiffBard · 2003-10-23 07:49 · Score: 1

Ok. Do they have an option for putting the music on an mp3 player, iPod or what have you? That's what I do. I buy my songs put them on my iPod and then lisen to them all the time.

Different strokes for different folks I just don't see the subscription idea being as attractive. Not for me that is.

--
- /* dead coders leave no comments */
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:53 · Score: 0

This is deeply offensive to me.

Clearly, just because a guy has no legs or is retarded is no reason to make fun of him to his face.

A truly polite and open minded person would simply make fun of him behind his back.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by ShavenYak · 2003-10-23 08:03 · Score: 1

Of course, palladium does not prevent you from holding a microphone in front of your speakers to make an analog copy.

No, that will be in the next version, Palladium Xtreme.

--

Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Eponymous,+Showered · 2003-10-23 08:14 · Score: 1

I'm pleased to know that I'm in the 0.01% of people. We're an elite clique of 600,000 worldwide.

I'm tired of "owning" music. I have about 500 CDs. That's about 5000 too few. There's just too much good music out there. When I buy a CD, I have to take the time to go to (the store|Amazon), get it (home|in the mail), rip it, classify it by genre, get the album art from (Amazon|AllMusic), sync it to my Lyra, etc, etc. Plus I'm out $10-20. Rhapsody, I find the album I want to hear, I click on it, I listen. 70-80% of my searches have been successful so far. Ten bucks a month.

If I can't listen to it in 10 years, who cares? I'll sign up for something else or just go back to buying CDs. I just signed up for Rhapsody today to get easy access to a bunch of Umphrey's McGee live shows. I think I may be sticking around.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by sirshannon · 2003-10-23 08:15 · Score: 1

putting songs from Rhapsody onto an iPod is the same as putting songs from iTunes onto every portable music player other than the iPod: buy, burn and rip. I don't have a portable music player so this isn't an issue with me.

I don't think the subscription model is ideal for most people. I talk about Rhapsody with my friends but I have yet to recommend any other them join. I don't pay for cable unlike most of my friends, so I have that disposable entertainment income. I also listen to more music than most of my friends, so buying songs at $1 a pop would leave me with a few full hard drives and an empty bank account.

--
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Ohreally_factor · 2003-10-23 08:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sounds like you've found a good solution for your needs. More power to you!

I'm one of those frothing-at-the-mouth mindless Steve Jobs worshipping fanatics, and I'd *HATE* it if iTunes were the only solution. It won't be a one-size-fits-all world until they erase our individuality.

--
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Ohreally_factor · 2003-10-23 08:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Just curious, but where did you get your figure of 99.99%? iTunes is my personal choice, and I think it's a great solution (maybe even the best solution for now) for a great many people, but their is room for other models. No need to pull numbers out of your ass, as it makes you look stupid, rather than proving your point.

--
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by FinalCut · 2003-10-23 08:33 · Score: 1

what songs do you have that you are trying to add to a playlist that you can't with iTunes? Im not sure I really follow what your asking for? I imported all 4400 songs that I have in one music format or another into my library and can make playlists out of all of them. Sure they have to be in your iTunes library but what exactly is wrong with that? It seems like a simple enough requirement considering you have to build your playlist from some source don't you? I didn't personally rip all 4400+ songs into mp3 format or whatever, but I have all of the files and iTunes doesn't care what machine I created them on, where I got them from, or how I put them on my computer/ipod/whatever. Please explain a bit more so maybe someone here can help.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by corebreech · 2003-10-23 10:05 · Score: 1

what songs do you have that you are trying to add to a playlist that you can't with iTunes?

Songs you haven't explicitly purchased.

With iTunes, I can only listen to music I've actually bought.

With Rhapsody, I can listen to any song in their entire collection as many times as I want.

This is very appealing if you want to sample other genres, bands, etc. Doing it the iTunes way means I have to spend a buck on a song I might not like. With Rhapsody, I'm only out the four or five minutes it took to listen to the song.

It's amazing how much broader your musical tastes become when you're free to listen to music without having to explicitly pay for each title. Like when Johnny Cash died... I was never really introduced to his music, but Rhapsody had him as a featured artist on their main page and so I listened to a few tunes. If it were iTunes, I'd have had to pay for those tunes, and I probably wouldn't have done it.

It's a very nice service. I don't have to worry about Apple pulling a switcheroo with their media formats or their licensing, something I guarantee you will happen when the company goes into "maximizing shareholder's value" mode.

--
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by corebreech · 2003-10-23 10:15 · Score: 1

I was kidding when I called myself a shut-in.

The point was that I spend enormous quantities of time in front of the computer.

Sure I go out. The places I go may have their own music, or it may be an activity where music isn't appropriate, or, and this will probably offend you, but maybe I don't need to be listening to music 24/7.

In fact, I find people who do that to have serious problems with mental hygiene... unable to occupy their thoughts without constantly dosing themselves with external stimuli. It's almost kind of sad, when you think about it.

--
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 10:29 · Score: 0

You can make an exact copy of the digital file by playing it through a sound card, simply switch the recording option to wave and your set. You can record at any bit rate. Of course, that's with Windows. I'm sure you can do it with other platforms but I've never tried.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 11:10 · Score: 0

You both are discussing two different things... one of you wants an on demand online jukebox(rhapsody),. one is listening to locally stored music (either purchased from itunes or obtained otherwise). I don't think the rhapsody guy understands what itunes is. Itunes is a media player, with also a link to their online music store where you can add items to your library. Clearly havent used itunes 6+ months ago when the music store didnt exist. think a superior winamp on crack, then add a link to a music store it. not complicated.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 13:44 · Score: 0

Why don't you just listen to "authentic" radiohead instead of O'Rielly's Elevator Muzak, downgraded version of the same songs?
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 14:31 · Score: 0

Also, Magnatune was not reviewed.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by whereiswaldo · 2003-10-23 16:09 · Score: 1

I'm tired of "owning" music. I have about 500 CDs. That's about 5000 too few. There's just too much good music out there.

That's a good point - I hadn't thought of music that way before. If I could pay a nickel every time I listened to a song, that just might be worth it. Considering singles are about $8 a piece and I end up listening to the song maybe 5 or ten more times before it goes on the shelf for awhile.

But still, if I shop around I can pay $5 for an entire album with 20 songs on it. Sounds like a good deal to me, and makes renting music a little harder to justify.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by sirshannon · 2003-10-23 20:24 · Score: 1

I guess you missed the "I wanted to hear" part of the sentence.

--
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by TPFH · 2003-10-27 19:50 · Score: 1

No, that will be in the next version, Palladium Xtreme.

In that version your music will be interrupted every 10 seconds by someone screaming "This Music is XTREME!"

It will be a little distracting when trying to listen to JS Bach or Chopin, but I'm sure you'll get used to it.

--
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
Re:What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-29 13:06 · Score: 0

you're an idiot

Napster? by joealvarez · 2003-10-23 04:16 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Seriously, in the age of Kazaa and other free P2P does anyone actually still use Napster? I mean really now... anyone?

Re:Napster? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:21 · Score: 0

Of course not, you fucktard. All their servers are gone-go-byebye for about 3000000 years now.

And for those outside the US? by KludgeGrrl · 2003-10-23 04:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yet this discussion completely sidesteps one of the aspects of Napster (1) and the like -- that they were international. From almost anywhere in the world (assuming internet access) you could get music, that was itself from all over the world.

Re:And for those outside the US? by Dark+Paladin · 2003-10-23 04:37 · Score: 1

"Were" international.

Now? I honestly have no clue - so I'd say "current" Napster and current iTunes/Musicmatch are all on the same footing that way.

Though I read that Apple is working on Canada.

--
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Re:And for those outside the US? by illumin8 · 2003-10-23 04:45 · Score: 1

Yet this discussion completely sidesteps one of the aspects of Napster (1) and the like -- that they were international. From almost anywhere in the world (assuming internet access) you could get music, that was itself from all over the world.

When Napster 2.0 is released I'm sure you'll find that it is only available to people in the US. There are way too many small record companies that have exclusive distribution rights in foreign countries to negotiate contracts with. It will be quite some time (years, possibly) before any of the online music services offer a ubiquitous international service that is available anywhere.

--
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Re:And for those outside the US? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:46 · Score: 0

>> Though I read that Apple is working on Canada.

So is Napster.

- roxio employee
Re:And for those outside the US? by anagama · 2003-10-23 04:49 · Score: 1

And for those inside the US ... these pay systems just localize music.

I used Napster to listen to things we don't get here. It was fun trying to search out music from the rest of the world. Sometimes I found really interesting music I would NEVER have heard on the radio, or found in even the most ecclectic music stores here.

The problem with the current music downloading incarnations, is that they take the ability to share ideas and place control right back into the hands of the people that are producing the current load of pap called pop music. Now, if all a person is interested in is the Beatles or Brittany, the pay sites are going to be cool. But since the RIAA rampage, I feel a certain level of trepidation even using gnutella to search out the international bits that can be so interesting.

--
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Re:And for those outside the US? by KludgeGrrl · 2003-10-23 05:08 · Score: 1

Though I read that Apple is working on Canada.

But as of this post one still cannot buy itunes here....

Realistically, Canada will probably gain the service eventually since trade relations tend to be pretty close, but what about the rest of the planet?
Re:And for those outside the US? by Saeger · 2003-10-23 05:39 · Score: 1

Another major reason I think the payservices aren't international yet -- besides issues of exclusive distribution deals, tax & legal headaches, higher fees, more CC fraud, etc -- is that it will be too obvious when they try to maximize their profit by charging poor countries less and restrict resale to richer countries (DRM region coding).
If Ethiopians could buy an mp3 track for only 7 grains of rice(!), and there were no digital trade barriers in place, they could resell it to fat Americans for 1,931,375 grains of rice, and, well, that's not the corporate definition of globalism.
--

--
Power to the Peaceful
Re:And for those outside the US? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:02 · Score: 0

How is music files different than chinese buying $1000 software off the street for $1? They already cant sell it back to the USA because of EULA licences and ebay not letting them.
Re:And for those outside the US? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:05 · Score: 0

you dont have the right share my ideas linux hippie.
Re:And for those outside the US? by Ricwot · 2003-10-23 06:58 · Score: 1

But what about my good nation

We're British don't you know
Re:And for those outside the US? by Eponymous,+Showered · 2003-10-23 08:20 · Score: 2, Informative

iTunes is actively courting indie labels. Check out cdbaby.com/dd for an example.
Re:And for those outside the US? by cweber · 2003-10-23 09:27 · Score: 1

The reason none of these providers is international (yet) is that music royalties are organized and paid in even more byzantine ways than recording contracts. Each country pretty much has their own agency/organization/whatever, and some have more than one (the US has three to my knowledge). Cutting through all that red tape (this is commercial, not government, for a change) is very, very hard. Read up about some of this stuff at Jamie Zawinski's DNA Lounge.

- Christoph
Re:And for those outside the US? by anagama · 2003-10-23 13:54 · Score: 1

Even so, it will be a long time before you can sample music from Kahzakstan on itunes.

--
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Re:And for those outside the US? by glyneth · 2003-10-24 01:49 · Score: 1

Interesting to note...

All you need to purchase iTunes music is a credit card with a US billing address. I had a friend who was in Britain for school, but his parents lived in the US. He was (and still is, now that he's in China) able to buy music from iTMS without problems.

Well, except for the Great Wall issues now.

134 by computerme · 2003-10-23 04:18 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've purchased 134 songs so far from itunes. Every time I have purchased songs from them the download has been fast(i am on a DSL) and the quality is amazing..Selection is great but i wish they more stuff from the 80's.

Now with books and personal playlists and gift certs, they have made it even better...

the best part is that the artists get their share...whether you agree its a fair share is a different matter since apple did not write the contracts between the record companies and the artists...

I will tell you this though... whatever they are getting from itunes is way more then they are getting from Kazaa downloads...

Re:134 by Basehart · 2003-10-23 04:28 · Score: 1

You want more from the 80's huh? I noticed yesterday that the entire Beggars Banquet catalog appeared on the iTunes store this week, lots of 80's stuff in there, including my band The Bolshoi. Needless to say I'm liking that!
Re:134 by computerme · 2003-10-23 04:30 · Score: 1

whooooh thanks! i will check it out...
Re:134 by cgranade · 2003-10-23 04:49 · Score: 1

I will tell you this though... whatever they are getting from itunes is way more then they are getting from Kazaa downloads...
Maybe... RIAA fleeces the artists with all sorts of "even if you sell 2 million copies, you still owe us your souls" deals, and I see no reason why they couldn't extend that to the Internet. Note that I don't say that they should, but merely that they could. Under that case, since the distro costs online are set by the number sold, it is plausible to think that the artists may be getting nothing at all from iTMS. That said, I do think that iTMS offers the potential for better treatement of artists. They already have some indie artists listed under their own contracts, and are seeming to want more. Remember, Apple's slogan is "think different," so it's not implausible that they would want to leverage their market share to start driving the market away from RIAA-controlled products. Better for Apple, better for the artists. Worse for RIAA. Good with me.

--
#define DRM chmod 000
Re:134 by larry+bagina · 2003-10-23 04:50 · Score: 3, Informative

This is slashdot, where being accused of violating the GPL is punishable by death, but violating the microsoft EULA is your civic duty, so it's the justification of p2p file sharing services isn't surprising.
Ignoring the legal issues, iTunes (and the other services) do have advantages. iTMS provides a large selection of music, consistent quality, fast downloads, and 30-second previews. p2p is generally a wasteland of mislabled files, corrupted downloads, poor encoding, audio glitches, and slow download times, if you can even find what you're looking for. There are some specialized cases where p2p or binary newsgroups are better (bootlegs, studio outtakes, live recordings, etc), but for commercial music, iTunes, musicmatch, etc. offer a more user-friendly experience.

--
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Re:134 by floatinghead · 2003-10-23 05:53 · Score: 1

I will tell you this though... whatever they are getting from itunes is way more then they are getting from Kazaa downloads...
Let's say you were a Kazaa user and when you downloaded a song a link appeared that took you to a site where you could make a voluntary donation. The site clearly displayed how your money would be distributed between the interested parties. Assuming the issues of micropayments and privacy could be worked out, would you see yourself voluntarily separating yourself from some of your green for songs you reeeaeally liked? I wonder how such a system if widely adopted would change the conversations and court cases we are seeing today?
Re:134 by rjamestaylor · 2003-10-23 06:12 · Score: 1

I've been listening to the radio feature of iTunes -- very nice. Better than Windows Mangled Audio. Almost bought some Willie Nelson the other night, but was rescued by losing consciousness (up late for the past week...the mind reels...)

--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Re:134 by Winterblink · 2003-10-23 06:38 · Score: 1

The artists get their share? I'm sure they do, but how much of that $0.99 pie goes to them? A certain percentage goes to the credit card companies, some to Apple, some to the RIAA (if you think they're not getting anything out of it think again), and then the artist gets some. And I'd be surprised if their share of that pie was anything but a very tiny slice.

--
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Re:134 by poot_rootbeer · 2003-10-23 07:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

the best part is that the artists get their share...whether you agree its a fair share is a different matter since apple did not write the contracts between the record companies and the artists...

IANA music industry contract L, but I would guess few if any extant artist/label contracts specify that income from on-line digital music sales channels is to be distributed to the artists.

Keep in mind, artists who get 5 cents per album when you buy their CD at Sam Goody get zero cents when you get the same album from Columbia House record club...
Re:134 by bogie · 2003-10-23 09:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

Excellant point, but as the author smartly pointed out what's better .01 per song for the artist or .00 because they downloaded from Kazaa? You can't expect a consumer to buy their music from some other means say CD's so that the artist makes more.

--
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Re:134 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 10:12 · Score: 0

I don't have any problem with people who support the GPL over the Microsoft EULA. Besides the fact that one is a permissive license, which lets you do things, and the other is supposedly a "contract" that keeps you from doing things, I happen to prefer the terms of the GPL over the terms of the EULA (whatever they are this week).

Since they they are covered by two different sets of laws (GPL = copyright law, EULA = contract law), I support the GPL and not the EULA.

So comparing the GPL to the EULA is like comparing the speed limit laws to the vehicular homicide laws, they both involve cars, and sometimes one overlaps the other in court trials, but otherwise are only similar on first glance from an uninformed reader.

And this has nothing to do with P2P anyway. :-) I'm just glad I did all my illegal song swapping on tapes when I was a kid and avoided this mess. Now I buy my music from non-RIAA labels on CD and download from (legal) MP3 sites and I know the song swapping is a big reason why I love buying 10-12 CDs per month.
Re:134 by shark72 · 2003-10-23 10:44 · Score: 1

"A certain percentage goes to the credit card companies, some to Apple, some to the RIAA (if you think they're not getting anything out of it think again)"

For us slower people, can you please explain how the RIAA gets a percentage of each sale?

The record company (which fronted the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to produce the music) gets a sizeable chunk. That's how they recoup their costs -- by selling music. And, the record company may be a member of the RIAA, so the dues that the record company pays are derived from its income. But that's stretching it to the point of being misleading. Saying that the RIAA gets a percentage of each online music sale is like saying that the janitorial company that cleans the record company's office gets a percentage of each sale, as the record company pays them, too. You're stating it as if Apple pays a tithe to the RIAA for the benefit of existing, but that's not true.

--
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Re:134 by Kosi · 2003-10-23 11:40 · Score: 1

At least the artist has no debt to his record company if i d/l it via Kazaa or else. There are artists who sold 250K albums and their record company still wanted some 10K $ from them!
Re:134 by Winterblink · 2003-10-23 12:22 · Score: 1

Excellant point, but as the author smartly pointed out what's better .01 per song for the artist or .00 because they downloaded from Kazaa? You can't expect a consumer to buy their music from some other means say CD's so that the artist makes more.

You make an excellent point yourself, however I didn't imply at all that the artist shouldn't get what they're getting currently. I DO agree that something's better than nothing. :)

--
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Re:134 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 17:47 · Score: 0

Wow, there ARE people who just fell off the back of the turnip truck.

Please allow me a moment to prepare myself the severe face-laughing-in I am about to deliver.

Okay, I'm ready:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HA!

What a rube. I wonder what the artist would do with the 34 cents collected from such a system??

No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't know about anyone else, but personally, I'm not using one of these things until they stop putting restrictions on the file usage. As far as I'm concerned, once I buy something, it is *mine*, and I won't pay money for a production which the ex-owners are still attempting to control by proxy.

Yes, I know the restrictions can be gotten around by burning, and then ripping that, but that's not the point. It's a matter of principle. Companies everywhere keep trying to put restrictions on what we do with things we *own*, and that's just not right - economically, morally, or socially. It saddens me so many people are willing to accept the situation without question.

But in the meantime, I'll stick with services like Magnatune which don't try to control the content once it leaves their hands.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.

Re:No open formats yet... by 5.11Climber · 2003-10-23 04:24 · Score: 0

As far as I'm concerned, once I buy something, it is *mine*, and I won't pay money for a production which the ex-owners are still attempting to control by proxy.

You aren't buying the song, you just bought the right to listen to this particular embodiment of the song. The copyright to the song still resides with the artist/record company that produced the song

--
Arf!
Re:No open formats yet... by bpbond · 2003-10-23 04:26 · Score: 1

The question is not is it *yours* once bought, but is it *yours to copy* once bought?

And the argument (whether you agree with it or not) is that these two rights can no longer be conflated together, in an age of perfect and lossless copying.

--
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
Re:No open formats yet... by the_2nd_coming · 2003-10-23 04:26 · Score: 1

sweet!!!

while I can tell you now that your basicvly saying you will never buy from the major lables and other indi lables that agree with the majors lables, this service is nice...I will have to try it out and see how nice the music is though.

50% is a good deal for the musicians, I will be sure to let my firends know.

I will say taht out of all the music services listed inteh article, iTunes is the least restrictive and easiers to use.

--

I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:27 · Score: 1

Whoops. That should say "and I won't pay money for a product which the ex-owners are still attempting to control by proxy."
Stupid silly typo...

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 04:33 · Score: 1, Flamebait

I agree 100%

They are charging $1 per song. This is without manufacturing costs (albumn art, case and cd) and smaller distribution costs than a regular CD. This is with a lossy format instead of the higher quality original. And on top of this they are sticking DRM on there? Get real.

I want MP3's. That's what my SliMP3 understands and what I will use. I don't want to pay $1 for an inferior product either. Until songs hit 50 cents, and the DRM is gone, they are not going to see a real market explosion.

For some reason, corporations in this country seem to believe that they can tell the customer what to do, rather than the other way around.

When DirecTV or my cable company does something to tick me off, what can I do? I have no legal recourse; the government has seen to that. I do have an economic recourse however. I can choose to walk away. When enough people walk away, the company stops being quite so stupid.

Intuit learned their lesson with TurboTax. Cell phone companies actually have to listen to customer complaints because competition is so stiff. Eventually, the recording industry will catch on. Let's hope it comes sooner rather than later.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by mblase · 2003-10-23 04:33 · Score: 5, Funny

I don't know about anyone else, but personally, I'm not using one of these things until they stop putting restrictions on the file usage.

You know, when Steve Jobs announced that "Hell froze over" when iTunes for Windows was announced, he was just kidding.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:35 · Score: 3, Informative

but is it *yours to copy* once bought?
Both the Supreme Court and the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 say 'yes'. And, in fact, by the AHRA we pay for those copying rights whenever we buy blank audio CDs.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:37 · Score: 1

while I can tell you now that your basicvly saying you will never buy from the major lables and other indi lables
Well, yes. In the past 6 months, at least, I think I have purchased ONE album which came from a major American label. (Type O Negative's 'Life is Killing Me', and THAT was because of the permissive way they allowed MP3s online) Everything else HAS either been indie, European, or from legitimate online music store.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by mtfbwy · 2003-10-23 04:38 · Score: 2

Keep dreaming. You'll never get a completely open, downloadable music format. Besides, you don't own the rights to the music you purchase. The original copyright holder(s) do. You just purchase a license to listen to the music.
Re:No open formats yet... by Planesdragon · 2003-10-23 04:39 · Score: 1

and that's just not right - economically...

Actually, that's how it is right. Right now, online music sales are the cheapest (or nearly the cheapest) legal way to get most music. Part of the reason that the price is where it's at is the DRM, which helps alleviate the opportuniy cost of electronic downloads.

Unless RIAA's various stockholders pass a resolution compelling it, I don't want the recording industry thinking in moral or social terms--I want them thinking of simple economics.

If they start using moral or social thought, it'll become impossible to buy any music that isn't "Wal-Mart safe."
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:42 · Score: 1

Absolutely. At $1 per song, you're paying roughly the same price for an album as you would for it to be on CD, except that the audio quality is degraded and you don't (theoretically) have your copying\reuse rights you would from a physical disc.
Remember, while they may not enforce it, dumping a DRM'ed tune to CD, and then ripping the CD to MP3, constitutes a DMCA violation.
For some reason, corporations in this country seem to believe that they can tell the customer what to do, rather than the other way around.
Unfortunately, since they buy off Congress to get laws like the DMCA passed, and those laws DO control the consumers, that's defacto true. It's becoming a seriously distressing pattern - whenever the consumers do something the corporations don't like, instead of adjusting their business model to fit the new consumer demand, they just get the government to pass laws to force consumers to behave like they used to.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by jpoulos · 2003-10-23 04:44 · Score: 1

Y'know, 128K is *not* perfect or lossless.
Re:No open formats yet... by DdJ · 2003-10-23 04:46 · Score: 1

Remember, while they may not enforce it, dumping a DRM'ed tune to CD, and then ripping the CD to MP3, constitutes a DMCA violation.
Not with the iTunes music store, it doesn't. In this case, Apple negotiated explicitly so you would have the right to burn the track to CD an unlimited number of times and then treat it like you would any other CD. With iTMS, this is not a DMCA violation, it's more like a right you're explicitly granted.
Re:No open formats yet... by AstroDrabb · 2003-10-23 04:47 · Score: 1

According to Fair Use, it is ours to copy. The law just prevents distribution. So, all these companies using copy control is really depriving consumers of their Fair Use rights. This is one reason why I have not purchased music for about 5 or 6 years now and will continue to not purchase music. Hit the RIAA where it hurts them, in their wallet.

--
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:47 · Score: 1

Part of the reason that the price is where it's at is the DRM, which helps alleviate the opportuniy cost of electronic downloads.
Translation: Awwww, the poor RIAA is losing money to pirates! So I have a social obligation to accept restrictions on my Fair Use rights so that they can continue to enjoy the profits they've gotten all along!
No.
Piracy isn't my problem. It's theirs. If they're losing money because of a flawed business model, I don't care. I'm not going to buy crippled products because they think screwing the *rest* of their customers is the best way to stay profitable.
I don't want the recording industry thinking in moral or social terms--I want them thinking of simple economics.
Well, that IS the problem. They are only thinking of *simple* economics. With absolutely no regard to the future, or sustaining their business model past next quarter. They are destroying themselves with these policies, allowing them to get away with them only encourages them, and unless they recognize that in this new electronic age, their way of doing business is *fundamentally flawed*, they will only continue hastening their descent down the drain.
Ergo, by refusing to support people who do this, and instead giving my money to small European labels and online sites that respect my Fair Use rights, I'm using my consumer powers to prop up business models which I believe hold better potential for the future than the RIAA.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:49 · Score: 1

Ah, OK, that's slightly different. But it's annoying that now they have deign to grant you the rights which, legally, you already possess.
But still, w00t to Apple for being mildly progressive.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by laird · 2003-10-23 04:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

"but is it *yours to copy* once bought? ...
Both the Supreme Court and the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 say 'yes'"

Depends on what you mean by "yours to copy". You can copy music to another device to listen to it (e.g. RIP a CD to listen to on your PC or MP3 player). You can't (legally) make copies for friends (or strangers, come to think of it). When you buy a book, you have the right to use it any way you like; burn it, sell it, etc. But you don't have the right to make new copies of the book. The trick is that with digital media, "copying" went from being a difficult, expensive thing (set up your own printing press) to an easy, cheap thing (RIP and burn a CD, email a file, etc.). So in 1970 if you told someone "you bought that LP and you can do what you like with it" nobody would have thought that you could set up a record plant and publish copies of the record. But with a CD and a PC on the internet, you can effectively do just that. The hard part is figuring out what to do about it.

"by the AHRA we pay for those copying rights whenever we buy blank audio CDs"

In the US, no. In Canada, apparently so (for personal use only).

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:No open formats yet... by Bloodshot · 2003-10-23 04:50 · Score: 1

Very noble, but ignores the reality of the situation. If you want access to the widest possible source of music, those people who will give you access to that source will be putting restrictions on what you can do with that stuff.

Hey, I like Magnatune too but they are basically a fringe record label. No huge record label is EVER going to say "here, download this stuff of our pay-per-download site and do with it whatever you want." Because then there is nothing to stop you from setting up a site that competes with them.

It's not about being "willing to accept the situation" as you said, it's about getting what you want. People want to download the latest popular music and the vast majority of them don't want to give 100 copies to all their friends. They just want to listen to it on their computer at home and on their portable player.

Apple has figured this out, and it's driving iPod sales right now. The sad truth is that "principles" don't count for anything in a society that has put corporations that make money at the top of the food chain.
Re:No open formats yet... by Mononoke · 2003-10-23 04:51 · Score: 1

As far as I'm concerned, once I buy something, it is *mine*, and I won't pay money for a production which the ex-owners are still attempting to control by proxy.
But you don't own it. You are licensing the rights to use it (within limits), but you do not own it.
Sorry, but a buck ain't enough money for full rights to do whatever you want with a music recording.
If you don't like the economics of the situation, then you've made a good decision to stay out of it. But don't stand on the sidelines and bitch about it, because those of us who understand how it works don't care what you think.
Music costs money to produce, and those involved in the production of it deserve to make a reasonable living for their efforts.

--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Re:No open formats yet... by Hawthorne01 · 2003-10-23 04:52 · Score: 1

At $1 per song, you're paying roughly the same price for an album...
Entire albums are, for the most part, $9.99 on iTMS. There are some exceptions due to number of tracks/partial albums, but on the whole, it's a great deal.

--
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 04:53 · Score: 1

Right now, online music sales are the cheapest (or nearly the cheapest) legal way to get most music

Not even close. The cheapest method is, by far, going to one of the many used music stores around here (I live n NYC so this is easy) and buying the CD's I want for $5. I get lossless recordings, no DRM, and it costs less.

The recording industry has to get their head out of their ass. Just like the movie industry when the VCR came out, DRM-less digital music will not kill them but likely save them. Their customers are not inherently criminals, yet for some reason, we keep getting treated that way.

The real truth of the matter is that music isn't going to be cheap or free of restrictions until the RIAA goes away. That will happen someday, as artists become more savvy, but until then, some of us simply are not going to be buying music.

Part of the reason that the price is where it's at is the DRM, which helps alleviate the opportuniy cost of electronic downloads.

An opportunity cost is the loss of revenue a business experiences while shifting limited resources to pursue a new opportunity. What this has to do with DRM is beyond me. The correct word in this context would seem to be risk.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:53 · Score: 2, Informative

Wow. That's a remarkably defeatist attitude. So are you claiming that the multitude of small online labels who offer exactly that, don't exist? I linked to one myself, they seem to be real. Not sure where my Shiva in Chains album came from otherwise. Did I send my money down a black hole? A time-space rift? Wow. That's creepy. I just disappeared money.
Or are you taking the attitude that the RIAA is going to rule forever, it will never fall, and music lovers everywhere will always be enslaved to whatever terms they dictate? Take a look at history if you believe that.
You just purchase a license to listen to the music.
Congratulations, you've swallowed the RIAA's propaganda. As a matter of law, unless you're dealing with encrypted CDs, you have full rights to make personal-use copies of music or videos you buy, and also to resell the original CD or other product. The only restriction is that you cannot distribute *copies* in any way without permission, or hold profitable public performances.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

but on the whole, it's a great deal.
No it's not. You only say that because it's cheaper than the massively inflated price of most retail CDs. And even that's changing - Universal's new pricing virtually destroys any cost benefit to downloading, outside of the price of gas to drive to Best Buy.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by Lidless+Eye · 2003-10-23 04:56 · Score: 1

Eh. If they were giving us 44khz PCM it would be a great deal. Lossy AAC == luke-warm deal at best.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 04:58 · Score: 1

The cheapest method is, by far, going to one of the many used music stores around here (I live n NYC so this is easy) and buying the CD's I want for $5. I get lossless recordings, no DRM, and it costs less.
But don't forget - if the labels get their way and manage to transition music to being a license-only product, your resell rights go away as well.
That's the subtext to a lot of these games. Even more than pirates, nothing would make the RIAA happier than to see used CD stores become illegal.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by t4b00 · 2003-10-23 04:59 · Score: 1

As they say, it is usually not enough to post a reply just because you agree with sombodys comment, but in this case I think I should make an exception.

Companies everywhere keep trying to put restrictions on what we do with things we *own*, and that's just not right - economically, morally, or socially. It saddens me so many people are willing to accept the situation without question.

I agree with 100% of what you are saying here. but consider that the consumer gets what he pays for, It is sad that having a "bad idea" doesn't mean you are going to fail, if you have enough people throwing money at you, you can do almost anything and get away from it. Its too bad we are preaching to the choir here on slashdot as we relive this conversation every day in one form or another. The only way to stop it is to educate the masses. Go out and tell people what you think at every opprotunity EVEN IF it puts you at risk of being labeled a "Zelot or Fanatic" things that are worth standing up for are just that, But we arent going to get anywhere talking amongst ourselves, time to get it in action.

"Lets not to call the ignorant, stupid, but instead, educate these slaves into freedom."
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 05:01 · Score: 1

In the US, no. In Canada, apparently so (for personal use only).

WRONG. There is a fee added to all AUDIO CDR purchases in the US and Canada (and probably elsewhere), and it goes right into the pockets of the RIAA (not the artists). The thing is, noone buys AUDIO CDR's. We all buy DATA CDR's and record audio to them. Because there is a substantial non-music use for data CDR's, there is no additional fee on them.

Also, the author of the previous post did not mean copying rights to include giving copies to friends, only within your own collection.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 05:01 · Score: 1

Magnatune goes above and beyond in allowing for redistribution. I'm just happy that the music I download is *mine* and I can do what I want with it, for personal use, without restriction.
Your defeatist attitude is quite alarming. You appear to basically be saying, "Our corporate overlords have won, there's nothing we can do but bend over and smile." That sort of attitude could lead to the collapse of our society.
And I'm not just talking about music here. Look at how widely the DMCA can be stretched. If I buy an X-Box and hardware mod it, even for entirely legal purposes, if Microsoft finds out they'll sue me. Thanks to MS's legal practices, I am in effect merely *licensing* physical hardware from them (for a flat $200 fee), since they'll come after me if I use an X-Box for anything but playing their games.
Or printers? The way the current Lexmark cases are trending, it won't be legal for you to buy ink from anyone but the manufacturer themselves.
Or car companies. There aren't any big precedents YET, but a lot of them have been poking around trying to use the DMCA to stop individuals and independent shops from servicing vehicles. (Thankfully, so far, the courts have been stopping them from doing this) How about that, you buy a car, and you don't even have the right to repair it yourself?
The princple of First Sale has to be held INVIOLATE for a capitalistic system to work. Once you sell something, it is no longer yours, and you cannot control what happens to it. This would seem to be self-evident. The other alternative - allowing the ex-owner to dictate how their product is used - introduces a slow trend that, if left unchecked, would turn into some sort of hideous corporate Socialistic system where no one besides the Corporations actually owns anything.
So I object to anything like this, not just because I personally want the freedom to copy my music, but because the erosion of First Sale principles could ultimately destroy our system.
And living in a Corporate Feifdom, because I simply accepted the situation rather than speaking out, isn't my plan for the future.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 05:04 · Score: 1

Universal's new pricing
I was just going to point out that Universal's new pricing has just made all of these online stores an even worse deal but you beat me to it.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by hondo77 · 2003-10-23 05:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

Universal's new pricing virtually destroys any cost benefit to downloading

No it doesn't. If I want only one song from a CD I can either waste money and buy the whole CD or I can head over to iTMS and buy the single track for a buck. I can even buy just a few tracks and it's still cheaper than the whole CD. That's one of the great things about the service.

--
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 05:06 · Score: 1

You know, I love how someone ALWAYS brings up the argument that, in essence, "they can price it and do with it however they want, so if you don't want to play along, shut up and quit bothering me."
But you don't own it. You are licensing the rights to use it (within limits), but you do not own it.
Sorry, but a buck ain't enough money for full rights to do whatever you want with a music recording.
According to both legal tort and Supreme Court judgements, when I buy music or a video, I have full rights to do ANYTHING I want with it, so long as I don't redistribute copies or profit from copies or derivitive works. The RIAA and related companies are trying to alter that so that I, in essence, have NO right except to have the music enter my ear canals.
Are you arguing that my resell rights should be restricted as well? If you're going to say I only have the right to listen to the music, then I don't have the right to sell my CDs, do I?
And BTW, I'm not "standing on the sidelines," because I actively give my money to people who aren't the RIAA. Or are you saying that I'm only allowed to complain about them if I'm still giving them money?

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:11 · Score: 0

If they're losing money because of a flawed business model
But they're not losing money because of a flawed business model, they're losing money because of widespread criminal copyright violation.
Re:No open formats yet... by Hawthorne01 · 2003-10-23 05:13 · Score: 2, Informative

But with a CD, I have to go to the store buy it, return home, and rip it. Or wait until it gets delivered to me if purchased online. With iTMS, if I want it, 2 minutes later I own it. For someone like me, with the attention span of a gnat with ADD, that's very valuable. There will always be a need to own a phusical copy for some, and I treasure my old CD's and albums, but the convenience of online distribution just rocks.
I don't use iTMS for all my music desires.I'm guessing this, but I'd say the music on my iPod consists of 1/3 ripped tracks from my CD's, 1/3 um, "found" music, and 1/3 songs from iTMS. I like having another option open to me from which I can get the music I want.

--
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 05:14 · Score: 1

Wow. I'm just going to stop posting because you keep beating me to it. I feel the same way. Period. Some day the public is going to try to take back their rights. Let's hope it isn't too late by then.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 05:18 · Score: 1

With iTMS, if I want it, 2 minutes later I own it.

Great, two minutes later I have a song I can't play on my SliMP3 or my nomad. I have a song that if it gets erased, I get to pay for again because there is no physical copy (yeah I could burn it but now my 2 minute download is 10 minutes and adds the cost of a CDR). A song I can't listen to is pretty worthless to me.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by Rude+Turnip · 2003-10-23 05:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yes, you do own it, just as you own a CD. However, copyright law says you cannot distribute copies to others unless the copyright owner gives you permission (and they typically don't).

If you've ever licensed data (ie for work/research purposes), then you'll know that the transaction is significantly different than an outright purchase.

--
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Re:No open formats yet... by Lumpy · 2003-10-23 05:28 · Score: 1

this is where things like kazaa and imesh perfectly fit with for legal uses.

download your itunes song, now go and find a higher-bitrate mp3 on kazaa of the same song.

you just legally downloaded off of kazaa as you have the legal right to listen to that song because you bought a listening license when you purchased off itunes.

SPLAT! in your faces copyright nazi's!

--
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 05:33 · Score: 1

you just legally downloaded off of kazaa as you have the legal right to listen to that song because you bought a listening license when you purchased off itunes.
Nice idea in theory, but unfortunately, wrong. The court case against MP3.com awhile back (where they were letting people stream albums they had shown themselves to own) set the precedent that ANY digital copy is illegal unless you yourself rip it directly from your own physical copy. In the US, at least. I think Canada's laws make something like that legal.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by MoneyT · 2003-10-23 05:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

You can convert it to play it on your SliMP3.

Tell me, does your SliMP3 understand the format that music is on on the raw CD? Does it understand the format that music is in on Audio cassets? You mean to tell me you have to CONVERT your songs from CD or Audio Casset format to MP3 to play them on your SliMP3? The horror.

Question, if you accidentaly throw away your CD, or if your CD gets scratched beyond repiar, or your CD catches fire, can you go to the store and get a new copy for free?

You can't? BLASPHEMY!

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 05:41 · Score: 1

The thing is, noone buys AUDIO CDR's. We all buy DATA CDR's and record audio to them.
There are two ironies in this, really:
1)Because of the proliferation of data CDs that accept music tracks, effectively the ONLY people buying audio-only CDs are those who are least likely to be pirating. IE those in the industry producing music themselves. (well, and my roommate, who got a standalone pro-quality CD-audio burner for insanely cheap on clearance... :-) )
2)The RIAA still makes a decent amount off the surcharge, and REALLY cleaned up before data CDs became so common. There's no evidence in their financial reports that a cent of this money went to the artists.
But my initial point still stands. The AHRA dictates that we have Fair Use copying rights, and some people are paying for that right in the form of surcharges. Just because technology has shifted so that the RIAA isn't making as much off the surcharge as they used to doesn't mean that the law is invalidated. (and, in fact, generally speaking in law, older torts take precedents over newer ones. So when the RIAA gets around to suing someone for making a personal-use copy of a DRM'ed music track, that section of the DMCA is likely to get struck down because of the existance of the AHRA)

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by Kindaian · 2003-10-23 05:46 · Score: 1

And other parts in the world like Germany...
Re:No open formats yet... by MoneyT · 2003-10-23 05:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

Hmm, do out the math a bit:

Apple reported under the mac only service roughly 500,000 song downloads per week (according to a Cnet article from when the iTMS was released for windws)

Assume an average download size of 2MB per song you get 1,000,000 MB per week or roughly 1000 GB of bandwidth per week. Would you care to guess how much 1,000 GB of bandwidth/week costs?

Then keep in mind that you still need to pay the Artists, and the producers, and the record lables (as much as we hate them, they still get paid). Somehow, $1 a song does't quite seem like a rip off does it?

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:No open formats yet... by Bloodshot · 2003-10-23 05:59 · Score: 1

First of all, let me preface the rest of my comment by stating that I am Canadian, and don't live in the US and Canada does not have a law like the DMCA. Therefore, my views and opinions may be different based on cultural and societal influences.

I remember going to Chicago a few years ago and there was a convention of Marxists going on there. One thing that struck me about their talk of changing the system and things like that is one simple fact: to change the system, you have to become part of the system. In order to become part of the system you often have to compromise your position so other people will come around to your point of view. So, if you want to change things you really do have to sell out to a specific point.

Now, I don't think of my view as "defeatist." I think of it as being a "realist". Your government doesn't seem to listen to the people who actually vote them into office, they listen to the people who give them money. Which are corporations. Which is why the United States has become a society where large corporations basically dictate economic policy and what you get to do with the products and services they are giving you in exchange for money. The DMCA is a terrible law, but it won't be repealed unless corporations want it to be gone. Your "corporate overlords" have ALREADY WON because they can contribute money to people trying to get elected to public office, who in turn pass laws that make it easier for those corporations to make money. Yes, it's terrible. Yes, it's pushing things towards a "Corporate Fiefdom", which is a phrase that perfectly describes the current situation.

As far as I can tell, a capitalistic system is really about MAKING AS MUCH FREAKIN' MONEY AS YOU CAN. Everything else doesn't matter. I see nothing wrong with saying "Here, you can buy this thing from me but you can only use it in the following ways I think are acceptable." That's essentially what a license is, isn't it? If you don't like it, THEN DON'T BUY SOMETHING FROM THEM.
Your use of an X-Box being modded is a prime example of this. Nobody is forcing you to buy an X-Box and mod it. You don't like that if you buy an X-Box, you can't modify it? Gee, that's too freakin' bad because when you bought it you agreed to a bunch of rules regarding how you can use it. Again, I don't agree with the idea of a license that restricts how you can use something like an X-Box, but then again, I never voted for the people who helped pass the laws that let Microsoft do that.

If you sell something and attach no rules to it, then you are absolutely correct that you should have no control over what happens to it. Again, just don't buy stuff from people who want to apply rules to it's use that you disagree with it.

Go ahead and call me defeatist and claim that I've decided to bend over and smile. When the person who is bending you over is 10 times your size and 10 times your weight, there isn't anything you can do about it. A poster in a comment below talks about how "people will take the power back." People are too apathetic to care about the issues that readers of Slashdot are so passionate about. The few who care will be abandoned by the majority who don't.

So, prepare to be violated by the rulers of the corporate fiefdom.
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:01 · Score: 1

Says who? Does it say in the licensing agreement you have the right to do so? If not then it is a violation of the DMCA.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 06:03 · Score: 1

Somehow, $1 a song does't quite seem like a rip off does it?
Once again, my concern is not with how they deliver the product to me. If the costs on their end are prohibitively high, then they need to find a different means of distribution.
At those prices, I am only paying *slightly* less for an electronic album than I would for the physical equivilent, and in exchange I'm losing A)Physical media, jewel case, liner notes, etc, B)sound quality, and C)fair use copying rights.
Ergo, no matter what THEIR problems may be, no it is is not a good deal for me, the end consumer. The only benefit to their model in the grand scheme is the ability to download single tracks, but even that is simply bringing back the idea of the "single," which the record companies quit doing specifically because they wanted people to buy full albums. So that's hardly a progressive move.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

So the jewel case, liner notes, and the ability to store your music in any digital format you desire (FLAC) are worthless to you? They more than make up for any convenience I loose by having to go to a record store... of course I also quite enjoy going to record stores. Until the online music is signifigantly cheaper than physical media I'm not touching it.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:04 · Score: 0

Since when is something a "right" if you have to pay to exercise it?
Re:No open formats yet... by dasmegabyte · 2003-10-23 06:07 · Score: 1

Yes. And I'm sure that many of the sociopaths who pickpocket and jack people on the street feel that they own what they take, because as far as they're concerned once they have something it's *theirs*.

I know, reactive argument. I apologize. But ownership makes no SENSE in a digital world...how can you OWN something that has no substance? And why would you SELL something that has no value? Restrictions are there so you don't burn the album a thousand times because is is *yours*. Smart labels will always place restrictions, because the dumb ones will quickly go out of business. And don't tell me "it won't happen"...it happens all the time among the smaller hip hop labels. Death by dub.

Oh, and Magnatune is complete shit. They did not have one song I would listen to there, so it's about as much of an option as a wax tube. There's more to life than ambient...there's GOOD music, too.

--
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:09 · Score: 1

Tell me, does your SliMP3 understand the format that music is on on the raw CD?

Yes it does

Does it understand the format that music is in on Audio cassets? You mean to tell me you have to CONVERT your songs from CD or Audio Casset format to MP3 to play them on your SliMP3? The horror.

So I have to convert uncompressed audio to an mp3 to play in the player. Easy enough, I have CDex. Now how do I do this with something from iTMS? Oh wait, I can't. The songs are locked into AAC. I can't convert them to any other format without burning them to a CD first and further degrading the quality (not to mention the questionable legality of doing this).

Question, if you accidentaly throw away your CD, or if your CD gets scratched beyond repiar, or your CD catches fire, can you go to the store and get a new copy for free?

Question, if your hard drive goes tits up do you go to the iTMS and say, "Please let me have this file again for free?" No, if you didn't make a backup you're screwed. That's why I rip all my CD's to FLAC. I have them forever in a lossless format.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by DdJ · 2003-10-23 06:11 · Score: 1

Says who?
Steve Jobs. Watch a recording of the presentation of the original unveiling of iTMS.
Re:No open formats yet... by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 06:14 · Score: 1

But ownership makes no SENSE in a digital world...how can you OWN something that has no substance? And why would you SELL something that has no value?
Your silly, inflammatory flamebait aside, did it occur to you that this argument is entirely self-defeating? By that logic, if I don't have the right to own an electronic album, neither does the RIAA. Otherwise, if it has value to them to sell, then it has value to me to own and to resell.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:No open formats yet... by garvon · 2003-10-23 06:22 · Score: 1

right now we pay $0.34 a GB, so not that much.
Re:No open formats yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:25 · Score: 0

So are you claiming that the multitude of small online labels who offer exactly that, don't exist?

Nope. We're arguing that they're irrelevant. Marginalized. Fringe.

Not sure where my Shiva in Chains album came from otherwise.

Never heard of 'im, couldn't care less.

Or are you taking the attitude that the RIAA is going to rule forever, it will never fall, and music lovers everywhere will always be enslaved to whatever terms they dictate?

Wow. You really have a messed up view of the world, friend. The music industry wasn't created by anybody. It just happened, organically. It was a natural consequence of the open market system. If you want to change it, you're going to have to come up with something better. If it's not better, it ain't gonna work.

As a matter of law...

Are you a lawyer?
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:34 · Score: 1

So he specifically said the following was legal:

Burning your ACC to and audio CD. Ripping that audio CD to a different format (MP3). I doubt he would say this, as far as apple is conserned all other formats are crap why would you want anything but AAC.

But that's besides the point. He can say anything he wants. If it doesn't state that you have this ability in the license agreement, then you don't; because this would be a DMCA violation.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by laird · 2003-10-23 06:54 · Score: 1

"So I have to convert uncompressed audio to an mp3 to play in the player. Easy enough, I have CDex. Now how do I do this with something from iTMS? Oh wait, I can't. The songs are locked into AAC. I can't convert them to any other format without burning them to a CD first and further degrading the quality (not to mention the questionable legality of doing this)."

You don't actually have to burn a CD, just a virtual one (i.e. a CD that only exists in RAM). Tne RIP that into MP3's. And if you don't like having to click a couple of times, write an AppleScript to automate it.

"Question, if your hard drive goes tits up do you go to the iTMS and say, "Please let me have this file again for free?" "

That's what backups are for. Luckily you can fit 200 tracks on a CD-R, so the cost of backing up is, oh, 0.05 cents per track?

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:No open formats yet... by valmont · 2003-10-23 06:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

The fact is, once you buy music over iTunes, it *IS*, indeed YOURS. You are dismissing far too quickly the fact that you can burn it onto a CD and play it onto an unrestricted amount of devices. Many other "unlimited" services out there have DRM built-in stuff you download from them, but you can only play your music as long as you pay the monthly fee to listen to it. Apple lets you actually OWN it. And yes you can play your music on as many computers as you want, just not an infinite number of computers simultaneously. It does make perfect sense. Nobody controlls your iTMS-purchased music. It merely attempts to duplicate in a digital format hoops you would normally have to jump thru in the past to copy music you owned onto another medium, without the loss of quality. The only people this DRM model hurts are people who want to freely distribute their commercial (not freeware, not shareware) music to people who didn't pay for it.

Unrestricted digital music formats simply cannot live as "for sale music". Such formats will always either apply to free, shareware (a-la Magnatune), or pirated music. THAT is the issue. Now, don't blame Apple for being the first company to bring the world (well, the U.S. in practicallity) the first and only online store to offer a business model that mostly sastisfies all parties involved, in a very friendly, convenient interface. If music is to legally be sold in a digital format, that digital format NEEDS to have some sort of digital rights management. I challenge you to prove otherwise. If you want to blame somebody, then blame your favorite artists for going to big record labels in the first place, versus recording music on their own and making their music available for free on the internet as mp3's. Blaming Apple is non-sensical. Apple has managed to curb the record labels' hegemony and make it play nice with the consumers. Not only that, but Apple's online store ALSO allows independent, smaller record labels (such as CDBABY) to play with the big guys, and Apple has even dedicated an entire portion of their online music store to surface indie music and raise awareness to it.

Now if you stop and think about it, this is HUGE for indie music: It works this way: Big record labels promote their own music big time via the big AOL and PEPSI hooplah, and tell everyone to go buy music from the online music store. You suddenly get hoardes of average joe-blow consumers looking at the iTMS and wondering ... OoOOoo, what's that "indie music" thingamadoodle? Gee lemma check it out.

I like the principle behind Magnatune, i think it is valiant and worthy effort which definitely shows what the Internet is all about. But face it, artists that want to make it big-time (and i do mean BIG) NEED record labels. why? because it's a whole package: Record labels get your music PROMOTED. Until your music is promoted, it ain't worth shit. It's sad, it's infuriating, but it's true. Because right now people spend more time in front of the TV, listening to the radio, going to the movies, walking and driving the streets while passing hundreds of billboards, all of this courtesy of ClearChannel, than surfing the web for cool, original, worthy artists that are different from what the mass media shoves at our face.

There is a market for indie music, but the largest market still remains popular music owned by record labels. Apple will allow the first one to grow, and enable consumers to get what they want from the second one.

--
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Re:No open formats yet... by LetterJ · 2003-10-23 07:00 · Score: 2, Informative

1000GB a week isn't really that expensive. I currently pay $99 for 700GB/month *including* the server cost at rackshack.net. I could handle that amount of bandwidth with 6 of these $99/month servers. Assuming the half million songs per week, even dropping down to $0.75/song if lots of albums are bought (13 songs for $9.99), you're still looking at $1,500,000 per month, with the bandwidth costing *me* (I certainly hope Apple can get a better deal than I can) only $594. While bandwidth isn't free, it's certainly not even a significant portion of the expense of running the service. That amount doesn't even pay for someone to answer to answer the phone part time.

I'm not disagreeing with your statement that a large portion of the $1/song goes to expenses, but a lot of those expenses aren't where you'd think they are. Remember, whereever 2 or 3 million dollars are gathered, there also gather middle managers and expense accounts.

--

The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Re:No open formats yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:05 · Score: 0

Sorry, I believe you are wrong. Spending money for music (in the US) is a matter of contract law, an agreement between a buyer and a seller. As a buyer, my understanding of the agreement is that I am purchasing and owning the music and whatever distribution mechanism it is contained in/on. Yes, there are other laws which seek to restrict what I can do with my owned property. This is no different than when I own a piece of land and the government tells me my ownership right may be absolute, but what I do with that piece of land can be restricted because it causes some type of harm. (For example, I may own the land outright, but certain laws will prohibit me from dumping spent nuclear fuel all over the property).

The only thing which will limit your property rights in what you purchase is YOU. The key question in the purchase transaction is what is the buyer agreeing to, what rights is s/he agreeing to bargain away?

Buyers have done a very poor job to date of asserting their rights and interests as part of the exchange with the sellers. When was the last time YOU handed an End-Company-Purchase-Agreement with terms and conditions which favor YOUR position to a company? And if your immediate reaction to that thought is along the lines of, "What are you talking about? How ridiculous! I can't do that! sputter sputter sputter", then the more important question to ask yourself is, why did you let yourself come to the point where you forgot that doing so is as every much in your power and your interest and possible for you to do, as it is for the company to do.

Yes, it would be impractical to do this for every transaction you engage in. If every time you bought a candy bar, you had to hand the seller a list of your contract terms, of course that would be unwieldy. To overcome such unwieldiness in an age of mass production, that's why consumer protection laws were developed, so you wouldn't have to do this and could rely on the company abiding by laws passed by the government that the companies wouldn't adulterate their candy bars with lead filings or whatever.

Well, the consumer protection laws we have seen in recent years (if any) have not been adequately keeping up with consumers' digital needs - everybody knows that. And the fact that just because the laws in the past seemed to do a better job of this, has never alleviated your own responsibility to watch out for your interests, nor has your comfy reliance on such laws ever changed the power you have as an equal party in a bargaining relationship with companies.

Sadly, succumbing to false propaganda making you think such things as: that you have no power in the bargain; that you have bought nothing, only rented; and that various systems/laws/company decisions or policies/or Digital Restrictions mechanisms "allow" you only certain rights, is the first step to giving up the property rights you actually have and have purchased through contract. Your post unfortunately hurts slashdotters who don't understand the law and don't understand that they have power when they bargain with companies. With all due respect, your post should be moderated down as "un-insightful" -- quite literally.

One of the saddest comments I frequently see stated on slashdot is when people post that a certain company or a certain law or a certain system like iTunes only "allows" a person to do this, that, or the other thing. Please wake up, people, it is not a question of some overlord telling you what you are "allowed" to do. There is a bargain being developed, and if you refuse to exercise or even assert your interests as part of that bargaining process, well, all I can say is that the only thing you should be posting to slashdot is the woolly comment, "Baaa-aa-aa-aa".

The sooner we remember the fundamental legal principles here, that WE have rights and interests and that OUR EXPECTATIONS form part of the contract when we buy something just as equally as the company's expectations do, the sooner we will find a solution to these ills.
Re:No open formats yet... by valmont · 2003-10-23 07:05 · Score: 1

Yup, and your bandwidth calculations don't even take into account the amount of times users "preview" a song before actually downloading the purchased version. That costs bandwidth too.

Heh. I also like how the parent claims there won't be a market explosion. Excuse me but the market explosion has already started. iTMS has been getting tremendous press coverage, and that is without the deal with AOL and PEPSI having been implemented YET. And you can bet your sweet ass record labels are all going to get behind Apple to promote the iTMS, because iTMS is their last hope for a viable online commercial music business model that satisfies all parties. Since iTunes came out for the PC, 5 co-workers of mine have already bought iPods.

1 million purchases from PC users alone in 3.5 days. Yeah. clearly no demand for Apple's offering.

--
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Re:No open formats yet... by laird · 2003-10-23 07:11 · Score: 1

"The AHRA dictates that we have Fair Use copying rights, and some people are paying for that right in the form of surcharges."

Nope. The fee supposedly compensates the industry for the illegal copying that goes on using CD-R's (and cassette tapes). The law imposing the fee did not make it legal to make copies that would otherwise be illegal. So it's still illegal to burn CD-R's of your music (or tape it) and give it to other people. And the fee isn't for "fair use" copying, because that is legal use, and thus not a harm that would justify compensation.

This is different from Canada, where (supposedly, I don't live there) the equivalent law imposing fees on blank media did, in fact, authorize people to make copies for personal use.

The canadian law is a lot cooler, if you ask me.

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:No open formats yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:13 · Score: 0

Jay Blaylock, I have read all your posts on this, and they are very well-reasoned and you are 100% correct. See my earlier anonymous post re: companies and contracts and bargains and property rights. The people disagreeing with you are unfortunately confused about some fundamental legal, moral, ethical etc. underpinnings of our commercial laws and of our society in general. You are completely on target, thanks for posting, and please keep doing so.

God
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 07:14 · Score: 1

You don't actually have to burn a CD, just a virtual one (i.e. a CD that only exists in RAM). Tne RIP that into MP3's. And if you don't like having to click a couple of times, write an AppleScript to automate it.

You only addressed half the problem. You still loose audio quality.

That's what backups are for. Luckily you can fit 200 tracks on a CD-R, so the cost of backing up is, oh, 0.05 cents per track?

So why is it ok to have to back up you're tracks, but not your physical CD's? I back up my physical CD's, so this is a moot point.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:22 · Score: 0

Once again, my concern is not with how they deliver the product to me. If the costs on their end are prohibitively high, then they need to find a different means of distribution.

Troll troll troll your boat...

At those prices, I am only paying *slightly* less for an electronic album than I would for the physical equivilent, and in exchange I'm losing A)Physical media, jewel case, liner notes, etc, B)sound quality, and C)fair use copying rights.

No you're not. The warez d00dz will have it cracked in three hours, right?

Ergo, no matter what THEIR problems may be, no it is is not a good deal for me, the end consumer.

Yeah it is. Buck a song? Downloadable? 400,000 songs available? Can be burned to CD, transferred to iPod, played as often as you want? That's better than the record stores, and at almost the same price.

Nice troll.
Re:No open formats yet... by Hawthorne01 · 2003-10-23 07:56 · Score: 1

1. I can buy jewel cases for the CD's I burn. And with iTMS, I get the album art. Liner notes, lyrics, etc haven't been the same since the switch from 12" LP to CD forced everyone to 6pt Arial.
2. I like record stores. But I get weird looks from the help there when I ask them if I can rip open the packaging so I can listen to 30 seconds of each track like I can on iTMS ;-).
3. 128kbps AAC sounds just fine to me, but I admit I'm not the most passionate audiophile.

HBO, Showtime and PPV movies haven't killed video stores yet because of the reasons you mention, that going shopping can be a social event. I like having another option open to me when the urge to buy hits me.

--
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Re:No open formats yet... by silicon+not+in+the+v · 2003-10-23 07:56 · Score: 1

You don't like that if you buy an X-Box, you can't modify it? Gee, that's too freakin' bad because when you bought it you agreed to a bunch of rules regarding how you can use it.
Who agreed to it? Does it say that on the box? Does it say that on the receipt? Does it say that in the manual? There is a big difference between physical product like hardware, and information type product like songs/software. The only restiction they can put on an XBox is that you void your warranty by modifying it. They can't restict you from modding it, but they can say that they have no more service obligation on the product once you do that.

These things about cars not allowed to be serviced at independent repair shops will never hold up at a court level. It can happen from a technology standpoint anyway, though, because they just put some computer components into the car that can only be read by a manufacturer-formatted machine, and then the independent shops can't do the extensive work that would require use of that.

--
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 08:04 · Score: 1

The fee supposedly compensates the industry for the illegal copying that goes on using CD-R's (and cassette tapes). The law imposing the fee did not make it legal to make copies that would otherwise be illegal.

Once again you miss the point. The previous post was talking about paying for fair use rights. He was mocking the idea of paying for a "right". He was not trying to say that paying the CDR surcharge made it legal to distribute music.

Furthermore, the surcharge in Canada does not give you the right to distribute cpied music any more than you are allowed to do it here in the states. The Canadians just have a much higher surcharge.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by MoneyT · 2003-10-23 08:18 · Score: 1

Bull shit it's uncompressed audio. What do you think digitizing music does? And you can quite easily convert from one format to another, you just take the digital signal from your computer. Get a program takes the output from your sound card, and reencodes it to another sound type. Not that fucking hard. Or, since your SliMP3 player supports raw CD format, why not just use that?

Question, if your hard drive goes tits up do you go to the iTMS and say, "Please let me have this file again for free?" No, if you didn't make a backup you're screwed. That's why I rip all my CD's to FLAC. I have them forever in a lossless format.

And this has what to do with the fact that Apple won't give you a free copy of the file if you lose it, just like a music store won't give you a free copy of a CD if you lose it?

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:No open formats yet... by renderhead · 2003-10-23 08:20 · Score: 1

It seems to me that this is not a violation of the DMCA, or at least it could be argued such. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the DMCA forbids circumventing encryption. Once you have burned the file to a CD, a completely legal and contractually guaranteed right, the file is no longer encrypted. In fact, it's no longer the same file or even the same kind of file. Now it is a CD, subject to the same laws that govern the copying of CDs.

Of course, as I write this it occurs to me that I may be wrong. Court precedent allows you to legally make a certain number of backups (I forget how many) of your media, including CDs, videos, cassette tapes, and even DVDs (except that you can't really copy a DVD without violating the DMCA). In the case of iTunes or the other stores, what you are paying for is the downloaded files. In that case, burning to a CD is already making a backup. Apple generously allows you to make 10 backups of a playlist while the others allow 5, but copying the backup might go beyond the scope of your agreement.

In conclusion, I've made no point whatsoever. Goodnight.

--
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
Re:No open formats yet... by MoneyT · 2003-10-23 08:21 · Score: 1

So $340 a week.

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:No open formats yet... by MoneyT · 2003-10-23 08:25 · Score: 1

Just to add to that, and that's only the bandwidth costs for downloads. Then there are previews, actual acessing of the store. The costs to maintain the systems, the costs of the lawers to continue to negotiate deals with new records, the cost of any tech support people they have. Transaction costs and so on and so forth

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 08:26 · Score: 1

I can buy jewel cases for the CD's I burn. And with iTMS, I get the album art. Liner notes, lyrics, etc haven't been the same since the switch from 12" LP to CD forced everyone to 6pt Arial.

By the time you have bought the CDR, the case, and printed the cover art, you might as well have bought the CD. Considering Universal suggested lowering the price of a CD to $10, it really doesn't make iTunes look like a good value anymore.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 08:29 · Score: 1

Bull shit it's uncompressed audio. What do you think digitizing music does?

Digital music on a CD is sampled not compressed. If you do not get the difference, then I can not help you.

Get a program takes the output from your sound card, and reencodes it to another sound type. Not that fucking hard.

It's not hard. The problem is the sound gets worse when you do this. You can't throw away information at every step and then expect the end result to sound as good as the original. Please stop being so snotty about it. Noone said iTMS isn't the best offering currently available. The problem is, some of us are waiting for something better.

just like a music store won't give you a free copy of a CD if you lose it?

If I lose a CD, it is my fault. If my hard drive dies, that isn't my fault. Let's not make stupid arguments and treat them like gospel.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by renderhead · 2003-10-23 08:32 · Score: 1

Magnatune is a great idea. However, one of the biggest reasons that their current model is effective is because nobody wants to steal their music. People go to their site specifically to find artists that they've never heard of, or to "stick it to the man" by buying from a system they approve of. The problem is, it can't replace the big labels because the big labels carry the music that all the teenie-boppers want. The big labels won't adopt the Magnatunes model because they have too much to lose, and their customers don't care about "the cause" like Magnatunes' customers do. The 13 year olds that fill the RIAA's coffers are not scrupulous. They will download a track for free, say "thanks, suckers!" and be on their merry way. Don't expect them to embrace the "pay if you liked it" model.

--
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 08:37 · Score: 1

. I like record stores. But I get weird looks from the help there when I ask them if I can rip open the packaging so I can listen to 30 seconds of each track like I can on iTMS ;-).

That's probably because they're confused. At my record store they let me listen to the whole damn thing, not just 30 second clips. They have listening stations with all the newest releases avaliable to listen to in their entirety (200+ albums). They let you carry any used CD directly over to a bank of CD players to listen to. And if you ask them nicely they will let you open a CD to listen to it, especially if they know you and you're the kind of person who's likely to buy something.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 08:40 · Score: 1

And this has what to do with the fact that Apple won't give you a free copy of the file if you lose it, just like a music store won't give you a free copy of a CD if you lose it?

Dude, read the parent. I only said this because he said if I scratched my CD I was out of luck. My point was that both systems require you to make backups to be safe. If you read what I said, I even stated that I make backups of my CD's.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 08:42 · Score: 1

Exactly! Notice I never said it was illegal to do this, I just questioned the legality. INAL, and I'm no expert at copyright. This could be considered fair use, or it could be a DMCA violation, I don't know. I do know that I don't want to be a guinea pig.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by mcubed · 2003-10-23 08:47 · Score: 1

You just purchase a license to listen to the music.

It's amazing how often this particular misapprehension gets repeated, particularly in places frequented by the more technologically inclined. I guess the idea comes from software licenses. There is no "license" of any sort involved in a consumer's purchase of an audio CD. Just because the music comes on a shiny plastic disc does not mean you've licensed it, any more than you "license" a book when you buy one of those.

Michael

--
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
Re:No open formats yet... by Nucleon500 · 2003-10-23 08:57 · Score: 1

The fact is, once you buy music over iTunes, it *IS*, indeed YOURS. You are dismissing far too quickly the fact that you can burn it onto a CD and play it onto an unrestricted amount of devices.
By that logic, even the most DRM'd music is "yours" because you can put it through the analog hole. Granted, iTunes is currently the least restricted way to get mainstream music, but it's still putting up completely pointless speedbumps, barriers that block the sale for many Slashdotters (obviously, the public doesn't care.)
If music is to legally be sold in a digital format, that digital format NEEDS to have some sort of digital rights management. I challenge you to prove otherwise.
What about CDs? Let's face it, no DRM, ever, will stop determined users from puting music on P2P. This means it's smart to drop the whole DRM thing and give consumers what they want - complete ownership and format choices.
There are some people who only abide by laws or morals because of the consequences. IOW, the reason some people don't shoplift CDs isn't because they think it's wrong or illegal (it is), but because it's not worth the risk. If each CD cost $1500 but was no more risky to steal, these people would shoplift them without batting an eyelash. This is very bad, but it is the reality - in a large enough group of people, there will always be someone who thinks that way. The internet is a just such a group.
There are only two ways to stop these people's mass copyright infringement. One is to increase the risk, which is easy enough to do. Although this could change (Freenet), right now the sources of P2P music are easy to find and sue. For the forseeable future, good watermarking can also trace the source of files on P2P. For the short term, Vorbis serial numbers are sufficient. The second way is to increase the value of legitimate music. To me, this means completely DRM free, preferably -q5 Vorbis downloads with album art. Put up a nice web store, with an optional iTunes-like frontend, and sell high quality rips in a choice of formats and real "ownership," and P2P would no longer be worth the risk or inconvience.
Because, as people here are so quick to point out, iTunes's DRM is so pointless, why does it exist at all?

--
Litigious bastards
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 09:00 · Score: 1

As far as I can tell, a capitalistic system is really about MAKING AS MUCH FREAKIN' MONEY AS YOU CAN.

"WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION" is the part you left off. Pure capitalism is a series of checks and balances, supply and demand. It does not survive in the face of ludicrous laws like the DMCA, and government sanctioned monopolies like RIAA.

The fact is, the RIAA could put an end to piracy once and for all by giving us what we want, not telling us what we want. Do you need DRM? Not if you give them an economic reason to stay legitimate.

It is exactly like the movie industry when the VCR came out. Video's cost $100 a piece. Everyone pirated them because they were too damned expensive. The same is currently true of music. Would you waste your time searching on kazaa or emule if you could get a perfect digital copy for 25 cents? Would you risk downloading a virus or otherwise waste your time trying to find the exact version of a song you want? Absolutely not.

I see nothing wrong with saying "Here, you can buy this thing from me but you can only use it in the following ways I think are acceptable."

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. But if you think for one damned second I am going to accept those terms, you are out of your mind. And eventually, I really believe the rest of the world is going to feel that way.

Look what happened with TurboTax. Intuit added product activation. It wasn't draconian, it really wasn't nearly as evil as everyone made it out to be, and yet, it caused an uproar. Intuit lost thousands of sales and hundreds of thousands of dollars. They were forced to not only remove the product activation, but even the license key as well.

When the person who is bending you over is 10 times your size and 10 times your weight, there isn't anything you can do about it.

When, exactly, did the buying public become 10 times smaller than the entertainment industry? The tech sector alone is many times larger than the entertainment industry. The buying power of US citizens is many times larger than that.

The real problem here, is that you believe you have no power. What you should be doing, just as I and my friends have done, is to convince people not to buy CD's. People have attributed the decline in CD sales to the economy and to piracy, but less frequently to what is likely the real culprit, a disgruntled buying public.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by sirket · 2003-10-23 09:07 · Score: 1

Yup, and your bandwidth calculations don't even take into account the amount of times users "preview" a song before actually downloading the purchased version. That costs bandwidth too.

Try actually doing the bandwidth calculations. The cost is TRIVIAL.

1 million purchases from PC users alone in 3.5 days. Yeah. clearly no demand for Apple's offering.

That is, frankly, pathetic. When you consider just how much music is traded on kazaa every day, 1 million songs is a pittance.

-sirket
Re:No open formats yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 09:42 · Score: 0

If music is to legally be sold in a digital format, that digital format NEEDS to have some sort of digital rights management. I challenge you to prove otherwise.

Hell that's easy to prove. I just bought about 10 songs on iTMS. I'm not going to share them with anybody. So I don't need the DRM. And I can't take it off and sell it on eBay like I can an extra camera lens or something.

In fact I wish it didn't have DRM because I have 5 computers (including handhelds) and only two are Macs. That means I have to re-rip them to MP3 anyway. Which I do, and I don't notice much loss in quality, but it does take time. So the DRM is actually more than just useless to me.

But that's okay. Apple made it easy to get around so I'm fairly happy. If it keeps the RIAA from lobbying for stupid laws, or at least slows them down as they take time to count their gold, fine with me.
Re:No open formats yet... by iantri · 2003-10-23 09:47 · Score: 1

Question: Do CDs have a tendency to fail horribly within 2-3 years like hard drives?
CD media are a lot more reliable than hard drives and computers in general. I have CDs from the late 80's but no surviving hard drives from that time..
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 12:28 · Score: 1

I agree with one thing: this will be no way for me until the prices drop under what's reasonable for a real CD. Which means incl. covers, media and case it should not cost more than 7,- for an album. That there has to be no DRM or any other stuff like this should be common sense.

And, please, no "but there are only two good songs on an album, and here you can buy only the good songs, so calculate this out" nonsense!

And, for the corps tell the customers what to to and not the other way round: just look which way the legislation has been going for the last years in the western countries. Most laws strenghten the position of them and not ours. :-( Next thing is they will be enabled to sue you just for not buying their products or other bullshit.
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 12:30 · Score: 1

2 minutes download time for a whole album? The usual pipe is much smaller than yours, man!
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 12:39 · Score: 1

Somehow, $1 a song does't quite seem like a rip off does it?

It does, as it is even more expensive than the usual rip-off prices in the stores, even ignoring the fact that that downloaded stuff is far inferior to a "real" CD. Here in Germany, the price is up to nearly 20,- for a normal CD, and I consider about 8,- to 10,- being a fair price. After all, we're still waiting for the music industry to fulfill the promise of CDs becoming "soon" cheaper than the vinyl record was before!
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 12:46 · Score: 1

Right now, online music sales are the cheapest (or nearly the cheapest) legal way to get most music.

In contrary. Count together just the costs for the songs, printing the covers and the jewel case and with $1/song for just the download you pay more than the usual rip-off price of ~EUR 17,- in a store!
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 12:49 · Score: 1

If you want access to the widest possible source of music, those people who will give you access to that source will be putting restrictions on what you can do with that stuff.

And that's exactly what has to be shut down. Would anybody here except such restrictions e. g. for the car you own and have payed? The music industry sells a product and their only duty is to sell it, not tell the buyers what or when they can do with it!
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 12:56 · Score: 1

But you don't own it. You are licensing the rights to use it (within limits), but you do not own it.

Just imagine that the car manufacturers would make the same claims when you were out to buy a new car. How would you react? I guess you'd call them bullshit! What is the difference from a car to a CD?
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 13:08 · Score: 1

Smart labels will always place restrictions,

That's the way of the dumbasses, not the smart ones.
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 13:13 · Score: 1

If music is to legally be sold in a digital format, that digital format NEEDS to have some sort of digital rights management.

Ah, that's why the real CD-A format has nothing of such nonsense and was nonetheless that successful? Get real!
Re:No open formats yet... by pHDNgell · 2003-10-23 14:46 · Score: 1

Tell me, does your SliMP3 understand the format that music is on on the raw CD?

Yes it does

Weird, I upgraded mine a couple of days ago, and it still won't play anything but mp3s.

However, if I run my server on a Mac, it'll recode AIFF, WAV, and AAC on the way to the slimp3.

I run my server on Solaris, though, so the music I buy from iTMS gets converted on my powerbook before moving over there.

--
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
Re:No open formats yet... by valmont · 2003-10-23 14:50 · Score: 1

hardly a pittance when this music is actually being *paid for*, *and* considering there has been close to zero true marketing promotion for the online store. this all pure word of mouth. Wait until the AOL/PEPSI deal gets implemented and this thing is available to the AOL public at large. The cost ain't trivial, especially considering Apple still isn't getting most of the money made on the online store, most of it goes to the record labels, read their 10Q. it might cover costs at best. iTMS and iTunes clearly are iPod-sellers.

--
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Re:No open formats yet... by laird · 2003-10-23 15:46 · Score: 1

The post I replied to said that "The AHRA dictates that we have Fair Use copying rights, and some people are paying for that right in the form of surcharges." This isn't true -- the AHRA isn't charging anyone for exercising their fair use rights, it's compensating the record companies for the lost sales due to _illegal_ copying.

And the comparable law in Canada does (according to numerous posts on Slashdot and elsewhere) give consumers the right to make personal copies of music from CD's, which you could interpret (IANAL) to mean that in Canada you're paying higher fees on recordable media, but gain the right to make copies of music onto that media. The example people used in posts was that in Canada it's legal to check a CD out from a library (or borrow it from a friend) and burn a copy for personal use, which is not legal in the US.

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:No open formats yet... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 16:26 · Score: 1

I was actually talking about my SlimX, which is a CD based MP3 player

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:No open formats yet... by Planesdragon · 2003-10-23 16:53 · Score: 1

...printing the covers and the jewel case...

Neither covers nor jewel cases music make. If that's what you want, then buy a mass-produced CD.

If you want digital music for your computer, it's fairly hard to beat $.99 a song--unless you buy albums with more tracks you'll listen to than dollars in price.

'course, I'm still a bit miffed that Metallica isn't on the iTunes store. Ah, well. Can't blame the metal-luddites. (They're probably still burned from the high-technology microbrew beer that came off skanky.)
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 23:05 · Score: 1

Neither covers nor jewel cases music make. If that's what you want, then buy a mass-produced CD.

No, I just like the whole experience of holding soemthing in my hand.

If you want digital music for your computer, it's fairly hard to beat $.99 a song--unless you buy albums with more tracks you'll listen to than dollars in price.

There is no album with only one or two good tracks under the ~350 albums I own. And I think it is something you can demand that an album does not contain 80% crap.
Re:No open formats yet... by Planesdragon · 2003-10-24 01:51 · Score: 1

No, I just like the whole experience of holding soemthing in my hand.

So do I, actually. But that's a differnet thing than just wanting the music.

There is no album with only one or two good tracks under the ~350 albums I own.

Note that I didn't say "good." I said "that you will listen to." :)
Re:No open formats yet... by Kosi · 2003-10-24 04:32 · Score: 1

Note that I didn't say "good." I said "that you will listen to." :)

Usually I play the whole album when listening to a CD. Even downloaded stuff (listening to it on my Xbox) usually gets played in one piece. Just skipping through a few tracks from an album is really seldom, maybe when I want to show a specific song to someone, or when I listen to my "misc" audio directory.
Re:No open formats yet... by Bloodshot · 2003-10-24 04:45 · Score: 1

Hey, lots of good points. Let me respond to them:

"WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION" is the part you left off. Pure capitalism is a series of checks and balances, supply and demand. It does not survive in the face of ludicrous laws like the DMCA, and government sanctioned monopolies like RIAA.

The fact is, the RIAA could put an end to piracy once and for all by giving us what we want, not telling us what we want. Do you need DRM? Not if you give them an economic reason to stay legitimate.

Very true, but those ludicrous laws you described were bought and paid for by (wait for it) corporations! As for the RIAA "giving us what we want", does this mean that you want to download music that you can then use in any way you want? Me too, but I don't forsee it happening any time soon. The RIAA will drag down everyone it can with their clients on the slide down, and it will take a strong co-ordinated effort for people who want to listen to music on something other than a CD player to not go down in the wreckage. But given human nature, you can expect 99% of the public to basically not give a shit.

It is exactly like the movie industry when the VCR came out. Video's cost $100 a piece. Everyone pirated them because they were too damned expensive. The same is currently true of music. Would you waste your time searching on kazaa or emule if you could get a perfect digital copy for 25 cents? Would you risk downloading a virus or otherwise waste your time trying to find the exact version of a song you want? Absolutely not.

Hey, I'm with on this one too.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. But if you think for one damned second I am going to accept those terms, you are out of your mind. And eventually, I really believe the rest of the world is going to feel that way.

Look what happened with TurboTax. Intuit added product activation. It wasn't draconian, it really wasn't nearly as evil as everyone made it out to be, and yet, it caused an uproar. Intuit lost thousands of sales and hundreds of thousands of dollars. They were forced to not only remove the product activation, but even the license key as well.

Again, can't argue too much there. But I think you severely overestimate that "the rest of the world", which includes half the population that doesn't even know how to use a phone, will stand up to this. Again, I lack faith that the very people you need to support this cause even care about it at all. This isn't like the civil rights movement in the U.S. in the 1950's and 1960's. This is about a bunch of technoelitists (which is what we are) wanting to have things our way. Which, of course, never happens unless (wait for it) CORPORATIONS agree to go along with it.

When, exactly, did the buying public become 10 times smaller than the entertainment industry? The tech sector alone is many times larger than the entertainment industry. The buying power of US citizens is many times larger than that.

The real problem here, is that you believe you have no power. What you should be doing, just as I and my friends have done, is to convince people not to buy CD's. People have attributed the decline in CD sales to the economy and to piracy, but less frequently to what is likely the real culprit, a disgruntled buying public.

Well, this isn't the buying public vs. the entertainment industry. It's the public vs. the entertainment industry PLUS your elected government officials who accept the monetary donations of the entertainment industry.

The sad truth is that you and I don't have any power against this combination. I don't buy CD's very often (I think I've bought 3 in the last 3 years) because I don't like the tactics of the music industry (although living in Canada gives me the right to share my MP3 and OGG collection online).

As long as they have the government on their side, the entertainment industry is free to treat us like the thieving pieces of shit they
Re:No open formats yet... by MoneyT · 2003-10-24 10:14 · Score: 1

If your CD gets damaged in a player, it's not your fault either, but the store won't give you a free copy in that situation either.

As for sampling vs compression, yes, it's different, but in the end, you're still loosing sound quality from the original sound.

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:No open formats yet... by MoneyT · 2003-10-24 10:17 · Score: 1

But let's be reasonable about the media too. You keep CDs for a long time, but I'm sure you're not using the same computer that you were using back inthe 80's it only makes sense that you would transfer those files. And if that's what you're worried about, archive the songs to CD or DVD, they'll last longer than on an HDD and you'll have more songs on a disc than if you bought plain audio.

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984

The biggest con of all of them... by moonboy · 2003-10-23 04:21 · Score: 1

IMHO, the biggest con for all of them is that none of them (that I'm aware of) consolidates ALL music. Every song ever recorded. This is understandable considering that all music is owned by different companies and understandably, they aren't going to share. BUT, I think it'd be cool if there were a database that would tell me who has what songs/bands/artists/etc... That way I wouldn't have to search all of them individually for a particular song or artist. Or is there such a thing and I've been under a rock?

--

Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com

Re:The biggest con of all of them... by cK-Gunslinger · 2003-10-23 04:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

Kazaa lets you search for any bands/songs/artists and find out who has it. And they *are* going to share. Perhaps you have been under a rock. =P

[legal disclaimers]
The poster of this comment does not endorse the trading/sharing of copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent. Your milage may vary. Batteries not included. FDIC insured. EOE.]
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by mblase · 2003-10-23 04:35 · Score: 1

IMHO, the biggest con for all of them is that none of them (that I'm aware of) consolidates ALL music. Every song ever recorded.

Good luck finding anything that does that. Even with Gnutella or KaZaA, you're not going to find an archive that complete.
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by laird · 2003-10-23 04:41 · Score: 1

The reaspn that the download services don't have all music isn't the record companies, it's the artists. THe labels are doing deals for as much as they can as fast as they can; all of the major download services (iTMS, PressPlay, MusicMatch, BuyMusic.com, Liquid, etc.) have done deals with all of the majors, and some independents. But if the Beatles or Led Zeppelin don't want their music sold digitally, there's nothing a label can do about it.

So if you had a database of which artist was signed with which label, etc., you still wouldn't know who could sell what.

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by jargonCCNA · 2003-10-23 04:51 · Score: 1

...if the Beatles or Led Zeppelin don't want their music sold digitally, there's nothing a label can do about it.
You'd think so. Musicians rarely own the copyrights to their music. The publishing house own the copyrights (intelligent artists get around this by creating their own publishing houses - Faust's House, for example, is Billy Corgan('s publisher)). Unfortunately, in most recent (say, within the past ten-fifteen years) record deals, the label has subsidiarilly owned the publishing house.. so the label owns the copyright and can do whatever the fuck they want with it. More popular musicians have a little more clout with what happens, but typically, the label has the final say.

Which is one of many reasons why I don't intend to sign myself to a label.

--
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by dissy · 2003-10-23 05:00 · Score: 1

Actually, the library of congress is suppost to have a copy of anything copyright is used to protect.

The reason is because copyright does expire, and at that point that work becomes public property so that we can innovate by using it in ways the creator did not think of.

I've wondered why noone has used this argument in court yet.

"But I looked for that song at loc.gov and they show no record of it what so ever. Naturally, they cant have a copyright on the [whatever] or else that wouldnt be so. So when i distributed [whatever] to my best knowledge it was not illegal to do so."
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by IAmAMacOSXAddict · 2003-10-23 05:04 · Score: 1

There is a way to research an artist as you requested, ( http://www.gracenote.com/music/ ) however it is just a database and has no purchacing options. Grace Note is the front end of the internet's CD Database (CDDB).

--
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by kfg · 2003-10-23 05:06 · Score: 1

Even the Library of Congress does not have such a list. An English dictionary does not contain all words, not even all words in English. You might even be surprised at the sheer mass of commercially released sound recordings that aren't "recorded" anywhere at all.

Omniscience cannot be mandated.

KFG
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by EvilFrog · 2003-10-23 05:11 · Score: 1

IMHO, the biggest con for all of them is that none of them (that I'm aware of) consolidates ALL music.

Even the file sharing networks fail to consolidate all music. Same with record stores. File sharing services require a demand to be available. If nobody has heard of it you'll have to wait until the one or two people that have a copy log on. Record stores can only stock so much at once, so they only stock what is popular.

I may not be overly impressed by the selection provided by iTunes and its ilk right now, but the catalogs are growing. They're far from perfect, but perfection takes work. Even at this point they're better than nothing.
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by laird · 2003-10-23 07:41 · Score: 1

You're right -- that's what I get for simplifying. All of the major artists set up their own publishing house, but not all. And contracts these days give the labels the right to sell music digitally as well as on physical media, so over time the digital music services will get better and better inventories. Also, as musicians see the services start to sell real volumes of music (yay iTMS) hopefully they'll decide that it's worth pursuing.

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Re:The biggest con of all of them... by Kosi · 2003-10-23 13:23 · Score: 1

This is understandable considering that all music is owned by different companies

No.

For nearly any other product it would be no problem at all for anyone to open up a store which sells each brand of this product.

P.S. The music should be owned by the artists, not the record companies or anybody else.

What about. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:22 · Score: 0, Informative

Where's buy.music? I know everyone says it sucks but it should certainly count as a major player in the online music biz.

As a Windows user, iTunes is, hands down, the best by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:22 · Score: 0

No joke, I thought MusicMatch was pretty cool. But no. I can't stop using iTunes. I love it.

I think it may love me, too.

They don't mention the cool Napster Launch Party. by wo1verin3 · 2003-10-23 04:24 · Score: 0, Offtopic

NAPSTER'S LAUNCH PARTY TO FEATURE HOTTEST NEW MUSIC ARTISTS

Celebration at House of Blues on October 29th Marks
Availability of Napster 2.0 in the United States

LOS ANGELES, CA --Oct. 23, 2003--Napster, a division of Roxio (Nasdaq: ROXI) today announced the musical lineup for its October 29 celebration of the launch of the Napster 2.0 at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. Additionally, in the spirit of Napster, hundreds of music fans will receive free tickets to the exclusive event through local radio stations and fan site giveaways this week.

Ahmet Zappa will be the emcee for the evening and Def Jam recording artist Ludacris will headline the event. Ludacris is the hottest musician in the country, with the number one selling album "Chicken N Beer". Other popular new artists performing that night will include Dashboard Confessional (Vagrant), Interpol (Matador), and Metric (Enjoy) and DJ Melo-D.

More info at Billboard

I can't wait for iTMS to reach .au by Talez · 2003-10-23 04:24 · Score: 1

At the moment I'd gladly pay US$9.99 for an album of M4P tracks. Most CDs over here are between AUD$20 and AUD$30 while the equivalent CD in the iTMS is only about AUD$16.

Um... Ogg Vorbis? by Prince_Ali · 2003-10-23 04:24 · Score: 4, Informative

If you rip with AAC in iTunes it attaches no DRM to it at all. Also AAC > OGG.

--
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.

Re:Um... Ogg Vorbis? by larry+bagina · 2003-10-23 04:39 · Score: 1

How many audio tools can work with AAC (DRM or otherwise)? iTunes, iPod, and QuickTime can play AAC, but those are all Apple offerings. Ogg has limited support as well (although the specs and sample implementation are freely available), which is why I'm stuck using raw wav files are mp3s since they're better supported.

--
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Re:Um... Ogg Vorbis? by proj_2501 · 2003-10-23 05:13 · Score: 1

using compressed audio in your audio tools is a waste of energy. each time you save, you will lose quality.

well, i guess if that's the sound you're going for, it might work out. kind of like how basic channel used to record their drum tracks to cassette tape before mixing everything down.
Re:Um... Ogg Vorbis? by Doktor+Memory · 2003-10-23 05:30 · Score: 1

Also AAC > OGG.

Wrong.

(Link is to an english summary; original german article is here.

--
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Re:Um... Ogg Vorbis? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:31 · Score: 0

You can also rip into WMA with no DRM, and that means exactly diddly (like your comment). All the purchased music from any of the services including Apple's AAC has DRM.

So his point stands. Just because you can rip music to AAC doesn't remove the copy protection it has when you purchase it from iTMS (which was the whole point of the story).
Re:Um... Ogg Vorbis? by slimak · 2003-10-23 05:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

using compressed audio in your audio tools is a waste of energy. each time you save, you will lose quality.
Although this will vary with tool, it is generally not true. Consider the similar (and more familiar) concept of image editting. If you are working with a compressed JPEG and simply open->save the image manly times (say 100) you will end up with the same result as the original image. The reason is that the threshold used to determine which information to discard does not change.
It really comes down to the basis functions used to express the data, which do not change. We can think of compression as a projection onto a smaller subspace. Repeated compression, or repeated project, will have the same result. This is very easy to verify gemoetrically for the 2-D case.
Example:
Consider the vector k=(2,1). If we wish to compress k by retaining only its x component, we would retain only the coeffient 2. Now our approximation to k is the vector a=(2,0). note that regardless of how many times we repeat this compression (projection) we end up with the same result of (2,0).
Re:Um... Ogg Vorbis? by ViolentGreen · 2003-10-23 06:30 · Score: 3, Interesting

Your example does not convert over to audio compression. First of all, you are repeating the compression with the same technology. Second of all, that technology does not even remotely compare to audio/image compression.

The loss in any kind of lossy compression occurs in the step function (I forget the exact term, step quantization I believe.) If you encode with one function, decode, and encode with a differenct step function, you will have two levels of loss. The compression is very complicated and has multiple steps. I know image compression uses transforms as well and I would assume audio compression woudl do something similar but I am not certain here.

You gave a compression example, consider mine:
compression scheme a: step quantifier of 7
compression scheme b: step quantifier of 15

encode 137 with method a: 137/7 = 19
decode 19 with method a: 19*7 = 133
encode 133 with method b: 133/15 = 8
decode 8 with method b = 8*15 = 120
120 != 137

That is an oversimplification on how the quality is lossed in jpeg compression. The larger the quantifier, the greater the compression/quality loss. The same idea goes for audio.

(Please forgive me if I used some incorrect terminology; it's been a while.)

--
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Re:Um... Ogg Vorbis? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:35 · Score: 0

How many audio tools can work with AAC (DRM or otherwise)?

Everything that uses QuickTime. In other words, everything.

10 times? by SirTwitchALot · 2003-10-23 04:24 · Score: 0, Insightful

I was under the impression that iTunes let you burn unlimited CD's? They claim the number is 10 in the article. Which is correct?

--
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.

Re:10 times? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:28 · Score: 1, Informative

You can burn a playlist 10 times before you have to edit it again. After you edit it, it can be burned another 10 times.
Re:10 times? by KJE · 2003-10-23 04:28 · Score: 1

It will let you burn a single, unchanged playlist 10 times. Of course, you can change that playlist, and then burn the new one 10 times, and then change that one...
Re:10 times? by cualexander · 2003-10-23 04:29 · Score: 5, Informative

Here's the deal with the burns. You can only burn the same playlist 10 times. So say you download 20 tracks from the music store. You can only burn those 20 in that exact same order 10 times, but if you switch the 1st and 2nd song you get 10 more burns and so on and so forth. I've also heard you can just delete the playlist and create a new one, but I'm not sure if that works or not. Anyhow heres how Steve Jobs puts it. Unlimited burning of individual tracks, 10 burns per playlist.
Re:10 times? by wtmcgee · 2003-10-23 04:29 · Score: 1

you can only burn the exact same playlist 10 times. but, you can easily make another playlist and put the songs on there again and you're good to go. i guess this was put in to avoid mass duplication on CD's.

--
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
Re:10 times? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:30 · Score: 0

You can burn 10 copies of each playlist. Build a new, slightly different playlist if you want to burn more.
Re:10 times? by Hawthorne01 · 2003-10-23 04:30 · Score: 2, Informative

You can burn a given playlist 10 times to CD. After that, you have to mix the tracks up to get another 10 burns, and so on. Any particular song can be burned as many times as you want.

--
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Re:10 times? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:33 · Score: 0

You can burn any playlist 10 times. If you want to burn more than that, you'll need to create a new playlist.

I've been using iTunes since its launch in April and haven't found this to be a limiting factor at all.
Re:10 times? by squidsquidsquid · 2003-10-23 04:36 · Score: 1

I was under the impression that iTunes let you burn unlimited CD's? They claim the number is 10 in the article. Which is correct?
10 of any one playlist. Change the playlist, burn 10 more copies.
Re:10 times? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:37 · Score: 0

The way this works is that it only lets you burn a particular playlist 10 times. You can burn a track an unlimited number of times you just have to change some aspect of the playlist after burning the playlist 10 times.
Re:10 times? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:45 · Score: 0

Burning restrictions are only for playlists that contain ITMS purchases. There is no limit to total burns in iTunes, or burns of non-ITMS music. Burn your mp3-only lists as many times as you like.

If a playlist contains an ITMS purchased song, you are limited to 10 burns of that exact same playlist. Change the playlist slightly, and you can burn that ITMS song 10 more times--you just get a slightly different mix.

Basically, you can't start a distribution center for ITMS albums. But you can burn a copy for your car, your office, your friend, your living room, and so on... 10 of the same thing is a lot.
Re:10 times? by Have+Blue · 2003-10-23 04:49 · Score: 2, Informative

The other posts are not quite correct: You can only burn a given playlist 10 times if it contains protected music. You can burn lists of MP3s or unprotected AACs as many times as you want.
Re:10 times? by Coplan · 2003-10-23 04:58 · Score: 1

The other replies are 100% correct. But I thought I should throw in the fact that this 10 time limit for a playlist, while it might seem silly, is actually quite justified. It was a requirement put forth on Apple. The idea is that it prevents you from downloading an album, and burning it billions of times and selling those albums. Yes, there is a way around it, but it's a hassle, and that's all that Apple had to do to keep RIAA happy.
Re:10 times? by pizen · 2003-10-23 05:11 · Score: 1

i guess this was put in to avoid mass duplication on CD's.

Because after you've burned it once you can't just copy it like a normal CD in your favorite CD burning software. The restriction just doesn't make sense to me.
Re:10 times? by dissy · 2003-10-23 05:31 · Score: 1

> I've also heard you can just delete the playlist and create a new one, but I'm
> not sure if that works or not.

Yes, it works.
The 'limit' is only there so you cant script automated mass-burns and pay a monkey $1/hr to just swap cds out. Takes a bit more work.

If you burn one cd, and then just dupe that cd, its no longer itunes software that is doing the disc copy, so they dont have to worry about it legally.
Re:10 times? by dreamcatcher72 · 2003-10-23 05:34 · Score: 1

what's to stop one from say , burning a cd and using an app like exact audio copy (EAC) to make an almost perfect dub of the cd ? wouldnt the 10 rule seem rather silly at that point ?
Re:10 times? by Osty · 2003-10-23 08:33 · Score: 1

The 'limit' is only there so you cant script automated mass-burns and pay a monkey $1/hr to just swap cds out. Takes a bit more work.

Oh no! You mean the script writer would have to take ten more minutes and code in a routine to drop/recreate the playlist every 10 burns? Argh, the horror!
Re:10 times? by Coplan · 2003-10-23 08:53 · Score: 1

I'm sure it seems silly to anyone that knows computers, maybe even Apple for that matter. But that's not the name of the game. Keep in mind, Apple is not necessarily a friend to the RIAA, but it has to work with the (corrupt) organization. So if the limitation of 10 burns seems silly, it's just a way to keep the RIAA happy. Its a compromise in which I'm sure the RIAA doesn't realize what's truly possible. Too bad for them. Yay for Apple -- and us.
Re:10 times? by Graff · 2003-10-23 09:20 · Score: 1

The 'limit' is only there so you cant script automated mass-burns

You can't? It's not automatic but it's not hard to script. Here's a AppleScript script that I whipped up that could burn as many CDs as you want from a playlist, it just rotates the songs around. I haven't tested it or debugged it but it should be close.
set continueBurn to true repeat while continueBurn is true display dialog "The playlist \"Burnlist\" will be burned." & ¬ return & ¬ "Put a blank CD in the drive." ¬ buttons {"Cancel Burn", "Burn CD"} ¬ default button "Burn CD" if dialog reply is "Burn CD" then tell application "iTunes" activate set selection to playlist "Burnlist" end tell tell application "System Events" tell process "iTunes" «event prcsclic» «class menI» ¬ "Burn Playlist to Disk" of ¬ «class menE» "File" of «class mbar» 1 end tell end tell tell application "iTunes" duplicate the first track in playlist "Burnlist" to ¬ the end of the playlist "Burnlist" delete the first track in the playlist "Burnlist" end tell else set continueBurn to false end if end repeat
Well I have no clue on how to get HTML entities to appear properly here so just replace "& # 172;" with option-return when you are typing this into the Script Editor. Replace "& # 171;" with option-\ and "& # 187;" with shift-option-\

The point I'm making here is that this sort of copy protection on Apple's part is really just a speed bump designed to make the record labels comfortable with selling songs electronically. It's really not much of a barrier to doing what you want with the music.

--
Sapere aude!
Re:10 times? by wtmcgee · 2003-10-23 10:29 · Score: 1

touche'

--
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***

Tipware? by Thinkit3 · 2003-10-23 04:24 · Score: 0

What about donating for music like magnatune?

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:Tipware? by GeneralEmergency · 2003-10-23 04:32 · Score: 2, Informative

OK. As long as I can be assured that The RIAA and the "Big Five" never sees a penny of my money. The RIAA is evil and must be put to (commercial) death.

Oh...AND I AM NOT A TROLL! This is a LEGITIMATE point to make about this news item. Just because reasonably priced download sites now exist, we still all have an obligation to do every thing we can to quash evil, lawyer flinging, corporate association associations like the RIAA and the MPAA.

.

--
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Re:Tipware? by homer_ca · 2003-10-23 07:58 · Score: 1

Send cash to their fan mail address. Anonymous and easy.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:25 · Score: 0

Why is this marked as a troll? Sounds like a legitimate argument to me.

Limited choice by unclebulgaria · 2003-10-23 04:25 · Score: 0, Redundant

I find that record stores still beat iTunes in choice by far (never tried Napster 2). I can find very little of what I want on iTunes, less so than even KaZaA perhaps (the poorest selection of the major P2P clients), eMule still has the best albums I find.

Re:Limited choice by Flagbrew · 2003-10-23 04:50 · Score: 1

I agree with you about the limited choices --- 500,000 songs....pfft. Most of it is pop music crap anyway. Just hop over to etree where you can peruse some 119,000 unique shows from quality artists of many genres. Enough to keep your highspeed connection busy for a while.

Regards,

Jeff
Re:Limited choice by borkus · 2003-10-23 05:06 · Score: 1

Admittedly, the choices in iTunes are limited. Even though they signed several indpendent labels, including Matador and Kill Rock Stars, though don't have the entire catalog of those labels or any rarities. Heck, they don't even have some of the new releases - try looking for Her Majesty the Decemberists.

The advantage of the P2P networks from a selection standpoint was that you had thousands of people adding tracks, not just one or two labels. On the old Napster, I remember finding tracks from B-Sides and compilations albums from the 80's along with ton's of live materials - let alone regular recordings. In that respect, I think the P2P networks will probably stay around for hardcore fans, looking for rare items. However, I don't think the RIAA is worried about people who are downloading the Reiver's cover of "Atlantic City".

If anyone stands to lose from online music stores, it's Rhino and the producers of the "That's What I Call Music" series. For the hit single buyer, the online store is a great bargain. I wonder if you can pick up "Billy Don't Be a Hero" on iTunes yet.
Re:Limited choice by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:25 · Score: 1

The kicker to me is that they don't have The Polyphonic Spree, a band that is featured in the iPod/VW commerical!

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Who the fuck cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:25 · Score: 0

"RIAA . . .brbble. . . brbblr brzzzllr. . . Linux!. . . ."

Here's a clue:
No one cares about your cardboard zealotry.

Re:Who the fuck cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:31 · Score: 0

Damn right. I've worked inside and outside the music industry. What I've seen in the last 10 years leaves me with this viewpoint.

I hope Napster and iTunes fail for selling out
I hope the music industry collapses
I hope all that mindless shit is taken off my radio
I hope we see a rebirth of popular music as a peoples industry

you should hear the noises my mp3 cd player makes by leile · 2003-10-23 04:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

I really don't dig those wonky formats. Makes it impossible for my pitiful Sony mp3 CD player to cooperate. And when you burn it to disc, and then re-rip to get it into mp3, hooboy. The sound quality is shittastic. (And while I'd very much like to buy one of those swank iPods - A geek I am, but moreso, a broke student geek)

--
Please enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...

Better than all of those mentioned by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:26 · Score: 2, Informative

Allofmp3.com beats all those mentioned so far hands down. You get to choose your format (mp3, Ogg, aac, wma) and bitrates (from 128k up to 384k) and you pay based on the number of megs you d/l. Furthermore, there's no DRM on the files you d/l.

Re:Better than all of those mentioned by Jayjay75 · 2003-10-23 04:58 · Score: 1

There's no way to browse or search by genre,only by artist, song title or words in the lyrics (although admittedly this is kind of cool). But without listings by genre it does me no good.
Re:Better than all of those mentioned by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:05 · Score: 0

If you want to be really legal, allofmp3 is not it. They are located in Russia, where the already weak copyright law is not really enforced. They definitely don't have licensing agreements with the music distributors...

allofmp3 also has a spotty selection - mostly what's popular rather than what's interesting. :)
Re:Better than all of those mentioned by molarmass192 · 2003-10-23 05:16 · Score: 1

Is this thing legal? If so, this is the shizznit of the online music vendors!

--

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato

Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by devphaeton · 2003-10-23 04:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

I recall a lot of folks ((in my circle of musician friends) with apple computers) saying that the music they downloaded from iTunes (when it first was launched) was kinda 'muddled' sounding, many blamed the copy-protection as doing it.

Or is it just the encoding into an mp3 that does this? Any comparisons between the other `legal' music downloads and the end-quality of sound?

Just curious. I personally buy CDs still, except for the old blues/british invasion stuff that's out of print or never made it past vinyl.

--

do() || do_not(); // try();

Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:29 · Score: 0

iTMS encodes it's music as an AAC, not MP3. Personally, I've had no problems with music quality from iTMS. IMHO, it's better than standard MP3 fare.
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by imadork · 2003-10-23 04:47 · Score: 1

All that the Apple DRM does is encrypt the actual AAC file, then stick the whole thing into a QuickTime wrapper. If people think that the iTunes files are muddy-sounding, it's AAC's fault, not the DRM's.
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by oscast · 2003-10-23 05:10 · Score: 1

i think the parent was just trolling
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:16 · Score: 0

I was just thinking the same thing reading the article. If Microsoft were to offer the exact same service, terms, etc., only with their own proprietary player, they would get absolutely thrashed here on /. for attempting to lock in customers on a proprietary platform. But with Apple, there is nary a peep from anyone?!?
True, Microsoft's past behavior and business practices in some sense justify starting any discussion with the assumption that they are up to no good, but a bit of skepticism would be entirely justified in Apple's case as well.
What ticks me off is that none of the players in the 'legal download services' game seem to get one very simple point:
If they offer high-quality downloads from a fast, reliable server farm, they can remove any and all DRM without any significant effect on their bottom line. When finding and downloading a given track illegally, coupled with the risk that the download will be corrupted or of poor quality, gets to be more of a pain than just getting it from iTunes/Musicmatch/etc., very few people will object to just going to one of the legit sites and paying $0.99. Then you don't need the damn DRM and everyone is happy.
-FP
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by shotfeel · 2003-10-23 05:20 · Score: 1

recall a lot of folks ((in my circle of musician friends) with apple computers) saying that the music they downloaded from iTunes (when it first was launched) was kinda 'muddled' sounding, many blamed the copy-protection as doing it.

That's a common problem, but its not the copy protection. It's one of the settings in iTunes -I don't remember if its the equalizer settings or the "Sound Enhancer' or "Sound Check" effects found in the preferences.

Have them try turning that stuff off and see if it helps.
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Rude+Turnip · 2003-10-23 05:27 · Score: 1

If this helps, I recently burned an audio CD with iTunes for my car stereo. The songs came from a mix of 192kbps VBR MP3s I had ripped with Cyberlink MP3 PowerEncoder and 128kbps fixed rate AACs downloaded from iTMS. The songs that originated from AAC files sounded pretty darn near CD quality (and didn't make me cringe), while the songs that originated from MP3 files sounded muddled relative to the AAC-originating files. As a result, I'm using AAC as my preferred ripping format (albeit bumped up to 192kbps b/c I have the space).

--
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by devphaeton · 2003-10-23 06:00 · Score: 1

i think the parent was just trolling

No, i'm not trolling. It's a legit question. It's based on hearsay, though. I don't have an apple, and haven't used Windows in years so i don't have any first-hand experience.

--

do() || do_not(); // try();
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:11 · Score: 0

"...What ticks me off is that none of the players in the 'legal download services' game seem to get one very simple point: If they offer high-quality downloads from a fast, reliable server farm, they can remove any and all DRM without any significant effect on their bottom line..."
It isn't the download services that don't get it, it's the music publishing industry. Apple or MusicMatch could easily have developed such a DRM-free service, but the variety of music offered would have been very, very slim. Apple's DRM is surprisingly unobtrusive, and probably was the very best they could do and still get major labels to sign on.
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:30 · Score: 0

It's a legit question. It's based on hearsay, though.

You just contradicted yourself, friend.
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Nucleon500 · 2003-10-23 09:13 · Score: 1

iTunes actually provides some hope for DRM free music. They are in the best position to do studies of how unDRMing, say, one artist would affect their sales. Our hypothesis seems to be that if iTunes choose an artist, provided unencrypted AACs, and notified people that those files were unencrypted, it would have no effect, or a positive affect, on sales.
The only problem is who would propose such a thing. Artists would probably have the best position - a popular, perhaps indie group of artists could get iTunes to consider such a trial. Or, and this is a long shot, Apple could convince the RIAA to try this with one of their artists. The point is, if there were a bunch of experimental evidence that DRM can only hurt sales, perhaps the RIAA would get the drift.
Unfortunately, Apple probably won't lead the crusade to let iTunes be accessed by open source multiplatform clients or a web interface, but if they were to show that DRM free music could work, then the RIAA might allow it and somebody might fill that niche.

--
Litigious bastards
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Jon+Abbott · 2003-10-23 09:50 · Score: 1

128kbps fixed rate AACs downloaded from iTMS
As far as I know, AACs have a variable bit rate by design... The 128 kbps figure you see is the average bitrate. I could be wrong though.

--
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Re:Maybe Offtopic -1 RTFA -1 by Jon+Abbott · 2003-10-23 10:00 · Score: 1

I wouldn't blame the copy protection for causing the "muddled" sound they are hearing... AACs and MP3s both seem to have a problem dealing with hiss and "ess" sounds... My guess is that because these types of sounds are pretty close to white noise, the encoders have trouble producing a compressed approximation of it. The unfortunate result is "muddled" sound at the point where a hiss or "ess" sound occurs. 128 kbps AACs from the iTunes Music Store have this trouble to some degree, as do most compressed audio formats at lower bitrates. These AACs definitely do reproduce sounds better than a 128 kbps MP3, but not much better than a 160 or 192 kbps MP3. Until Apple offers higher bitrate versions of their music, I'm not quite sure there is a way around this problem. I imagine that they won't be offering higher quality versions though, because that would offset their "x songs in your pocket" claim marketing claims for the iPod.

--
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware

Questions on MusicMatch by IA-Outdoors · 2003-10-23 04:26 · Score: 1

A year or more ago I purchased lifetime updateds to MusicMatch (back when linux was supported). I have only used it as a jukebox and haven't downloaded the latest versions for downloadable music. Can anyone provide some more indepth analysis than what this report is giving.

--
You never saw a fish on the wall with its mouth shut.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:27 · Score: 0

It's marked as a troll because this is an Apple article. How dare the poster link Apple with the RIAA, and how dare he boycott a product of Apple's!!!

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:27 · Score: 0, Informative

Why? It's not exactly as if he's posted a justification.

And his comment about "for any reason" - so if the RIAA sues Apple for putting too harsh a DRM on their music, requiring Apple distribute everything in Ogg Vorbis format (yeah, I know, not very likely), he's going to boycott them?

Costly, limited music by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:27 · Score: 0

I'm glad this is out there but I for one continue to enjoy the ease-of-use and expansive libraries, to say nothing the absence of DRM which I truly abhor on philosophic grounds, of the various free services.

Then again if you are so morally inhibited you can't bring yourself to install k-lite, you should probably support the music industry ... I mean SOMEBODY has to, right?

OPINION: Probably will be modded down by Acidic_Diarrhea · 2003-10-23 04:28 · Score: 1, Insightful

I find nothing cool about Ahmet Zappa, an annoying bore who's far too full of himself considering he's simply riding Frank's coattails to mediocre fame, or Ludacris, who seems to be very, very dumb - even for a rapper.

Honestly, maybe you are excited about this BUT this is just reaffirmation of the fact that there is very little interesting going on in the current popular music scene. It's nice that they're selling music online - now someone just has to start making some music worthy of being bought.

--
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.

Re:OPINION: Probably will be modded down by dcowart · 2003-10-23 04:51 · Score: 1

Try Emm Gryner, an asian girl from Canada. Pretty good music. http://www.emmgryner.com
She's got music on iTunes, otherwise it's a $17+ import on her site. But the CD on her site doesn't match the one availible on iTunes.

--
www.rdex.net
Re:OPINION: Probably will be modded down by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:23 · Score: 1

I'd have to disagree... Interpol is an excellent band. Not sure how they would come across live, but recorded they are quite good. Their lable is even RIAA free.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:OPINION: Probably will be modded down by sdcharle · 2003-10-23 08:16 · Score: 1

I thought Ludacris was phenomenally stupid myself, then I came to the realization it's all a joke. Like most novelty music, his album's not 'one for the ages', but it was good for a few laughs.

Brings yellow-toothed smile to my face by Maskirovka · 2003-10-23 04:29 · Score: 1, Troll

iTunes is the best choice on Windows.

As you read this play an mp3 of Johnny Knoxville laughing hysterically.

Re:Brings yellow-toothed smile to my face by IAmAMacOSXAddict · 2003-10-23 05:08 · Score: 1

Really, because as you read this I'm listening to an mp3 on iTunes Tourniquet by Marilyn Manson. and think you should put one on your neck to save the gene pool...

--
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows

Nope by Sloppy · 2003-10-23 04:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

The best "online music service" is still to buy CDs online, wait for them to arrive, and then rip'n'encode on your home computer, into whatever format happens to work best with ytour playback equipment. I'm not going to buy proprietary formats, because I don't know if I'll be able to play them next year -- heck, I can't even play most of them right now.

It's open or nothing. If you want the roughly $1k per year that I spend on music, then they way to get it is to sell me standard CDs, FLAC files, wav files, aiff files, or very high bitrate Vorbis files.

This little piece of the market has spoken. Don't complain about lost revenue, if you're not selling.

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Re:Nope by GlassHeart · 2003-10-23 06:10 · Score: 1

The best "online music service" is still to buy CDs online, wait for them to arrive, and then rip'n'encode on your home computer, into whatever format happens to work best with ytour playback equipment.
Obviously, an article has to establish criteria for the products or services that it is comparing. Your "best" method fails miserably in the "instant gratification" criterion, and the "cost for just one track" criterion. I'm happy it works for you, but that doesn't mean it's the "best" for anybody else.
Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:33 · Score: 0

AAC is an open format. MP3 is an open format. What exactly are you whining about?

The record companies will sell you a "open format" file when they have assurances you won't proceed to give it to 500 of your closest friends.
Re:Nope by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:49 · Score: 1

AAC is an open format. MP3 is an open format.

Not in the United States.

--
Will I retire or break 10K?
Re:Nope by OglinTatas · 2003-10-23 08:38 · Score: 1

The CDs I buy online are either from independents directly from their websites, CDBaby.com, or I buy used CDs from amazon's zstore. The indie artists get a bigger cut of the sales (obviously) while the affiliated artists are not getting much less than they would if I bought new... but the recording industry is.

--
More music, fewer hits
Re:Nope by KingNaught · 2003-10-23 08:41 · Score: 1

"The best "online music service" is still to buy CDs online, wait for them to arrive, and then rip'n'encode on your home computer, into whatever format happens to work best with ytour playback equipment. I'm not going to buy proprietary formats, because I don't know if I'll be able to play them next year -- heck, I can't even play most of them right now. " iTunes lets you burn songs to CD/DVD. Just buy songs you want burn them to CD, then you can play it in any CD player on earth or Rip the songs from the CD using whatever encoding software you normaly use. And $.99 isn't a bad price. Most full albums on iTunes go for under $10. And the best part is you only have to buy the songs you actually want off the album, which for me is ually 2 or 3. iTunes will be a lot cheaper for me in the long run.
Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 09:51 · Score: 0

Depends on the music. I buy all my "important" music that I want to own and love and listen to all night long, on CD. Mostly indie stuff. It's really cool to own a CD that some small band put out themselves, and maybe slipped a sticker or a handwritten note into. I was in a band once and we put out a couple tapes (years back) and I kinda understand what it's like to have someone buy it, it's really nothing like the experience from the vast RIAA CD-pressing machine.

On the other hand, if I want to hear some "popular" stuff, or top 40 stuff, or some old Ella Fitzgerald song, I hit the itunes shop. Then I re-encode to MP3 so I can listen on my Zaurus. I still keep the AAC around though because I'm sure it will be cracked one of these days, at that point I'll probably start buying even more.

Anyway the point is, all those times you might've wanted to hear a couple songs and then didn't bother listening again, that's what the itunes store is best for, even if you are CD and vinyl lover like myself.
Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 17:53 · Score: 0

You're an ignorant ass who probably spends $1K of your PARENT'S money maybe, but definitely not your own.

FYI, AAC is MPEG-4, an OPEN format.

The one you want to be ranting against is WMA. Dipshit.

Awww, man.. by LePrince · 2003-10-23 04:29 · Score: 1, Redundant

I feel just like someone who's in line to see Star Wars when Homer gets out of the theater and says "Man I don't believe Darth Vader was Luke's father !!!"

You stole the article's punch by putting in your submission. Why should I even bother reading it now?

;-)))))

Re:Awww, man.. by cgranade · 2003-10-23 04:52 · Score: 1

So you can /. the server... duh!

--
#define DRM chmod 000
Re:Awww, man.. by BobTheJanitor · 2003-10-23 06:55 · Score: 1

Um, I think you mean The Empire Strikes Back. Yoda confirms it in Jedi, but Vader breaks the news to Luke in Empire.

Fundamental Problem by JSkills · 2003-10-23 04:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Ok, I can certainly appreciate the issues of copyright and the industry wanting to keep their chokehold on the river of money generated by the traditional sales of music, but this quote from the article leaves us with a fundamental problem.

To hinder mass copying, songs you buy from the three stores are in special encrypted formats, not the open MP3 format. Each service also operates via its own special software, not via a Web browser. This software doubles as a music jukebox that can organize and play all the music on a PC, including your existing MP3 files.

What does this really do? A "special encrypted format"? This is significant limitation. Again, I understand the issues, but is it really necessary to force people to (1) install some special software in the first place (2) use this special software to make purchases (3) use this special software to play music on their computers (4) use this special software to actually burn the music to a CD?

A great deal of the music I have on CD (all 800 of them) is ripped to MP3 and sitting on my Archos jukebox. I guess these online music solutions care not about people like me.

Not to be a big baby, but I also hate the idea of having to use some catch-all piece of software, rather than choosing my own applications to browse/purchase (web browser), listen (xmms, winamp), and burn CDs (groaster) etc. Never mind that I run a Linux desktop too of course. I could understand if this was the only way they could think of to prevent unlawful activities. But once the music's on the CD, couldn't it just be ripped to MP3? So is their system not putting up secure walls but rather presenting annoying hurdles?

Please someone smack me down if I'm not thinking clearly (it wouldn't be the first time).

Re:Fundamental Problem by ivan256 · 2003-10-23 05:10 · Score: 1

A great deal of the music I have on CD (all 800 of them) is ripped to MP3 and sitting on my Archos jukebox. I guess these online music solutions care not about people like me.

Considering how few people have purchased an Archos jukebox, especially compared to the iPod; and considering the political and practical costs of caring about people like you, there's no good reason for any of these companies to cater to you. You're insignifigant. If you don't conform to the masses you will be inconvienienced by your practices. It's a common trait of a profit driven market. Besides, your niche is being served, however inconvieniently, by the record stores. You can still buy and rip CDs.
Re:Fundamental Problem by A+Crunchy+Zephyr · 2003-10-23 05:12 · Score: 1

I dont think that it is as bad as you think. At least for iTunes. (I have never seen the others) iTunes does not really use a "special encrypted format" it uses AAC which is part of the MPEG-4 spec. And it allows you to convert anything to mp3 if you like.
Yes, you do have to use iTunes to buy it, but once it is mp3 or ripped to cd you can play or burn the stuff on anything you like. I presume, (but am not sure) that you could use any AAC to mp3 converter to do the conversion, or any AAC player to play it.
Apple simply decided to put their stuff in a newer (some say better) format rather than the older more popular format ( a typical apple thing to do)
Re:Fundamental Problem by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:31 · Score: 1

You cannot convert AAC bought from the iTMS into anything else. You can burn them to an audio CD and re-rip them, but the quality will suffer and the legality is questionable.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:Fundamental Problem by JSkills · 2003-10-23 06:55 · Score: 1

You're certainly right about how very insignificant I am.
Record stores? Maybe, but I can still jump through the hoops and buy online/burn CDs/rip them to MP3 later if I don't feel like leaving my meaningless living space to go to the store ;-)
Re:Fundamental Problem by JSkills · 2003-10-23 07:02 · Score: 1

Thanks for clearing that up - the parent post confused me since it went against my understanding of iTunes.
Re:Fundamental Problem by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:55 · Score: 1

the quality will suffer

Significantly? Have you tried it? How, specifically, would you characterize the extra artifacts of wav -> AAC -> MP3 vs. wav -> MP3 more than a vague "there are more"?

and the legality is questionable

And answerable with "yes" as long as your copying is non-commercial (17 USC 1008).

--
Will I retire or break 10K?
Re:Fundamental Problem by Ohreally_factor · 2003-10-23 09:02 · Score: 1

I think it's more something like this:

Studio Master > AAC > WAV(or AIFF) >mp3

vs.

Studio Master > Audio CD (WAV or AIFF equivalent) > mp3

--
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Re:Fundamental Problem by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 09:59 · Score: 0

It's not so bad... if apple hadn't done this, the RIAA would be screaming LOUD and SHRILL and it would really be annoying.

Also, it's easy to get around. I know at least 3 ways to remove the DRM. so for me I can buy them all day long knowing I can convert them to WAV if I wanted to.

The same thing was true for DVD players. I avoided DVD for a while because of the whole CSS/DeCSS/etc bullshit. Then stuff like mplayer came out which let's me completely work with DVDs as if they were unencrypted. Now I buy DVDs, "rip" them to AVI and watch them on my handheld. Life is good.

So I consider apple's DRM a good thing, considering the context.. although it creates a minor inconvienience, it also serves us by keeping the RIAA vultures from flocking overhead.

Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by soluzar22 · 2003-10-23 04:31 · Score: 1

Personally, while I would defend unto death your right to obtain music from whatsoever source pleases you the most, I just can't get excited about the thought of downloading music.

For me, a huge part of being a music lover is the tactile quality of having a lot of CDs, and while I do play music on my PC, sometimes, I far prefer to slot a CD in my stereo. Apart from anything else, it doesn't mean using tying up a portion (however small) of my PCs CPU time.

I guess I'm in the minority now, huh?

-- Soluzar

--
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit

Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:53 · Score: 0

Mm, let's see.

Buying a CD
1. Drive to the store and find parking.
2. Browse the selection, notice that some stuff you really wanted is not available.
3. Choose the CDs you want.
4. Wait in line by the cash register.
5. Yay! Music!

Downloading
1. Launch the app and find the tune.
2. Download.
3. Yay! Music!
Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:55 · Score: 0

yep, pretty much. You must not move a lot...freakin jewel cases are heavy
Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by soluzar22 · 2003-10-23 04:56 · Score: 1

I know that this makes me old fashioned now, but I just kind of enjoy steps 2 & 3.

It's part of the process for me...

-- Soluzar

--
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by ichimunki · 2003-10-23 05:03 · Score: 1

Hmmm. I agree that it's hard to get excited about downloading from these particular onlines sources (nothing compares to the old emusic.com or just plain ripping from disc), but I have to disagree with the rest of what you're saying. CDs already seem kind chintzy to some of us who grew up in the era of vinyl. Gone are the days where you pull off the shrink wrap and out falls a lyric sheet, a booklet, pictures, other assorted gimcracks and geegaws. Gone are the days where cute tricks like locked grooves made listening to some vinyl a bit more interesting. Also gone: playing any 33 1/3 album at 45 for that Chipmunks sound, playing a wide hole 45 off center, picture discs, foldout covers, affordable indie singles, legible cover text, and probably a lot more.

To me, there is nothing less tactile than a smooth plastic disc. You can't even check the grooves to see how long the songs are! And those little booklets? Always printed on the same lame glossy paper, always printed with miniature type because that's the only way you can fit more than two words on a page. And those lame plastic cases. So easy to break, so annoying to attempt to replace.

For my part, I welcome the digital age. It means: custom playlists without changing physical media or time-consuming mix making, putting my mp3 server on shuffle and not hearing the same song twice for over a month, having Festival act as my own personal DJ, no more scratches, pops, dings on the physical media. The only thing missing is the packaging, which I've already pointed out has lost 99% of its enjoyment during the switch from vinyl to CDs anyway.

Anyway, that's my rant and I'm sticking to it. :)

--
I do not have a signature
Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by shotfeel · 2003-10-23 05:36 · Score: 1

Minority maybe, but not alone. I'm not exactly sure why, but I'm not all that excited about downloading music either.

I don't know how others felt about the transition to CDs, but the great promise of the CD was that it has great sound quality that doesn't degrade with time and use like vinyl or tape. If properly cared for you would never need to replace a CD in your lifetime.

Maybe its because I spent so much time and money replacing my vinyl and tapes with CDs, but I don't want to buy a bunch of music now and have to start repurchasing it in 5 years in a lossless, possible better than CD quality format.
Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by ichimunki · 2003-10-23 06:07 · Score: 1

Dang. Sorry for the unclosed anchor tag. I swear I previewed that post too!

--
I do not have a signature
Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:37 · Score: 1

I also enjoy steps 2 and 3 of the old fashioned way. I can go with friends, we can show eachother new stuff. Browse the used CD's. Listen to what's on the store stereo. Talk with the clerks about local band, upcoming show, new and upcoming releases. Meet new people. Find a hidden rare out of print CD. Plus I get the CD case, the artwork, and the ability to rip into any format I want. Not to mention 9 times out of 10 the record store is more likely to have what I'm looking for (and often cheaper) than iTunes.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:Don't you prefer to buy a CD? by RatBastard · 2003-10-23 06:45 · Score: 1

I've already got more CDs than I have room to store. It's not that I buy a lot of CDs, it's that I've been buying them since the 1980s. The collection tends to build up after a while. And while I do like to look at the artwork and such, it hasn't been the same since the death of the 33-1/3 LP with it's nice 12" package.

And more and more I'm finding that I don't like all of teh songs an many new releases. Most new releases I might like one or two songs and hate the rest. Combined with living in a place with crappy selection and higher than average prices, the incentive to buy an entiire CD is just not there.

Sure, I could buy CDs from Amazon and wait for my CDs to arrive, I'm still usually spending more than I want to, or I'm waiting longer than I care to. (I buy from Amazon because they are one of the few retailors that will ship USPS to Alaska and not completely rape me on the shipping charges.)

While online purchases isn't the perfect sollution ofr everyone, or for all situations, it works for me.

--
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.

another thing to consider.... by larry+bagina · 2003-10-23 04:31 · Score: 1

... is if the company will be in business next month. Apple has been around over 20 years, so AAC is likely to be useable next year (MS has been around, so WMA will probably be around as well).

Musicmatch, napster 2, etc are startups with no track record. How long they last may depend on their burn rate. Best Buy (buymusic.com) is the only other player that's not wet behind the ears, but their committment to eMusic is unknown.

--
Do you even lift?

These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

Re:another thing to consider.... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:04 · Score: 0

Buymusic.com is NOT best buy. They are entirely different companies. And as far as I'm concerned buymusic blows.
Re:another thing to consider.... by decairn · 2003-10-23 05:34 · Score: 1

I think behind Musicmatch front name is RCA/Thomson as an investor. Their not strictly a start-up.

copyright protection? by xpl_the_myst · 2003-10-23 04:32 · Score: 1

How do these three services ensure copyright protection? I mean, what technology? Just because they encrypt stuff doesnt mean that it's safe - someone has to decrypt it somewhere before sending it to the sound card, and what's more, this is your computer, so you can figure out where that's done. So how do they ensure you don't pick out the audio data and then use it as you like?

Or is it simply protection by obfuscation? No one knows how the code goes and so no one tries to break it? So we all have to wait for some midnight hacker to come along and destroy all these services ...

I had this idea that without special hardware support, there was no way anyone could keep some content that was ultimately on my machine safe from me. This thing seems to go against that belief. Or am I missing something straight in front of me?

--
This sig is empty.

Re:copyright protection? by kinshadow · 2003-10-23 04:40 · Score: 1

Well, it has mentioned 1000 times that iTunes uses AAC and Napster uses WMA. That about the best they can do for DRM.

--
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.
Re:copyright protection? by xpl_the_myst · 2003-10-23 04:43 · Score: 1

How does this AAC or WMA format keep you from getting at the music? I mean, it might be protected by some key or something, but it finally has to be decrypted on your computer, so I don't see how you can't do it yourself.

Yes, I do remember not being able to play some WMA files some time but I don't have any idea how they do it. Anyone know the details?

--
This sig is empty.

You need advanced searching by tune by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:33 · Score: 1, Insightful

Use your microphone to hum a bit of the song, then upload the resulting wav file, and have the computer return a set of songs that contain that melodic line.

I'd pay good money for that.

Re:You need advanced searching by tune by quacking+duck · 2003-10-23 05:07 · Score: 1

Funny thing is the new iPod software has a simple game that does exactly the reverse. It plays a few seconds from a song, gives the list of five titles and YOU have to guess which song it is! The potential for an "In Soviet Russia" crack is too easy...
Re:You need advanced searching by tune by pbooktebo · 2003-10-23 05:50 · Score: 1

As a music teacher, I have two points:
1. "a bit of the song" would match up with millions of songs, as so many melodic fragments exist all over the place, and only the gestalt of qualities (timbre, lyrics, instrumentation, tempo, etc.) result in something that is actually somewhat unique.
2. The confusion between most people's less-than-perfect singing and the (of course) messy prospect of "tune recognition" (think Newton's handwriting recognition), on top of the fact that what someone sings may be the melody, backup vocals, bassline, or drum break (intro to "Hot for Teacher"), and I don't think this will be ready for prime time for centuries.
Re:You need advanced searching by tune by jo_ham · 2003-10-23 05:55 · Score: 1

The service is offered in the UK on cell phones already.

You call a special number and then listen to a short segment of a song playing on the radio or out of any speakers but just holding your phone nearby.

The computer on the other end then attempts to work out what song it is and it sends a text message with artist, album and track info.

I don't know how good it is since I don't have a cell phone that supports the service.
Re:You need advanced searching by tune by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 08:13 · Score: 0

There are many query-by-humming papers and databases running around in academic circles. They've had quite a bit of sucess, but only with midi files as of yet.

Bananas for MPAA RIAA and Kev's mom by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:33 · Score: 0

Shhhh, you will be fined for illegal download of the textual version of the phrase "commercial music". The audio version is a bigger fine.

I thought the Banana Republic sold Bananas and related items such as Banana juice, Banana bread, Banana-melon "quenchers", and new baby name books with Banana-fana-fo-fana-less names so your child can avoid the abuse of unwanted Banana'ing.

Let's all download Banana Rama mp3s to confuse the hell out of them litigious Banastards.

This is the plan: Download the worst music possible (other than the commercially chart breaking "worst" already out there). Stuff that hasn't been cool for decades. Then the industry will see the "trend" for old garbage and when they start pumping out rehashed pre-re-released copycats of previous decades trash they can blame Napaster and us "thieves" for slumping sales instead of poor product and awful market conditioning. ...damn! Another plan already in effect and nobody told me, I thought I had an original here too.

Johnny Crash

hukt on fonix werkt for me!

Re:Sorry, not interested. by MooCows · 2003-10-23 04:33 · Score: 4, Informative

You should try the Riaa Radar
It shows you which labels are not affiliated with the RIAA, and thus are 'safe'

--
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Sloppy · 2003-10-23 04:34 · Score: 1

Why do you boycott non-RIAA labels in response to RIAA's activities?

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:34 · Score: 0

I will not listen to music as long as there are lawsuits -- or laws.

Any *other* innovators out there? by mithran8 · 2003-10-23 04:35 · Score: 1

Although there have been several attempts at online music services in the past, I find it very interesting that the only 'viable' and well-publicized services today can be considered derivatives of the iTMS.

The same is true for the iPod - there were several HD-based MP3 players on the market before its launch, and more than a few released after. However, virtually all 'modern' portables seem to take several chapters from the iPod playbook, and some are far less subtle.

I won't believe that Apple is the only company with the talent to conceive and release groundbreaking products, but they may very well be one of the few companies with the courage to do so. I find this to be very disheartening.

--
An object at rest cannot be stopped!

Re:Any *other* innovators out there? by pdbogen · 2003-10-23 04:48 · Score: 1

I swear by my Archos Recorder.

Redownloading Songs? by kinshadow · 2003-10-23 04:35 · Score: 1

Napster is the only service that will redownload songs you've purchased, even if you're using a different computer. Does anyone know if iTunes will ever get this feature?

--
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.

Re:Redownloading Songs? by falcon5768 · 2003-10-23 04:45 · Score: 1

maybe since that has been a complaint by a few people who didnt backup their harddrive (I for one learned the hard way its always safer to have a backup)
What you can do with iTunes is download some, then pause and download the rest, I have actually done this and it works fine.
course you cant play it on a different computer unless you authorize it so you will never be able to play it on more than 3 computers (yes even streaming unfortunatly doesnt let you play them, that I also tried streaming my iBook to a iMac at work.

--
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."

iTunes Rip to Mp3? by mankey+wanker · 2003-10-23 04:35 · Score: 1

How are rights managed after you rip the song to Mp3 as stated in the article? Can you rip at any bit rate?

Re:iTunes Rip to Mp3? by kinshadow · 2003-10-23 04:37 · Score: 1

They don't apply DRM to stuff you rip, just stuff you download.

--
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.
Re:iTunes Rip to Mp3? by fdiv_bug · 2003-10-23 05:03 · Score: 1

You can rip to any bitrate as set in the preferences, and there are no restrictions on it regardless of whether you've set it to rip to MP3 or AAC.

`bug.

BuyMusic.com by Therlin · 2003-10-23 04:36 · Score: 1

I'm glad that they are not even being considered. Horrible restrictions, and even worse customer service.

Re:BuyMusic.com by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:30 · Score: 0

Buymusic doesn't even work on firebird. Shame on them!

Legal != commercial by fiffilinus · 2003-10-23 04:38 · Score: 1

Seems only thing considered legal nowadays is something making money for someone - preferably some (RI)|(MPA)AA kind of outfit.

*Free* stuff also is legal. If a band decides to offer their music for free download, this is legal, too.

Go to that other site for a nice discussion and list of free legal music downloads.

What's so special about iTunes by prostoalex · 2003-10-23 04:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

With everyone raving so much about iTunes being the "best app ever" for Windows users, it's been hard for me to see what the advantage is. I mean, iTunes is easy to use and nice and all, but it's hardly fundamentally different from a variety of services out there.

I downloaded the application the first day it came out, and so far liked it, but come on, there's nothing super-duper-extra-spectacular about it. Furthermore, there are some minor technical and technological problems that I've experienced.

1) Selection of radio genres is not that great. If all you wanted was to listen to some high-quality Internet radio, the genres and bitrates are okay, but MusicMatch and Live365 seem to be better.

2) Some radios are just silent. Listed in the app, some radios just don't have any music on the air.

3) All downloaded music is in AAC format. Great if you have iPod. Sucks for like 99% of the music players outthere that support MP3 and WMA. Yeah, there's always a way of burning a disk, then ripping that into MP3, but that's a hassle.

Other than that iTunes seems to be a nice app to have around for a music lover, but come on, it's just one of many. With Napster and Microsoft getting into the arena the competition will be heated.

Re:What's so special about iTunes by Mononoke · 2003-10-23 04:57 · Score: 1

1) Selection of radio genres is not that great. If all you wanted was to listen to some high-quality Internet radio, the genres and bitrates are okay, but MusicMatch and Live365 seem to be better.
So add Live365 stations to your iTunes library. It's easy, works quite well, and you only have to do it once, saving you from searching every time for stations.

--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Re:What's so special about iTunes by ryanvm · 2003-10-23 04:57 · Score: 1

I downloaded [iTunes] the first day it came out, and so far liked it, but come on, there's nothing super-duper-extra-spectacular about it.

Hello? Apple makes it.

[Remember, this is Slashdot.]
Re:What's so special about iTunes by mizidymizark · 2003-10-23 04:59 · Score: 1

In response to the Radio selections, you can also play any Shoutcast streams as well. Also, in response to the AAC comment, I would prefer the higher quality AAC to MP3, or worse, WMA, any day of the week. Just because the iPod is the only player now to listen to it, how many do you think will be available in a year?
Re:What's so special about iTunes by prostoalex · 2003-10-23 04:59 · Score: 1

Oh, you can do that? Thanks for the tip, I didn't realize that was available, I thought the radio selection was pre-selected by Apple and that was it.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by Dixie_Flatline · 2003-10-23 04:59 · Score: 1

3) All downloaded music is in AAC format. Great if you have iPod. Sucks for like 99% of the music players outthere that support MP3 and WMA. Yeah, there's always a way of burning a disk, then ripping that into MP3, but that's a hassle.

Actually, iPods had 30% of sell-through marketshare in July and August, and they're well thought of as the single most popular MP3 player out there. Sure, the iPod is one player among many, but most of them are crap.

So, quite a few people that are picking up iTunes already have an iPod. It IS kind of lousy for people that don't have one, but maybe they should just jump on the bandwagon. ;)
Re:What's so special about iTunes by CaptScarlet22 · 2003-10-23 05:04 · Score: 1

1) Selection of radio genres is not that great. If all you wanted was to listen to some high-quality Internet radio, the genres and bitrates are okay, but MusicMatch and Live365 seem to be better.

I don't know if you know this, but you can type in a URL from iTunes, it's called OPEN STREAM.

Other than that iTunes seems to be a nice app to have around for a music lover, but come on, it's just one of many.

Just one of many??? Are you crazy??? Have you tried the Smart Playlist yet??? Winamp could never be so good. The whole playlist function is alone the best in the business.

And you don't see what Apple has done for the "PC" community, have you???

CS.....out

--
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
Re:What's so special about iTunes by prostoalex · 2003-10-23 05:06 · Score: 1

Apple was late to the digital music player market, and even though in terms of sales they might boast a nice market share, the market saturation is not that high.

Also, from my personal experience - when I got a PDA (first it was Sharp Zaurus, later on - Dell Axim), I stopped using my MP3 player and sold it on Amazon Marketplace, since I couldn't see any value in it. Track management and options are just so much easier on PDA, and you can plug in CompactFlash cards of any size (up to a gig for now, but I never actually had a need to store 20 gigs on a device).

However, what rocks, as far as I know, is being able to listen to an audiobook on PC, then sync to iPod and continue listening where you've left off. According to Steve Jobs' presentation, that was kickass feature. Yeah, no one else does that for now.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by prostoalex · 2003-10-23 05:12 · Score: 1

Have you tried the Smart Playlist yet??? Winamp could never be so good.

I still don't get it. Yeah, Smart Playlist is cool, I don't use it a lot (I prefer to listen to the whole music library at once), but that's just me.

Not to turn this into a flamewar, but if you have Windows XP + XP Plus + Windows Media Player 9 (yeah, bite me for quoting MS apps), you have the same features via voice recognition. You can launch the WMP9, then say something like "Media Player, play genre Jazz", and get a new playlist with that genre on the fly, or something like "Media Player, play artist Britney Spears" would get you can probably guess what.

And you don't see what Apple has done for the "PC" community, have you???

In general, or with iTunes? I see contribution of Apple and Steve Jobs to the PC market historically, but fail to see that with iTunes specifically.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by brian6string · 2003-10-23 05:17 · Score: 0

Maybe it's just me, but:
I don't want to download tunes to listen to them on my iPod, or any portable device. I want to listen to them on my PC, or in my car MP3/CD player. Transferring to an iPod or Samsung thingee just aren't what I want.

Another limitation of iTunes is complete lack of support for internet proxies or firewalls. Which means I can't use it at work. I don't know about you, but I spend most of my computer time (and therefore, my uninterrupted music listening time) at work.

I downloaded both iTunes and MusicMatch 8.1. Musicmatch has a "free" radio station feature, (by genre), that allows you to listen to and buy tunes. Pretty nice...and it works in my company's firewall/proxy/internet-nazi environment.

iTunes also lacks some of the nice jukebox features that MusicMatch has (like AutoDJ).

As for whether a music library has x00,000 songs or y00,000 songs--who cares? I want to know if it has the songs I'm looking for. Number of songs in a library is a meaningless metric.

Ok, I have to get back to "work" now.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:32 · Score: 0

Not to turn this into a flamewar, but if you have Windows XP + XP Plus + Windows Media Player 9 (yeah, bite me for quoting MS apps), you have the same features via voice recognition.

Voice control/recognition is standard in OS X 10.2.x...it's on the system preferences under "Speech"
Re:What's so special about iTunes by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:44 · Score: 0

I too, listen to music on my PC & CD players (which also play MP3 CDs). For this, I found the interface to ITunes to be lacking to the point of being unusable. I uninstalled it after 5 minutes.

My wife loves Music Match. I eventually tried it. Their radio stations are really good.

The problem I ran into was that you had to be an Administrator to use Music Match on Windows 2000. Did they fix that?
Re:What's so special about iTunes by dnquark137 · 2003-10-23 05:55 · Score: 1

Well, iTunes is very functional, and very easy to use. This last point is very important for the less technical crowd, which Apple traditionally courted. (Plus, lots of non-techie people buy iPods just because it's an expensive toy that's chic at the moment.) I imagine that for a lot of people, iTunes will be the starting point for digitizing their CD collection.

I personally am not drooling over it too much, and am frankly a bit disappointed. It seems that Apple designers became so focused on implementing everything and the kitchen sink (ripping, burning, store, etc) that they overlooked making it into a quality music player. Yes, it has great playlist features. But this doesn't make it a great player.

As it stands, the iTunes' interface is simply too clunky (for playing music.) Much worse than Winamp, which is very compact yet functional. Winamp gives you full playback controls, shows the playlist, without taking too much screen real estate. I can put it where I need it, so that it's always at my fingertips, yet takes up minimum amount of space: it can run out of system tray; it can remain docked on top of other windows at the corner of the screen, just big enough to show controls and maybe a couple of playlist entries, etc. (With plugins you can get even more very convenient features, like global keyboard/mouse shortcuts.)

With iTunes, it's all or nothing. The full application has to be in the foreground if you want to browse through the playlist, or just have the playlist in plain sight. This is a pain in the ass. If you minimize the program to its compact size, you just get minimal controls; you can't see the playlist, and the program still wastes space on the taskbar as opposed to minimizing to system tray.

It shouldn't be hard to make iTunes do all that Winamp does right now in terms of UI. For starters, how about an option to display the playlist in the compact size? Not the entire title/genre/composer/blah/blah/ grid, just the title and the artist. Make the program minimizeable to tray. Implement global keyboard shortcuts. Give a few options for resizing/docking the compact view window. Then the program will truly be insanely great.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by shotfeel · 2003-10-23 06:05 · Score: 1

iTunes is easy to use and nice and all, but it's hardly fundamentally different from a variety of services out there

Don't confuse iTunes with the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). I think of the iTMS as just being one of the features of iTunes. You're right though, it isn't fundamentally different from the others in any one way, but IMO that doesn't mean the package as a whole isn't fundamentally better. YMMV.

1) Selection of radio genres is not that great.

Can't argue with that, but I thought there was a way to add more stations to the iTunes list. Unfortunately I can't figure out how, so I may be wrong (that'd be a first -just ask my wife).

3) All downloaded music is in AAC format.

Which brings up the question of when other music players will start supporting more standards -AAC is part of the mpeg4 standard. And we all know about the ogg fans around here.

Of course then you get into the problem that even though AAC is a standard, the DRM system used is not. I don't know if its possible, much less feasible, for other manufacturers to license the FairPlay scheme to enable their players to work with files from the iTMS. Anybody have any info on this?
Re:What's so special about iTunes by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:43 · Score: 0

I usually burn my protected AAC songs to a disk and then rip it to MP3 in iTunes. I don't notice any loss of quality esp if you set your MP3 bit rate to match the AAC rate. Think about this people there shouldn't be any loss of quality at all.

One of the neat thing about doing this is that title information, artist information, etc. All get preserved on the MP3!

Anyway I resot to doing this so that I can listen to the tunes on my MP3 player in my car. It's a bit bothersome and it wastes a lot of disks but hey disks are dirt cheap and it gives you a lot more flexibility.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by sean23007 · 2003-10-23 07:47 · Score: 1

3) All downloaded music is in AAC format. Great if you have iPod. Sucks for like 99% of the music players outthere that support MP3 and WMA. Yeah, there's always a way of burning a disk, then ripping that into MP3, but that's a hassle.

You know, you're right! Instead of using an upcoming standard, like AAC (it's MPEG-4 audio), they should have used a real standard, like WMA. That way, it would make it virtually "impossible" for MS to compete with them... and they wouldn't even have to PAY MS FOR THE RIGHTS TO RIP TO WMA IN THEIR PROGRAM. Are you seriously complaining about the lack of WMA support? WMA sucks.

--

Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 08:25 · Score: 0

And I suppose your Mac hardware/software/iTunes app and iPod all came from a variety of vendors, with second-sourcing available?
Re:What's so special about iTunes by Have+Blue · 2003-10-23 09:48 · Score: 1

In regards to point 1 and 2, iTunes is not limited to playing only the streams listed in the Radio. Look under the Advanced menu, it will connect to (and add to the library) any mp3 stream on the net.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by takshaka · 2003-10-23 10:33 · Score: 1

I don't care about speech recognition (in fact I would hate talking to my computer), but I wrote a little Perl app to play songs in winamp based on Infocom-style commands: "play all live rock by liz phair" or whatever. And at home I use a similar app to control my Audiotron.

The smart playlists in iTunes are okay but don't chain logical operations, which is a pain.
Re:What's so special about iTunes by sean23007 · 2003-10-31 04:45 · Score: 1

Maybe it depends on what you prefer. Would you rather be locked in to a set of cheap and crappy hardware from third party vendors looking to make a buck by playing crappy WMA from Microsoft which is DRM'd to beat the band, or would you rather be locked into the best available portable audio player made by a company looking to make excellent products which play the upcoming audio standard (which has very reasonable DRM) by Apple? I know what I'd choose.

--

Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by mizidymizark · 2003-10-23 04:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes, you are showing the man that as long as the artists are defending their rights to have copyrighted material, you will continue to steal music from them. I don't agree with the RIAA tactics, but they have to try something to defend their rights. Maybe if the online music stores do well, then the RIAA will see that there are ways to use the Internet successfully, and therefore stop such aggresive measures. By refusing to buy music from any source, you are simply fueling their fire.

Redownloading songs in iTunes by Silvertre · 2003-10-23 04:41 · Score: 1

According to the article it states that, using iTunes, one cannot download a song more than once. So what happens if my computer crashes and I didn't have a chance to backup some songs, I'de have to buy the songs again?

Re:Redownloading songs in iTunes by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:55 · Score: 0

So what happens if my computer crashes and I didn't have a chance to backup some songs

What happens if your house burns down and your music CDs are destroyed? Nobody owes you another copy.

Pop your iPod into the cradle after buying your songs, and there's your backup copies. Otherwise, duplicate your purchase songs or music folder to CD, DVD or a second volume at least once per day. If you're not backing up your data nightly, you deserve what you get when disaster strikes.
Re:Redownloading songs in iTunes by EvilFrog · 2003-10-23 04:59 · Score: 1

Yep, same as if you'd bought a CD and lost it. You buy a copy, you protect your copy. Simple as that.

To the best of my knowledge Apple doesn't keep track of the songs you've bought. Funny how people complain so much about companies spying on their downloads and purchases, yet here people are complaining that they're not spying on your downloads and purchases. Sometimes you have to decide whether to keep the cake or eat it.
Re:Redownloading songs in iTunes by Box+Checker · 2003-10-23 05:12 · Score: 1

yes, you would have to buy the songs again. just like you'd have to buy a new cd if you lost one and didn't have a backup copy.

Support it where you find it. by torpor · 2003-10-23 04:41 · Score: 1

Like

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --

MOD PARENT - INFORMATIVE by GeneralEmergency · 2003-10-23 04:41 · Score: 1

Thanks! Very helpful resource.

--
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency

iTunes/Pepsi by amnesty · 2003-10-23 04:41 · Score: 1

It looks like Apple is poised to win the online digital music vending business. They right now have the best promotions to attract people to find out about their service, and I think the Pepsi promotion this February will bring a LOT of users to the service. iTunes is free and you get a free song. Heck, buying cases of Pepsi and getting a couple of free songs.

I just installed iTunes for Windows the other day and was amazed at how easy it was to use... mirroring the thoughts of countless reviews of the service. This is the key, because if it's easy to use, average-joe user (i.e. the big market) will like to use it. And with the best fair-use policies of all of them, and many artists backing them (rebooted or not, why would Metallica suddenly feel good about a product named 'Napster'?) I think this is the one chance for legal music downloads succeeding.

The problem with the business model of all of these is that the same thing is available free. Well now it's cheap... 99 cents you can buy ONLY the songs you like instead of the entire album where only 3 songs are good, and they are better quality than what is on Kazaa.

The iPod's huge market share certainly doesn't hurt their case.

Re:iTunes/Pepsi by hondo77 · 2003-10-23 05:19 · Score: 1

rebooted or not, why would Metallica suddenly feel good about a product named 'Napster'?

Metallica seems to care about money a whole lot these days so I'm sure they have their price (which seems to get lower all the time).

--
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Re:iTunes/Pepsi by Ohreally_factor · 2003-10-23 09:15 · Score: 1

Lars has big Kleenex bills.

--
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.

iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by illumin8 · 2003-10-23 04:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Just so you all know I'm not an Apple hater, I own a 30GB iPod and I love it. I also use iTunes for Windows and I've already bought a couple of albums. I agree with the article that iTunes is the best jukebox and music store for Windows, but isn't this the same author that gives every single Apple product a favorable review? It would be nice to see reviews from an unbiased source.

I like Apple products quite a bit and I'll probably buy a 15" G4 PowerBook in the next couple of weeks, but something that really bothers me about the Apple culture and the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is that it seems like the Apple zealots love any product that Apple releases, regardless of how good or bad it is. Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999 and Mac fanatics would be lining up around the block to buy it.

Appreciation of a good or well thought out product is one thing. Blind zealotry is quite another and I see entirely too much of that in the Apple world.

--
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon

Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:53 · Score: 0

Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999

OMG that's funny. True dat.
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by shaneb11716 · 2003-10-23 05:06 · Score: 1

Appreciation of a good or well thought out product is one thing. Blind zealotry is quite another and I see entirely too much of that in the Apple world.

s/Apple/OSS/

-Shane

--
I love teh int4rw3b!!!!!111one1
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by xpccx · 2003-10-23 05:17 · Score: 1

Appreciation of a good or well thought out product is one thing. Blind zealotry is quite another and I see entirely too much of that in the Apple world.

So which products are you referring to? Which products has Apple released that sucked but Apple zealots loved?

I'm not a long time Mac "zealot" but the only product I'm not happy with is Apple Works ( so I'm using MS Office v. X ). Could it be that Apple products get favorable reviews because they're much better than similar offerings on Windows? You don't find it telling that the best jukebox and music store for Windows is made by Apple?

Besides, Jobs wouldn't try and sell something like the iShit because Gates already did that and called it Windows ME. :)
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by kimgh · 2003-10-23 05:22 · Score: 1

OK, how about Josh Bernoff at CNET.com?
Or, how about Mike Langberg at the San Jose Mercury News?
Are they unbiased enough for you?
I'm curious which products you think are s__t? (That was a rather disgusting metaphor, by the way!)
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by danlor · 2003-10-23 05:31 · Score: 1

Two words for you:

G4 Cube

Did everyone like it? Yes. Did everyone buy it? No.

While mac users do love their Macs, thier love is most definately not unconditional. On top of that, price most definately matters. From what I have seen, people will pay more to increase precieved value, but like everything, this has its' limits.
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by nate+nice · 2003-10-23 05:36 · Score: 3, Funny

Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999 and Mac fanatics would be lining up around the block to buy it.

That's a good one, heh. Where can I put in a pre-order? Do I have to pay for the food also?

--
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by illumin8 · 2003-10-23 05:38 · Score: 1

I'm curious which products you think are s__t? (That was a rather disgusting metaphor, by the way!)

Thanks for the links to other reviews, I hadn't seen those yet. To be honest with you, I love Apple's products. I can't think of any that have been released since Jobs took the reigns again that are shit... I guess I've just been reading message boards at Macrumors too much. It's funny because as soon as someone speculates on some new whizbang hardware product that will never see the light of day (like iTablet, etc., etc.), there are tons of Mac faithful that go "oooh! a shiny! If Apple makes it then it must be good." I guess I never understood that mentality. I always wait until the product is released and a few reviews have rolled in before I make my own unbiased decision about whether or not it's worth purchasing. To take the example of the iTablet, I have no use for it personally. Between my desktop, my laptop, my smart phone, and my iPod, I have enough gadgets already and I don't need an 8" tablet to browse the web from the toilet with.

Apple does have a great track record, with a few minor flops (iBook logic boards that fail if you look at them wrong come to mind).

BTW, sorry if I offended you with that metaphor. I was just trying to make a point.

--
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by hackstraw · 2003-10-23 05:44 · Score: 1

Apple zealots love any product that Apple releases, regardless of how good or bad it is.

s/Apple/Harley Davidson/g
s/zealots/bikers/g

Let me know when you have a free Friday or Saturday night and I'll come pick you up and go to a biker bar and we can get the Harley Reality Distortion Field straight.

It should not take more than 20 minutes or so.
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by bpbond · 2003-10-23 05:51 · Score: 1

Mossberg was pretty hard on Apple in the 90s, when they were turning out some real crap. You can certainly agree or disagree with his reviews, but I think implying that he's a "blind zealot" is inaccurate and unfair.

--
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:02 · Score: 0

Well, I don't know about products they sell, but their software updates have of late not been very good. MacOS X 10.2.8 had so many problems they had to pull it, and iPod firmware 2.1 broke the battery indicator, screwed up the screen brightness (on my ipod at least), and completely nuked lots of people's ipods.

Not everything Apple does is good.
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 10:08 · Score: 0

you have noticed that apple stuff is so much nicer than other stuff, right? I mean Windows is okay in a utilitarian way, and Linux is good as long as you turn off the GUI (sorry folks), but what comes close to apple's UI and design??

I see this "zealot" word dropped a little too easy around here, and the anti-anti-establishment slashdot folks lap it right up.
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by Jon+Abbott · 2003-10-23 10:12 · Score: 1

Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999
I knew he would come out with extras for the iToilet! :^)

--
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 10:14 · Score: 0

The coolest part? The translucent brushed-metal corn.

You won't see shit like that from Microsoft!
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by ax_42 · 2003-10-23 12:02 · Score: 1

We'll be watching your posts from the point in time when you get your Powerbook :)

Seriously, Apples just work. They are totally out of your way while you actually get things done. Once you've learnt that your computer can be like this -- everything works together and doesn't careful require care and feeding and reinstallation every time the planets change alignment -- every other OS/hardware combinations will pi** you off.

Yeah, all hardware sucks, all software sucks, but Apples suck so beautifully.
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by MasonMcD · 2003-10-23 14:10 · Score: 1

...but isn't this the same author that gives every single Apple product a favorable review? It would be nice to see reviews from an unbiased source.

Actually, Walt Mossberg used to regularly marginalize the mac, as did Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Herald. I don't think it was malicious; they just didn't see any stemming of the MS tide, and any mention of the mac was kind of meh. Now that FOSS and OS X have been steadily gaining traction, and MS is getting a bad rap *and it actually matters to people making the purchasing decisions* it's a different story.

I think Mossberg and Bray started coming around when 10.1 and the new PowerBooks came out.

Besides, if something is good and getting better all the time (Apple really hasn't stepped on its d**k much at all wrt OSX), why not say that? I consider myself a pretty realistic person, but I can't think of significant drawbacks of Apple hardware or software for their target audiences that haven't been already addressed for the most part.

Parse those weasel words, why dontcha? :)
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by yocuma · 2003-10-23 14:47 · Score: 1

What if everything they release is awesome?
I love everything I can think of. Maybe I am so blind that it makes me think all the apple crap I use is really good even though it is bad.
Ok, that is cool too though, because I am still happy.
Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source by ozric99 · 2003-10-23 18:06 · Score: 1

So which products are you referring to? Which products has Apple released that sucked but Apple zealots loved?
Every software product pre-OSX. How's that for starters? OSX is real nice, but before that Apple released nothing but shit.

has there been any converter program written? by fandelem · 2003-10-23 04:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

has there been any converter program written? like aac2mp3 or wmf2mp3 that will move through the encryption?

also i would be curious to know what security each of these 'stores' have in place, seeing how you are using their app to go over the network.. would be interesting to see if any concerns arose from shortcuts to meet promo deadlines..

--

--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.

Re:has there been any converter program written? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:45 · Score: 0

like aac2mp3 or wmf2mp3 that will move through the encryption?

The worst case scenario:
AAC/WMA -> Audio CD
Audio CD -> MP3
Re:has there been any converter program written? by chinton · 2003-10-23 06:28 · Score: 1

Yes, its called a "CD Burner". All of these sites allow you to burn a CD a limited number of times. But there is nothing they can do to keep you from burning a CD then ripping it into MP3...
Re:has there been any converter program written? by Gogo+Dodo · 2003-10-23 07:16 · Score: 1

Just a quick look results in these two:
mAC3dec
aacConverter

Support it where you find it: by torpor · 2003-10-23 04:44 · Score: 1

Like here, for example.

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --

boo! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:45 · Score: 0

Find the Dashboard fwibble before midnight!

Re:boo! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:47 · Score: 0

oh wait! It was under my Camera!

Re:Sorry, not interested. by worm+eater · 2003-10-23 04:49 · Score: 4, Informative

Give me a break. The RIAA does not speak for the entire music industry, and there are plenty of great independant labels and pseudo labels (such as CD Baby) that whole-heartedly disagree with the RIAA on many levels. Even before the RIAA was suing its customers it was fucking over the artists, many of whom have become basically indentured servants to the 'big 5.' Personally, I haven't bought major label music in years, just because I think that in general it isn't innovative. Here's who I *do* buy from:
Beta-lactam Ring
Elevator Bath
IDEA
Wholly Other

And last but not least, the best independant distributor of anything ever... Forced Exposure

--
Maybe partying will help...

Useful article over at Kuro5hin by Dammital · 2003-10-23 04:50 · Score: 1

Yesterday somebody at K5 posted a short article listing sites with downloadable music, including Magnatune (which somebody else mentioned).

Better article presentation by teko_teko · 2003-10-23 04:52 · Score: 1

I'm taking a business/technical writing class at the moment, and after viewing the link in the news, I noticed that it's not presented that well for people who don't really wanna read the whole thing but wants to get the comparisons only (lazy people like me). Something what my instructor will frown upon if we write something like this in his class.

I think if the article has tables for comparison between the 3 services, people will be able to compare them better and faster, dont you think?

I wasn't looking for opinions, just looking for the hard facts like: cost, number of songs available, etc.

or am I going too off-topic here? :P

Re:Sorry, not interested. by DFJA · 2003-10-23 04:53 · Score: 1

Have a look at: http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/eff_oal.php I think we should be doing our best to encourage artists to publish their own music under a free licence such as this, by downloading and listening to their music - after all that will ultimately make them more popular and hence more able to make a living from live concerts. After all, why should the RIAA and it's ilk make a living out of other people's talents, while simultaneously overpumping a very small number of artists and ignoring the vast majority who's artistic talent is equally good (sometimes better)? Yes I will buy music, but not from any organisation that has anything to do with the RIAA.

--
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.

proof? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:53 · Score: 0

go ahead and back up your trollbait with facts.

None of it matters. by trudyscousin · 2003-10-23 04:54 · Score: 1

Not that I've actually used anything but iTunes.

However, what these it alone has given me is a renewed appreciation for the compact disc. It's often possible to get a disc for the same amount of money as the m4p tracks of it.

Even when it's more expensive to get the disc, I still have something I can hold in my hand. Something I can see (even if cover and liner art will never be the same since the demise of the LP). The music doesn't come in a lossy format from the start. I can rip it into whatever format I want (copy protection schemes notwithstanding), and still have the original to fall back on.

Of course, none of this means anything to anyone who has that wacked sense of entitlement to music without paying for it...

--
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.

MusicMatch Radio by briggsb · 2003-10-23 04:54 · Score: 1

I find the MusicMatch Radio MX service to be much more suited to my listening habits than buying individual songs. I've blown lots of money on CDs that I only listened to for a few months. For $60/year I can listen to unlimited music from thousand of artists. I've tweaked my artist's match ed stations so I can listen to them for hours without a bad song. And if I get a hankering for an artist I just do the artist direct option and listen to music only from that performer. Saves me disk space too. I know everyone's listening habits are different (for instance if you want to take your music with you then you're screwed), but for me it works great.

Re:MusicMatch Radio by orion67 · 2003-10-23 07:25 · Score: 0

I've also been a subscriber to this service for a while and for the most part I really like it, despite the fact that the software is sometimes flaky.

I only wish there was a feature whereby I could exclude an artist. I don't care how much MusicMatch thinks that Creed is similar to Red Hot Chili Peppers, I think Creed sucks ass and I don't want to listen to them.

If Apple would make iTMS work with the majority of portable players out there, I'd certainly check it out. But as long as they are trying to force me to buy an iPod, I won't use it.
Re:MusicMatch Radio by briggsb · 2003-10-28 12:42 · Score: 1

Amen, I'd love to exclude Dave Matthews from my station.

To what end? by sacrilicious · 2003-10-23 04:54 · Score: 1

Thanks for the clarification. But why would they impose a restriction that is so easy to get around and inconsequential? Because I don't understand the intended point, I worry that I don't actually understand the restriction to begin with...

--
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.

Re:To what end? by oscast · 2003-10-23 05:07 · Score: 1

The idea is to keep people from mass-producing CDs. By throwing a small monkey wrench in the works it keeps the mass-producers of music out of the way (they're not allowed to re-sell these), but it doesn't hinder the average consumer who likely wouldn't want to make 10 duplicates of the exact same playlist anyways.
Re:To what end? by hondo77 · 2003-10-23 05:13 · Score: 1

The idea wasn't to make the DRM completely foolproof (it would never be) but to put up some obstacles that most people wouldn't spend the time to get around. Hence the 10 burns per playlist (but nothing to stop you from just duplicating the CD).

--
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Re:To what end? by cgenman · 2003-10-23 05:59 · Score: 1

The idea is to keep people from mass-producing CDs.

Except that you could just duplicate the 1st burned disk as a master, with no difference in audio quality.

I'm fairly certain this is just there to placate the labels. It's neither effective nor annoying, it's just odd.

--
The ______ Agenda
Re:To what end? by laird · 2003-10-23 07:15 · Score: 1

Right, there are pretty obvious ways that you can work around all of the limitations in FairPlay (Apple's DRM). It's really just there to serve as a "speed bump" so that someone breaking the rules knows that's what they're doing.

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!

EMusic good value for indie/historical music by astroblue · 2003-10-23 04:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Although [Emusic.com] just got bought out and is significantly reducing the # of songs one can download, it has been an amazing value for lovers of non-pop genres, as well as contemporary indie pop stuff. I've been using it for 5-6 months and have mined their amazing jazz/blues/world catalog to my great satisfaction. I would guess I've paid a nickel a song at most, and that's about the right price. At their new rates, it is up to 30-40 cents per song, so you need to be pickier, but I'd still rather have a timeless gem for that price than a tune that will soon seem like last weeks news for a buck.

Re:EMusic good value for indie/historical music by eric76 · 2003-10-23 05:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

I have unsubscribed from their service because of the change.

There is an option to resubscribe, but unless I see a reason to stay, I won't.

At the new limits, they are going to have to have more music I definitely want instead of music that I speculativey wish to try out.

Shameless plug: try racofi.elg.ca by ondelette · 2003-10-23 04:56 · Score: 1

We have a collaborative filtering system which attempts to recommend Canadian Music to you based on your ratings... you like Celine Dion, you might like other Canadian artists...

http://racofi.elg.ca

Cheers!

iShit by sacrilicious · 2003-10-23 04:57 · Score: 3, Funny

Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999 and Mac fanatics would be lining up around the block to buy it.

I won't pay a penny for it until it supports Ogg Vorbis.

--
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.

Re:iShit by tbone1 · 2003-10-23 05:34 · Score: 1

He should give it away! But nevermind gPoo does this already ...

--

The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Re:iShit by Temporal · 2003-10-23 05:44 · Score: 3, Informative

I know you're joking, but for those who don't know already: iTunes on Windows can be made to play OGGs. Just install this open source OGG component for Quicktime. Download the Windows version and stick it in your system32\QuickTime directory. (The component is a little buggy in that it will pause for a few seconds before it starts playing an OGG, but it DOES play.)
Re:iShit by cmstremi · 2003-10-23 06:18 · Score: 1

Just image a Beowulf cluster of iShits...
Re:iShit by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 08:28 · Score: 0

OMG!!! OMG!!! What colors does it come in?

Legal info? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 04:57 · Score: 0

All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3-02-36 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting.

Users are held liable for the use and distribution of the MediaServices site information materials according to local legislation.

Penny Arcade's take on it by Silverhammer · 2003-10-23 04:59 · Score: 1

Mmm, pie...

Anyone remember compromise? by 4iedBandit · 2003-10-23 05:02 · Score: 1

I'm not using one of these things until they stop putting restrictions on the file usage.

And they're not going to let you download a perfect digital copy without some reassurance that you not just going to plop that perfect copy down on Kazaa. Fortunately for you, you can still go to the store and buy the album and rip it yourself. However the last time I spent $18 US on an album, there was only ONE song on the album that I liked. I paid $18 US for one track. Complain as much as you want, but if I could have bought just that one track for $1, I would have. As far as restrictions go, Apple's the best compromise.

For everyone else bellyaching about the DRM, would you go for a system where the music you bought was watermarked to it could be identified to you? So you could do whatever you want in the privacy of your home, but if it got out they would know exactly who to sue?

It's a compromise. I haven't bought any music from iTunes or any other online vender for that matter. But if I did it would be from iTunes. I can authorize 3 different systems for the music. When I sell a system I simply unauthorize it. I put it on my iPod, or if I had some other player just convert it to mp3 and use it.

You know what saddens me? People who don't pay the artist anything because they're upset about $1 a track, in a format that is superior to mp3 at the same bit rate.

Me? I still buy CD's on occasion, maybe a couple every year. I get the perfect digital copy I want. But the next time some one-hit-wonder has a song I want, iTunes will definitely be a temptation. $18 for the perfect digital copy (buy the CD) or just $1 for an acceptable electronic version of just the track I want.

--
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh

Re:Anyone remember compromise? by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 05:11 · Score: 1

You know what saddens me? People who don't pay the artist anything because they're upset about $1 a track, in a format that is superior to mp3 at the same bit rate.
Know what saddens ME? That the artists aren't savvy enough to stay away from predatory conglomerates which do everything in their power to ensure Artists stay poor and in debt no matter how well their music sells.
I give my money to independent labels that respect fair use rights. Other people do the same. Those labels get bigger. The artists see that those labels are a more attractive option. The artists sign with them instead of the RIAA. I profit, the labels profit, the artists profit, and the RIAA either crumbles or conceeds defeat and reorganizes.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 05:13 · Score: 1

Nice Kosh quote, BTW. Seems especially appropriate. Perhaps, "Listen to the MUSIC and not the song," works as well. :-)

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by IAmAMacOSXAddict · 2003-10-23 05:16 · Score: 1

Albums are up to $18 :( the last time I bought an album here was a couple years ago... However I was visiting my girlfriends family in Buenous Aries this past July. While there I bought 10 albums for 150 pesos, after the exchange rate kicked in it came to $5 US per album. Now I only wish I could buy DVDs while I'm there :(

--
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:17 · Score: 1

And now you understand why the MPAA pushed for region codes so hard!

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:23 · Score: 0

Re: "Would you go for a system where the music you bought was watermarked to it could be identified to you? So you could do whatever you want in the privacy of your home, but if it got out they would know exactly who to sue?"

No, for several reasons, but the main dealbreaker for me is wanting my privacy. That's why I'd rather buy a CD in a store for cash than ever download using i-Tunes or whatever. If i-Tunes allowed anonymous downloading, then I would sign right up.
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by silicon+not+in+the+v · 2003-10-23 08:03 · Score: 1

I get your point about artists should stay away from the major record labels, but "poor and in debt"??!! Please! I don't think many artists that have gotten signed onto an RIAA record label are poor or in debt. (Unless they blow their money themselves, which is not the label's fault.)

--
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by sirket · 2003-10-23 09:12 · Score: 1

I don't think many artists that have gotten signed onto an RIAA record label are poor or in debt.

I hope this is a joke. By the end of most record deals, the artists end up owing the record label money. The only way they make any money is through touring.

-sirket
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by mcubed · 2003-10-23 09:19 · Score: 1

However the last time I spent $18 US on an album, there was only ONE song on the album that I liked. I paid $18 US for one track.

Two suggestions:

1. Find someplace else to shop. The last time I paid US$18 for an album was ... wait, I have never paid that much. Most CDs I buy, I buy used -- usually locally, but online as well -- for $8/CD, give or take ("give" only for the "rare/OOP" type album). If there's something I want that I can't find used, I'll spring for it new, but never for $18. I don't even know a record store that charges that much for a single-disc album.

2. You may want to think about refining your tastes a bit. It takes a little work, but it really pays off in the end. I read this kind of criticism of the music biz (writ large) all the time ... "I'm sick of buying a whole CD for one or two good songs blah blah blah." I always wonder what the hell those people are buying. Sure, I've bought my share of CDs that have been disappointments, but never any that have only one or two good songs. I buy the CDs of recording artists I like -- none are incapable of producing inferior work, but none habitually include throwaways on any of their albums. And sure, there are recording artists out there who've had one or two songs I kinda like, amidst a lot of other songs I don't. But I wouldn't buy their albums, I wouldn't even consider it -- at most, I might buy a single if I really have to own that song -- chances are, there'll be a couple of good remixes along with it. As a rule, I tend to think that people who habitually fall prey to "one-hit-wonder" types of performer really aren't music fans. A service like iTunes would certainly satisfy that craving, but I have to wonder how viable a music service will be that caters to people who don't listen to all that much music.

Michael

--
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by Kosi · 2003-10-23 13:05 · Score: 1

However the last time I spent $18 US on an album, there was only ONE song on the album that I liked. I paid $18 US for one track.

No, you spent this money because you were too dumb to listen to it before and then get the MCD, which would have been overpriced anyway too, but cheaper.

In addition, real artists don't throw out such crappy albums!
Re:Anyone remember compromise? by JayBlalock · 2003-10-24 04:42 · Score: 1

Read this article from Courtney Love.
She goes into absolutely horrifying detail on how the RIAA does everything it can to make sure their artists don't make money themselves.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.

Heh... by anaphora · 2003-10-23 05:02 · Score: 0

Yesterday I purchased my first legal song download. It was from iTunes, and I -expected- a working mp3 I could listen to on Winamp without external plugins. I got an .m4p file. Now the only way for me to get this into winamp or an mp3 player is to burn to a cd through iTunes then rip it directly off. Way too much work, but what do you expect for 99c?

We should be encouraging unrestricted copying by DFJA · 2003-10-23 05:05 · Score: 1

We should be encouraging complete freedom to copy any music as much as we want - by only supporting artists that release their music with an open license, such as that at http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/eff_oal.php These people have no interest in imposing DRM, restrictions, proprietary formats etc. and deserve our support. This is what peer to peer should be about - the freedom to copy anything as much as we want. It's the same issue as with open source software - the proprietary mindset of microsoft and their mates is good for them in the short term, but ultimately damaging for the consumer. That's why we should support open source software . If a wider number of musicians were promoting themselves in this way, they would do better for themselves and would make the world a better place for everyone. The RIAA simply runs on greed, and the abuse of what amounts to a monopoly position - just as a certain software company has done recently. The corollary is that we should be willing to pay for 'open' goods, as doing so helps them to stay 'open'.

--
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.

LEGAL GRATEFUL DEAD MUSIC HERE by Asprin · 2003-10-23 05:08 · Score: 1

Apple has far more exclusive music than its competitors. It's the only legal service, for instance, to offer most songs by the Eagles and the Grateful Dead.

Legal? What the...? I though The Dead were all about sharing the bootlegs, at least of their concert performances!

--
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie

Re:LEGAL GRATEFUL DEAD MUSIC HERE by RatBastard · 2003-10-23 09:38 · Score: 1

Bootlegs of their concerts, yes. But they don't want you sharing their (not quite as much fun as the concert recordings) studio releases. I don't really have a problem with that.

--
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.

The poet once wrote, by banky · 2003-10-23 05:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

You must look at this from a realistic perspective.

1. The major record labels - meaning the people who control the content - will never release their "property" without DRM. If Apple wants to provide music online, it must do so at the whim of the content "owners". Hence, DRM. Otherwise iTMS is Napster v1, and we all know how that turned out.

As a matter of opinion, I find 'Fairplay' or whatever it is Apple calls its DRM method to be quite fair, to me. I can play all my music on my computers (laptop, desktop, work desktop) and devices (rev1 iPod), burn CDs, and so forth. I've been using iTMS since its inception, and have no complaints.

2. Apple has to balance their costs and resources, and the resources of their paying customers. Sure we all want uber-high-bitrate encodings. Remember that Apple has to push out all that data, and ensure the highest-possible success rate. I also assume they pay for their bandwidth, like everyone else. Moreover, many of their customers are probably still on dialup. In order to work, the experience has to be as close to instant as technologically possible. Like all things in technology, it's a balance. Until your uber-bitrate song fits in under a meg, it went with what it had that fit its requirements and needs.

Again, as a matter of opinion: P2P blows, people lie, allow bad rips, disconnect halfway through (mom's coming! quick, disconnect!), whatever.

3. The notion that one day this will all go away is a very fair criticism. So do the smart thing: burn to audio CD. You aren't prohibited (provided you don't try to turn that shiny G5 into a duplication studio). And getting around the DRM by re-encoding isn't all that hard (google it). iTunes enforces no DRM on user-ripped material, as WMP did at one point (could be turned off, IIRC). DRM applies only to content it re-sells.

--
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK

Re:The poet once wrote, by RatBastard · 2003-10-23 09:41 · Score: 1

Again, as a matter of opinion: P2P blows, people lie,...
And not just lie, but many of them are stupid as hell. Why is it, for instance, that every parody song out there is by Weird Al? Even the ones he never sang?

--
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.

iTunes can be twice as expensive... by sracer · 2003-10-23 05:17 · Score: 1

...as purchasing a CD.

I heard the hype about iTunes and thought that I'd give it a shot... I'd love to support a quality pay-to-download service.

I was going to buy the Ultra Lounge Christmas CD, so I thought that it would be a good test. I easily found the songs for the disc but then I caught the price per track.... $0.99. That's $20.79. Amazon sells the the CD for $10.99. Even adding $4 for shipping it is still significantly cheaper than iTunes and I get the CD and coverart too! (order a few CDs and shipping is free)

I guess iTunes is geared more toward single tracks than albums. oh well.

Re:iTunes can be twice as expensive... by CrazyTalk · 2003-10-23 05:26 · Score: 1

Except, most albums are sold at a "bulk discount" so that you pay roughly ten bucks regardless of the number of tracks. Assuming the buy album choice was available, it seems that your mistake was to assemble the album from individual tracks.
What gets me are the tracks that cost 99 cents that are only 10 seconds of so or of music, because it is a small intro to a longer song on an album.
Re:iTunes can be twice as expensive... by doce · 2003-10-23 05:36 · Score: 2, Informative

most CDs are, in fact, only $9.99. if every track on an album is available, you'll see a "Buy Album" link with it's price.

On compilation CDs, though, it seems that tracks are often missing. I'd guess probably due to licensing issues. Ultra Lounge CDs seem to all be partial... and thus, not available to buy whole. Maybe they'll fill it out later and have it available at a more rational, reduced cost.

--
woof!
Re:iTunes can be twice as expensive... by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:53 · Score: 1

Of course double albums seem to be 19.99... and I usually pay about 17.99 for them in the brick and mortar store.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

emusic still seems a better deal by autechre · 2003-10-23 05:21 · Score: 1

Even though it's not nearly as good a deal now as it once was, $9.99 for 40 tracks is still 25 cents per track, compared with 99. And emusic has artists I actually want to hear, like Belle and Sebastion, Apples in Stereo, The Pixies, etc. I don't care if Apple is the only one to have The Eagles, because The Eagles suck large, moss-covered rocks, and I don't love the RIAA much either.

The files only come as VBR MP3s, but that's OK with me since I have a hardware MP3 player (CD-based) that I probably won't be upgrading until it breaks.

Oh, and there's the matter of it actually working (officially!) with Linux, though I assume that's probably x86 Linux only. But still, that's much better than other sites that inanely restrict you to IE on Windows. It also says that "Other operating systems may work...", but they won't provide support for them.

--
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.

Re:emusic still seems a better deal by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:27 · Score: 0

I agree. Emusic does seem to have better music (in my opinion). I was pretty surprised to find that the other big sites didn't have anything from almost any of the artists I searched for. But one thing about emusic is it's a contract service. From what i remember, you have a choice between a 3 month ($15/m) or a 12 month contract($10/m). So the price is more like $120 for 480 songs, or $45 for 120 songs. I like Emusic best simply because of its content, and its no DRM policy.

Re:iTunes good, but not an unbiased source x1488 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:23 · Score: 0

Pot.
Kettle.
Slashdot.

Cheap CDs from BMG by I'm+Spartacus! · 2003-10-23 05:23 · Score: 2, Informative

BMG is now selling CDs for $6.99 apiece with free shipping. All of you that have been saying that you'll stop pirating music when it's reasonably priced, here's your chance to live up to those words.

Of course, now I expect the answer will be that $6.99 is still a rip off for a piece of plastic that costs pennies to manufacture.

--
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce

Re:Cheap CDs from BMG by usurper_ii · 2003-10-23 05:41 · Score: 2, Informative

I have over three hundred CDs and very few of them were purchased retail. In fact, the biggest majority of my CDs that weren't bought used, came from BMG.

To me, BMG is like dollar movies. You have to wait a little bit for the good stuff to hit the catalog but if you aren't in a big hurry, you can save 50%-plus. They often have really good sales where you can buy one and get two or three free (yeah, they stick it to you on shipping but it is still far cheaper than going to a retail store).

I have wondered about why nobody on here mentions BMG whenever everyone is bitching about high prices for CDs before...and personally, I suspect you are right: some people just like to bitch!

For a list of my music, check out:
http://www.parentingforless.com/mp3trade/

Usurper_ii

--
Ron Paul

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Lumpy · 2003-10-23 05:24 · Score: 1

you forgot mailboat records.

the have attracted many Big named pissed off at the RIAA bands and are attracting more every day.

you may not like Jimmy's Music, but you have to love his record label.

--
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.

Can some one help with iTunes? by Bombcar · 2003-10-23 05:25 · Score: 1

I've been using iTunes, but it's shuffle doesn't seem to work right. Out of a 200 song playlist, it keeps playing the same 25 or so songs. This is driving me nuts.

Am I missing something? I really do like shuffle, and I don't want to have to go back to winamp.

--
Fellowship 9/11

Re:Can some one help with iTunes? by Knobby · 2003-10-23 05:34 · Score: 1

I've never been that happy with the iTunes shuffle feature, but I've never had it get stuck on 25 of 200 songs in a playlist before..
Re:Can some one help with iTunes? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:21 · Score: 0

You might have the "Top 25 Most Played" Playlist selected as your playlist to randomize from. Make sure it's highlighted on Library and that should be it.
Re:Can some one help with iTunes? by Colazar · 2003-10-23 07:01 · Score: 1

I haven't noticed that so much, but I have noticed that most of the time, I will get songs by the same artist only 2 or 3 songs apart. That always makes me wonder.
But on the other hand, you'd have to actually do the math to figure out how unlikely that is. Remember that if you flip a coin 100 times, it is more likely than not that you will get a string of 9 or more identical flips in a row. And that doesn't mean that the "flip" function is broken, just that these things happen.

--
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Re:Can some one help with iTunes? by Bombcar · 2003-10-23 07:41 · Score: 1

No, there's something really wrong with mine. If I load my 17,000 song playlist, it still will only play the songs that I've completed playing previously. To me, it looks like some "play my favorite more often" setting gone wrong.

Ah, well. Winamp (and xmms) here I come again.

--
Fellowship 9/11

Re:Sorry, not interested. by MoneyT · 2003-10-23 05:26 · Score: 1

Yes, let's punish all the artists and boycott the very services that have a chance to change things because the RIAA is involved in a portion of those services.

Hint: The RIAA makes up only a portion of the lables in the iTMS. Why don't you buy from the independent lables and thus show the RIAA that you are willing to buy music, but not at the expense of the artist.

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984

Wrong Product by Zygote-IC- · 2003-10-23 05:29 · Score: 1

Besides, Jobs wouldn't try and sell something like the iShit because Gates already did that and called it Windows ME.

No, you are getting it confused. You're thinking of Microsoft Bob. Compared to BOB, ME was a high point of software engineering.
BOB was a product so bad that the Smiley Face had to go into witness protection and now can only get a job at Wal-Mart.
Sad really.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:30 · Score: 0

artists, many of whom have become basically indentured servants to the 'big 5.'

OMG! It was bad enough that the record companies screwed the "artists", now the college basketball teams in Philadelphia are holding them under indentured servitude?

MODS: Don't mod down just because you don't get the joke. Only people in Philly will get it.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by dasmegabyte · 2003-10-23 05:32 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, I just don't have the stamina to not buy records. I enjoy music too much to blame the record industry for trying to protect their ability to make CDs, no matter how callous their methods may seem.

After all, we don't boycott businesses that prosecute shoplifters. We even respect it...after all, shoplifters drive up the price for everybody else. And since copyright "theft" is really just infringment, which is a civil matter, all the RIAA can possibly do is sue people.

The other option is to ignore copyright violations in file sharing, cd copying, mix making, etc...and that is the same as saying it's okay. If there is any truth at all to the claim that this kind of infringing activity, then even if no real cash comes out of this round of lawsuits, the RIAA has posted a BIG "Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted" sign on digital audio. Which is good for me, because it's this desire to punish downloaders that led to the AWESOME iTune music store. Which is my new addiction.

--
Hey freaks: now you're ju

Re:Copy Restricted CDs? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:33 · Score: 0

That's only the 'best' way until you can no longer order non copy protected CDs online. Maybe you'll be satisfied by using the analog hole to rip into your format of choice or maybe that will be the time that DRM compressed formats will start lookiing more attractive.

encryption? by igny · 2003-10-23 05:35 · Score: 1

To hinder mass copying, songs you buy from the three stores are in special encrypted formats, not the open MP3 format...

At the same time,

For instance, you can play your purchased songs on only three computers, and burn the same playlist of these songs to only a limited (???) number of home-made CDs.

Can't you make copies of the CDs, burned by their jukeboxes, using other programs? Or rip them? Of course, it may be DMCA violation, but what the point of such encryption, which can be so easily decrypted almost without loss of quality. Or I am missing something?

--
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra

Auto-Rip. by cgenman · 2003-10-23 05:54 · Score: 1

Driver Heads:

How hard would it be to create a fake CDR drive that serves both as the output for any music ripping application and as the input for CDex? I know such ghost drives have been used for years for playing games without the original disks, but they have far less interaction with the program. How hard is it to fake a CD write?

--
The ______ Agenda

Re:Sorry, not interested. by cens0r · 2003-10-23 05:56 · Score: 1

I just found out that sub pop and matador safe... suprising as they're just about the biggest indie there are.

--
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by nolife · 2003-10-23 05:56 · Score: 1

RIAA makes up only a portion of the lables in the iTMS.

Nice way to put it, but do you care to put that portion into a percentage? 95-97%? I really do not know myself but your arguement would be more justified with some numbers or estimates. Buying songs from them and buying an IPOD to play those songs is a big investment to have legal access to ~3-5% of their total non RIAA songs.

--
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.

left out two by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 05:57 · Score: 1, Informative

Too bad he left out buymusic.com and rhapsody, although rhapsody loses until it gets rid of the monthly fee.
I have been doing a technical based comparison, and my own thought is that you'll go where the music is available, and if tied, the best sound quality. My (starting) chart is at http://www.techolio.com/onlinemusic/index.html
Fu nny how he thought musicmatch was the slow one, I found itunes sucked a lot of cpu browsing-wise!
rick

Apple's New Slogan by cgenman · 2003-10-23 06:02 · Score: 1

Mix. Burn. Rip.

--
The ______ Agenda

Agree - BuyMusic stinks by leftover · 2003-10-23 06:07 · Score: 1

Bought an album from them and couldn't burn it even once. Their Customer Dis-service basically said that was my problem. So I can listen to it on my scritchy little PC speakers but not my (modest) audiophile-type system. In my opinion they took my money and delivered nothing, they are aware of that, and are quite happy with that outcome.

--
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.

Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades? by cgenman · 2003-10-23 06:17 · Score: 1

How does iTunes' DRM handle a full OS re-install? Or a hardware migration? What does Apple recommending doing when, in 2 years, our hardware is outdated and needs to be replaced? Or in 3 months when XP has an irrecoverable crash and we have to reinstall everything from scratch?

Restricted file formats are a frustrating thing. But restricted file formats tied to a piece of hardware that is replaced on average every 3 years is foolish.

And buying restricted files once you realize this failing is just plain stupid.

BTW, thanks for the Magnatune link!

--
The ______ Agenda

Still priced out of the market. by DeadBugs · 2003-10-23 06:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

Right now most new releases at Best Buy are $9.99. Most if not all of these CD's have at least 10 songs on them. So for .99 (or less) a song I get a full CD with a jewel case and album art work etc. & I can rip it to my hard drive or MP3 or Ogg or IPod.

So why would I pay .99 for a song that has worse sound quality, will only play where they tell it to, comes with no liner notes or art and can not be converted to use on most of the audio devices I have?

Let me know when I can download the CD Audio file for .50

--
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Re:Still priced out of the market. by shark72 · 2003-10-23 06:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's the convenience factor, of course. Many things are a little cheaper if you're willing to get in your car and wear out a little shoe leather. The fact that it's often a pain to drive to the mall, the CD store, the florist, etc. is a major force that drives e-commerce.

In my case specifically, I've bought lots of tracks from iTMS which are on albums that I would never spend the money to buy as a whole. So, for me, it's been a money saver.

--
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Re:Still priced out of the market. by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:56 · Score: 1

I thought the main driver of e-commerce was price? Isn't that why amazon took off, because it was cheaper? Not because it was more convinient.

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Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re:Still priced out of the market. by shark72 · 2003-10-23 09:30 · Score: 1

This delves into the realm of consumer psychographics. With any retail business, it's the mix of product and price that defines the customer base and, ultimately, the retailer's success. In your case, you might shop at Amazon purely due to price, and if the prices on Amazon were the same as at traditional retailers, you wouldn't use it. For other consumers, convenience may override price and they might shop at Amazon even if prices were 10% more than at their local retail. No right or wrong reasons here. For yet other consumers, it may be because Amazon stocks items that they simply can't get in their local market. No right or wrong answers here.

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Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Re:Still priced out of the market. by nytmare · 2003-10-23 10:03 · Score: 1

Because: You can't preview at the record store, or if you can, a couple of CDs at most. When you buy a full CD you're paying for some tracks you won't ever listen to. And you're wrong because: The sound quality is not significantly worse. You can write the track(s) to a CD. Why do you need "art" to listen to music? The only reason I have for not buying from online music stores is that they only sell the most popular music. I would use them if they sold everything, but the only way to obtain what I want is still through Kazaa and other odd sources.
Re:Still priced out of the market. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 10:37 · Score: 0

Don't forget, after you've ripped the songs you want, you can take the CD back to your local used record store and get either cash or a different CD...
Re:Still priced out of the market. by MightyYar · 2003-10-23 10:52 · Score: 1

Go to allofmp3.com. They offer downloads for $0.01/MB.
What's more, you get to choose the format on most of the titles. You can get ogg, mp3, even mpc at the bitrate of your choosing.
It's a Russian site, so they don't have to abide by our silly US copyright laws, but they still have an English site.

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.

More than one flavor of Apple Zealot by finelinebob · 2003-10-23 06:19 · Score: 1

If you're going to get a PowerBook and start getting into all the Apple press and BBSes out there, you'll find there are LOTS of Apple Zealots who absolutely HATE most of what Jobs has been doing. Most are OS 9/Quark 5 hold-outs or people who refuse to give up their 680x0 machines from 10 years ago or so, but you'll find lots of folk who hate Brushed Metal, hate Aqua, hate Column Views, hate that command-N gives you a new Finder Window and not a new Folder, ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Sure, there are those of us who line up at Little Stevie's Kool-Aid Stand ($129 for a cup of Kool-Aid? I'll take three!!!) but just wait for the screams when most Mac Zealots find what's been done to Finder in 10.3....

No more than $5,000 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:20 · Score: 0

At 5 per GB it would cost around $5,000.00 USD. I am sure that apple pays less than that.

napster beta by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 06:24 · Score: 1

why are there soo many reviews and comparisons of napster to itunes, while napster is in beta? ever heard of a fair shake?

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 06:25 · Score: 1

From what I understand, Apple is pretty good about re-licensing files to you in the event of a System crash or similar event. (this is going by things I read about the Mac iTunes, obviously).

What I'm curious about is whether the export restriction is still in effect. One truly NASTY bit in the contract people discovered was that if you move outside of the US, as soon as Apple finds out (the next time you log into the service) it nukes every one of your files, and no refund. If you haven't burned them, you're screwed. A couple guys lost hundreds of dollars in music because of that.

And that's another reason I strenuously object to any kind of DRM-based "licensing" of music that doesn't give me full Fair Use rights. It means the copyright owner has the right (or at the very least, the power) to take away the license at any time, because they feel like it, and I can't do anything but buy the White Album yet again.

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Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.

Re:Copy Restricted CDs? by cens0r · 2003-10-23 06:28 · Score: 1

It is impossible to copy protect a CD and still have it play in a regular CD player. My CD player has SPDIF out... my computer has SPDIF in... if it plays I can make a digital copy. Copy protecting a regular CD is never going to work.

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Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by shark72 · 2003-10-23 06:30 · Score: 2, Informative

"And since copyright "theft" is really just infringment, which is a civil matter, all the RIAA can possibly do is sue people."

A common misperception. Here's the portion of copyright law which deals with criminal infringement.

Additionally, Googling on "criminal copyright infringement" will deliver links to data on criminal cases where copyright infringers have done jail time.

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Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by mikeswi · 2003-10-23 07:01 · Score: 1

By refusing to buy music from any source, you are simply fueling their fire.

Not all artists are RIAA members. There is no reason to boycott a third party who has nothing to do with this or who may not be a member because the RIAA disgusts them just as much as it disgusts you.

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Only on /.

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by laird · 2003-10-23 07:04 · Score: 1

"How does iTunes' DRM handle a full OS re-install? Or a hardware migration? What does Apple recommending doing when, in 2 years, our hardware is outdated and needs to be replaced? Or in 3 months when XP has an irrecoverable crash and we have to reinstall everything from scratch?"

I do this all the time (buy at home, copy to work, etc.). You copy your music to the new machine and click play. If you haven't played your music on that machin before, iTunes asks for your username and password, and you enter it. The music plays.

You can authorize up to three computers at once. So you should deauthorize the old machine if you're upgrading.

OS upgrades and re-installs on MacOS X don't affect user data, so there's no issue with iTunes DRM. On the PC, I have only been running iTunes for a few days, so I haven't done a re-install of the OS yet, but the worst case would be re-entering your username and password.

"Restricted file formats are a frustrating thing. But restricted file formats tied to a piece of hardware that is replaced on average every 3 years is foolish."

Yes, this is a problem with Microsoft's DRM. Apple's DRM is tied to a username & password, not hardware. The authorization is stored on your computer for convenience, of course, but you can authorize any other computer easily. And multiple people's music can be authorized on the same computer. Cool, eh?

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Enable 3D printed prosthetics!

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by cgenman · 2003-10-23 07:11 · Score: 1

Yes, this is a problem with Microsoft's DRM. Apple's DRM is tied to a username & password, not hardware. The authorization is stored on your computer for convenience, of course, but you can authorize any other computer easily. And multiple people's music can be authorized on the same computer. Cool, eh?

Very cool. Points to Apple for having thought this through.

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The ______ Agenda

Re:you should hear the noises my mp3 cd player mak by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:18 · Score: 0

Lie, cheat, steal, sell you neighbours cat ... whatever!

We are talking about an iPOD, the cost is a nuisance not a barrier.

iTunes is the best, MusicMatch is pretty good by laird · 2003-10-23 07:19 · Score: 1

While I certainly agree that iTunes is the best PC music service, MusicMatch's new system (launched a few weeks ago) is also surprisingly good. It's less polished, but it makes the generally annoying WMA format fairly usable, which is quite a feat.

OK, that's not much of a recommendation. But to put it in perspective, check out BuyMusic.com, where EVERY SINGLE TRACK can have different pricing and usage rules. Hideous.

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Enable 3D printed prosthetics!

Bochs, duh by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:23 · Score: 1

In thirty years, the patents on currently popular audio codecs will expire, and through the miracle of free software, XMMS and Zinf will be able to play every format that Winamp can now play. XMMS and Zinf will run on any POSIX conforming system, and even if the computer industry moves beyond POSIX to some incompatible native API, there will probably still be a way to emulate POSIX behavior on whatever's popular (as we have now with Cygwin for Windows).

Or just run Winamp in a Bochs. This is emulation. Likewise, there exist laser based devices that emulate a stereo phonograph.

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Re:Bochs, duh by ryanvm · 2003-10-23 09:07 · Score: 1

And this is my point. You'll have to jump through all sorts of hoops, wait out patents, etc. Just to play music you legally purchased.

Fucking ridiculous.
Re:Bochs, duh by yerricde · 2003-10-23 13:55 · Score: 1

You limited your question to "in thirty years." I'm assuming that as long as the patents subsist, the patent holder will continue to maintain the reference implementation, and immediately afterward, the free software community will step in and create a permanent solution in a language that won't just up and die. (Fortran hasn't died out completely; why should C?)

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Backup Fool, Why download again? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:27 · Score: 0

Some people...

Yes Hell did freeze over, pictures here!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:32 · Score: 0

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html

Audio codecs' step function varies over time by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:35 · Score: 2, Informative

Most JPEG implementations use a constant quantizer matrix for a given "image quality" setting. Given a constant quantizer matrix, JPEG image compression uses the same step function for repeated compression and decompression of the same image. JPEG also works with each DCT block as it finds it and doesn't overlap them; a change to one block won't affect the others. Therefore, if you always use the same quality setting, you can edit small portions of a JPEG image without damaging the rest.

MP3 and Vorbis, on the other hand, changes quantizers based on the observed characteristics of the audio after the frequencies have been convolved with a masking function. This can subtly change some frequency bands' step functions on repeated compression. In addition, MP3 and Vorbis process using an MDCT, which processes overlapping blocks of signal, and an error can spread from block to block on repeated recompression. Heck, MP3 codecs don't even seem to have a consistent idea of the encoder's delay, so blocks may not be aligned from one save to the next.

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Re:Audio codecs' step function varies over time by ViolentGreen · 2003-10-23 07:59 · Score: 1

Wow, thats more complicated then I expected. Am I understanding you that there is not a constant quantizer for audio compression? If this is the case, how is decompression handled?

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Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Re:Audio codecs' step function varies over time by yerricde · 2003-10-23 13:50 · Score: 1

Am I understanding you that there is not a constant quantizer for audio compression? If this is the case, how is decompression handled?

The popular lossy audio codecs store the quantizer information in the audio bitstream. As I understand it: In MP3, each block of audio has scale factors sent before the block, one for each of 21 "critical bands." In Ogg Vorbis, every block has a linearly interpolated de-emphasis curve sent before the block.

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Will I retire or break 10K?
Re:Audio codecs' step function varies over time by ViolentGreen · 2003-10-24 01:55 · Score: 1

Interesting... I can see how that would giev better encoding. This stuff makes sense after I see it but there's now way I could have come up with these schemes.

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Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.

iTunes Desperately Needs More Music by Black-Man · 2003-10-23 07:36 · Score: 1

I keep hearing about this "signing of indies" but I've yet to see much. Industrial Music is virtually non-existent. And like you state... 80's music is weak. They have the entire Ramones and Talking Heads collection... yet no Cars. WTF?

And way too much "Greatest Hits" albums. And the "partial album"... that is just plain annoying. Why can't they offer the entire album!?!

Re:iTunes Desperately Needs More Music by ShavenYak · 2003-10-23 08:22 · Score: 1

And the "partial album"... that is just plain annoying. Why can't they offer the entire album!?!

I'm guessing those are situations where not all the songs on the album fall under the same copyright, and Apple hasn't been able to negotiate with all the copyright holders.

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Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!

Re:Sorry, not interested. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 07:36 · Score: 0

You can get an idea of the amount of new material that has been added by independent labels by looking at the listing of new additions, which is organized by week. About 2-3 weeks ago there was a huge increase in new additions. Most of these new entries initially were from Rounder Records and other small labels. If you assume that most of the new additions above the initial 200K are from small label you could estimate that perhaps a third of the 350K library are small tunes.

My opinion: None of these services are acceptable by Ogerman · 2003-10-23 07:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's not even worth arguing which one is better, because all of these new music services are unacceptable for several reasons:

1. They all largely support RIAA music
2. Each has its own stupid DRM scheme, even if a weak one, that is a hastle for consumers
3. They are all platform limited and not Open Source (after all, you can't have DRM otherwise)
4. Most importantly: they still do not give all musicians a fair deal! ie.) at most 10-15% of sales for the typical signed artist, according to most reports.

The characteristics of a good online music service would be:

1.) Only non-RIAA affiliated labels or independent artists
2.) No DRM whatsoever, besides charging your account for the initial download
3.) Option to download in a lossless compressed format (such as FLAC)
4.) Contract with all artists that the music published via this service shall enter a non-restrictive Creative Commons license in at most 5-10 years (or after a sales target is reached) or else go public domain. This would re-introduce the concept of actually "supporting the arts and the public good"
5.) A free-downloads section for artists who realize it makes more sense to use recordings as a marketing tool for their live performances. Other artists services may be available in complement.
6.) All clients are open source and based on standard, open protocols.
7.) Artists directly receive at least 75% of the sales and are allowed to set their own per-track or per-album prices to remain competitive.

That would be a service I would love to use. Let us not accept anything less!

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by laird · 2003-10-23 07:36 · Score: 1

"What I'm curious about is whether the export restriction is still in effect. One truly NASTY bit in the contract people discovered was that if you move outside of the US, as soon as Apple finds out (the next time you log into the service) it nukes every one of your files, and no refund. If you haven't burned them, you're screwed. A couple guys lost hundreds of dollars in music because of that."

Minor correction -- Apple won't "nuke" your files (and doesn't appear to check anything except when you authorize a machine, when you enter your username and password into iTunes), but if you change your billing address to be outside of the US they won't re-authorize your music. In the case that got some press a few months ago, the guy had his machine crash, did a full reinstall, and then couldn't re-authorize his music because his billing address wasn't in the US, so Apple couldn't legally sell him music. I think that he ended up getting taken care of by customer service.

The cause of this regional issue is that music is licensed by country or region, so the company that has the right to distribute a song in the US (and thus licensed music to iTMS for sale in the) US may not have the right to distribute it in, say, England. This means that to launch iTMS in each country, Apple has to renegotiate the licenses to the music. Kinda sucks.

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Enable 3D printed prosthetics!

Promotion to moving vehicles by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:40 · Score: 1

Many "more talented artists" don't have the finance to promote their recordings on commercial radio (FM, XM, Sirius), which is the only broadcast medium that can be received in moving vehicles. Without promotion that reaches vehicles, how can I learn of "more talented artists" if I don't have time to listen to much music other than in the car (i.e. no time for iRATE)?

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Artist's Share by jollygreengiantlikes · 2003-10-23 07:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

I don't know how realistic this parody is, but someone's got their 2 cents about artist's share posted here:
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/index.html

JGG

Re:Artist's Share by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 10:42 · Score: 0

Well, Apple's cut is much lower than that site claims, so I would bet that their other numbers are off, too. Well, I suppose that if you call the credit card companies "Apple", then "Apple"'s cut MIGHT be 35%, but I still don't think so. Last I heard, Apple gets 10% and the credit card companies get 10%, but that still doesn't add up to 35.

In my cursory reading, I didn't seen any mention non-RIAA labels like CD Baby which are on the iTMS. IIRC, some 45% of the song purchase price goes to artists with the CD Baby deal, but my memory might be wrong.

Well, whatever.

You mean greatest HIT, singular by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:43 · Score: 1

Or maybe just go buy a greatest hits CD instead.

Hanson, Haddaway, 4 Non Blondes, The Wonders, Right Said Fred, and Deadeye Dick. What do they have in common? Their "greatest hits CD" is a single. Best Buy doesn't have a lot of singles.

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Will I retire or break 10K?

why would you want to do that? by Trepidity · 2003-10-23 07:44 · Score: 1

If an artist can't put together a good album, they're not worth listening to. Unless you just like listening to an endless parade of one-hit wonders instead of quality music.

If it's worth listening to, it'll be better as an album: good albums are not just a collection of random tracks thrown together.

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10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

SPDIF is not available on low-end kit by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:51 · Score: 1

My CD player has SPDIF out

Good for you, but the cheap CD players that most CD buyers already have do not have SPDIF out, and the cheap sound cards that most PC owners already have do not have SPDIF in. I'm guessing that most PC owners are not willing to spend $$$ extra for a new CD player and a new sound card. And what happens when the recording industry finally ditches CD in favor of DVD Audio for the most part just like it ditched vinyl in favor of CD for the most part?

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Re:SPDIF is not available on low-end kit by cens0r · 2003-10-23 08:34 · Score: 1

99.9% of all DVD players have SPDIF out, and they are slowly replacing CD players... so most CD players will soon have SPDIF out. but that doesn't change the fact that if a CD will play in a CD player you will be able to get the music off of it, that's just the way red book works.

When/If the recording industry ditches CD's for DVD Audio or SACD, we got other problems. First those are super high quality and multichannel formats, it remains to be seen whether consumers will embrace this. But SACD supports a red book audio layer that is compatible with regular CD players so once again you can get your music.

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Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Smart Playlists are great by laird · 2003-10-23 07:51 · Score: 1

I use almost nothing but smart playlists, for two reasons. First, it can automatically create playlists based on ID3 tags, so I can listen to 1960's music, or high bitrate jazz, etc. Second, I have a 5 GB iPod and almost 30 GB of music, so I can use playlists to magically collect a subset to carry with me.

Some examples:
- 1 GB of My favorite music, based on how I rate it.
- 1 GB of Most played music, which iTunes counts automatically.
- 1 GB of most recently added music.
- all of my Purchased Music.
- all of my Audible audiobooks that are 'checked'. I can un-check them in iTunes once I've heard them, and they disappear from my iPod the next time I synch.
- 1 GB of Random Music, so that I hear a few things I haven't heard in a while.

Of course, you can still access the music by genre, etc., -- the playlists are a way to force those tracks into the iPod. I listen to 'favorites' and 'recently added' playlists all the time, though.

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Enable 3D printed prosthetics!

Dedodedo by yerricde · 2003-10-23 07:58 · Score: 1

Also gone: playing any 33 1/3 album at 45 for that Chipmunks sound

Two words: 59535 Hz. Use any audio editor (or heck, even a hex editor) to change the wav file's sample rate from 44100 Hz to 59535 Hz, and you have your 45 RPM effect. Incidentally, the "Hampsterdance" wav is a 45 RPM record played at 78 RPM.

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Walter Mossberg by gordgekko · 2003-10-23 08:00 · Score: 1

What, we like Walter Mossberg this week because he gave the thumbs up to iTunes?

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You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".

BMG is worse than Napster was for the artists. by tgd · 2003-10-23 08:00 · Score: 3, Informative

Artists don't get a penny, not a single one, from everything sold at BMG. They negotiate flat fees with the lables directly for the use of their catalog, and thats the extent of it.

A user downloading 10 gig of music over WinMX, finding two CDs they like and going out and buying those on a whim gets more money to the artists than buying $1000 worth of CDs from BMG.

Re:BMG is worse than Napster was for the artists. by I'm+Spartacus! · 2003-10-23 08:15 · Score: 1

Please. Nobody, and I mean nobody, that downloads music off Kazaa or Napster gives a rat's ass about the artists getting paid. They're in it to get free music, period. Besides, I thought that real artists make music because they love to and they make their money off live performances, not recordings. It's always something with this crowd.

At least with BMG, you're legal and you get the physical media. With iTunes you get DRM'd, low bitrate music with no media. Sounds like a bad deal to me.

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"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce

Quality control by k3nv · 2003-10-23 08:03 · Score: 1

Does someone at Apple actually sit down and listen to all the songs that are available for download. I've ripped songs of my own and sometimes a file will have a *blip* in it. How does Apple make sure every song is error free when they add it to iTMS.

Audiophile excuses, answered by yerricde · 2003-10-23 08:04 · Score: 1

possible better than CD quality format

You probably won't hear the higher precision of a format that claims to have higher precision than Compact Disc Digital Audio. A CD, encoded in 16/44 PCM with a decent noise-shaped dither, already pushes quantization noise far below the noise floor that the human ear can pick up. The "better quality of 24/96" is most likely just the generally better quality of more expensive stereo equipment as opposed to mass-market Philips stereo sold for $200 at Best Buy or Circuit City. The "analog warmth" is actually a gentle treble rolloff plus a bit of pleasing harmonic distortion.

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Will I retire or break 10K?

If you listen in the car by yerricde · 2003-10-23 08:06 · Score: 1

They're not hard to find if you look.

Unfortunately, Clear Channel makes it really easy to find crappy artists and hard to find good artists in the car. Clear Channel often has a monopoly or near-monopoly on broadcasting recordings to a moving vehicle.

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Re:If you listen in the car by cens0r · 2003-10-23 08:28 · Score: 1

I agree... this is very sad. I forget that not everyone can listen to KEXP in their car like I can.

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Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Apple iTunes only supports iPod by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 08:07 · Score: 0

Yet again Apple is trying to use their software to lock you into their hardware. PC users are used to having a large variety of hardware to choose from, and expect software support. I hope PC users don't cave in and choose the Apple hardware lock-in path. The other 2 choices are much more likely to have a roadmap to support popular portable devices.

Re:Apple iTunes only supports iPod by arson1 · 2003-10-23 17:59 · Score: 1

The iTunes Music Store uses AAC files that most players can't play. But you can transfer mp3s to a variety of other players using iTunes. I have an iPod and at old Rio 500 that both work perfectly with iTunes

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Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.

Re:Sorry, not interested. by MoneyT · 2003-10-23 08:09 · Score: 1

a) You don't have to buy an iPod

b) Apple says they have over 100,000 songs from independent artists and lables. And claim over 400,000 songs total. So you could figure on roughly 25% of their songs being independent. That's a fairly large number and it's likely to go up.

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T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984

a better study.... by joebeone · 2003-10-23 08:10 · Score: 1

is here.

Secure Audio Path by yerricde · 2003-10-23 08:10 · Score: 2, Informative

Windows Media Audio with digital restrictions management encoding is encrypted, and it's decrypted, decompressed, and output through a Secure Audio Path (explanation). But because these services do in fact allow recording audio to a CD-RW disc, the limitation of no direct transcoding to MP3 is only a minor hurdle.

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Will I retire or break 10K?

Thank you everyone.... by GeneralEmergency · 2003-10-23 08:43 · Score: 1

Many insightful and helpful observations (except from the low-life RIAA STAFF TROLLS).

Here's what will get me back into the music market:

A) An "RIAA FREE" sticker on cds in the record store. I ain't haulin' a list with me every time I go shopping. Agreed, the indy labels and independants would have to join an anti-RIAA org that could eventually become just as evil.

b) A download service that only offers "RIAA FREE" content.

Bingo. Problem Solved. Business Model Idea(TM) here worth millions, just for the taking.

.

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"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by Nucleon500 · 2003-10-23 09:06 · Score: 1

Magnatune does most of that.

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Litigious bastards

only iTunes works with iPod = wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 09:23 · Score: 0

The article states that only iTunes works with iPod, this is wrong. This may be true if you have already installed iTunes. In that case your screwed. The user agreement states that if you install iTunes, only iTunes will be allowed to interface with your iPod.

For this reason, I haven't installed iTunes and continue to use MusicMatch with my iPod to this day. I like the way it organizes my music and I don't want to be locked into using iTunes.

Re:only iTunes works with iPod = wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 12:58 · Score: 0

The article states that iTunes only downloads to iPod (iTunes only works with iPod) not the way you stated....

Words and word order count...computer instructions given out of order won't work either.....

Krautrock selection is weak, too by sdcharle · 2003-10-23 09:36 · Score: 1

No Neu!? Come on!

Re:Copyright will be abolished, then... by jared_hanson · 2003-10-23 09:39 · Score: 1

I beleive your theory is based on a novel goal, but when placed in the context of reality, is completley absurd and the rationalizations reduce to ignorance.

Copyright law protects a multitude of professions, but I want to consider two specifically: musicians and authors.

In both cases, there is a great deal of pride that goes into a creative work of art. Copyright protects their ownerships of this and ensures that no one else can take the work and claim it as their own. I don't know if you've ever done any creative work, like songs, poetry, etc., but I have, and I would be very pissed if someone else were to take credit for my creation. This protection has noting to do with money, but of due credit. This is very important.

Secondly, there is the money issue. Your ideals seem to disregard this, but it is important. What incentive is their for people to create creative works, if they will not be compensated. There is an argument to be made about musicians, and making money from concerts, but this is not my main point. Look at it from an authors standpoint. It takes a tremendous amount of time to write and edit a novel. If their was no copyright, there would be no reason to publish the book, as anyone could reproduce and redistribute the work for free. Why then would anyone invest their time in writing? There is very little value available to an author other than revenue generated for books. Sure, you can do book signings and lectures, but generally these things are not very lucrative and done only for book promotional reasons. Your donation concept only goes so far. If creative works are seen as a charity, the value in them will decrease exponentially. If the book is available for free, I'm not likely to donate once I have a copy of it. Purchasing the copy ensures the value of the material to both the author and the consumer.

I've had discussions here on Slashdot on one other occasion, but you fail to prevent any credible logic to back up your ideals. I would really like to see you think though your theory, analyze the consequences (both good and bad), and present a logical argument, but you constantly spout rhetoric.

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-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by JayBlalock · 2003-10-23 09:40 · Score: 1

It does suck, but it's also one more reason not to buy into these sort of DRMed schemes. That it's not Apple's fault and they're just following international IP law (which is torturously evil and complex, I know) is small comfort if you just lost the rights to hundreds of songs you paid for.

And again, just as a matter of principle, if you have the music (or video or whatever) in a hard copy, then any power they have to kill the files is gone.

Now, a more interesting question is, you download files. You burn them to CD. You move to Taiwan or someplace. Apple (or whoever) says, you're being naughty, you can't use those files anymore, and revokes your license to use them.

Are the files on your CD rendered illegal copies?

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.

Wah! Wah! by GlockToTheHead · 2003-10-23 09:52 · Score: 1

But with a CD, I have to go to the store buy it, return home, and rip it. Or wait until it gets delivered to me if purchased online.

Poor little baby, wants his music now can't be bothered to have to FUCKING WAIT a little bit, or put EFFORT into something. Got to have that INSTANT FUCKING GRATIFICATION!

Grow up.

Or better yet, just blow your brains out with a glock. We need less people like you.

Re:Wah! Wah! by Hawthorne01 · 2003-10-23 15:06 · Score: 1

I would, but that's too fast. Insted, I plan on forging my own barrel, making my gunpowder from scratch, turning my own stock building my own action and shaping my own flint for the lock.

By the tone of your post, it seems your the one that's in a hurry.

--
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Re:Wah! Wah! by GlockToTheHead · 2003-10-23 20:13 · Score: 1

Sorry, but building your own gun from scratch as opposed to buying one is not even remotely comparable to buying a CD from a store as opposed to buying an AAC from iTMS.

Try again stupid fuck, or instead of replying, please just place a loaded glock to your temple, hold your breath, and squeeze the trigger. Then you won't have to worry about replying. To top it all off, there will be one less complete fucking moron in the wrold.

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by shark72 · 2003-10-23 09:54 · Score: 1

"Most importantly: they still do not give all musicians a fair deal! ie.) at most 10-15% of sales for the typical signed artist, according to most reports."

And a sizeable chunk of it goes to the record company, which invested tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into the CD's production.

Lots of people's hard work goes into the production of a typical CD of music. I'm not just referring to suits, but creative, talented people who sweated over an instrument, a mixing board, or a Mac and a Wacom tablet because they love music. In most cases, the artist did not front all of the substantial amount of money required to produce the CD. That's the record company's job, and the record company stays in business by recouping expenses when the music is sold.

"Artists directly receive at least 75% of the sales and are allowed to set their own per-track or per-album prices to remain competitive."

So 75% goes to the artist (for your sake I'll include compulsories and mechanicals here, which are normally not calculated as part of an artist's compensation), another 6% goes to the credit card company for the transaction processing, and let's say 9% goes to Apple to cover the software development, bandwidth, technical support, and so on. This leaves ten cents per track for the record company.

If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce (remember, studio time can be upwards of $500,000.00 for an entire album nowadays), this means that the track would have to be downloaded a half a million times just to break even. That's half a million paid downloads, not counting Kazaa's share, for which the artist and the record company get nothing. While the superstars might expect half a million paid downloads over a reasonable amount of time, most artists -- those ones who are just getting by -- just aren't going to see that traffic in any decent period of time.

By the way, I run my own online business. I call the shots, and I've put a lot of work into it. The business wouldn't be around were it not for the software I've written myself. I don't deal with hard goods and my expenses are low. Yet I don't make anything close to the 75% net margin that you say that musicians should get. Most people don't. Your expectation that musicians should get 75% net margin is unrealistic.

--
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by Lochin+Rabbar · 2003-10-23 10:08 · Score: 1

If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce

Then it's time to get your fucking costs under control.

High recording costs are a function of the high price of recorded music not the other way round. High quality recordings can be, and are, made for a fraction of that cost. The price of recording equipment has never been cheaper than it is today.

These inflated costs are nothing more than a means for the recording industry to distribute the money amongst a select few, and justify the small pecentage they pay the artist. They are a con bordering on fraud.

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by shark72 · 2003-10-23 10:36 · Score: 1

Costs can vary widely. Bruce Springsteen once recorded an entire album in his kitchen on a Tascam Portastudio. Yet union session musicians can cost several hundreds of dollars a day, as can a good producer and a good engineer. Studio rental costs can vary widely, as well, depending on type and quality of the equipment, the area in which it's located, and the skills and experience of the staff.

It's a free market economy, and generally speaking, you get what you pay for. If you know the secret to charging $100 a day and delivering the same start-to-finish quality as a studio that charges $2,000.00 a day, then that's what you should be doing. "Just stop charging so much for studio time" and other simple bromides are not the solution.

--
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.

I'm not giving anything to anyone who doesn't allow duplication for any reason.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Some people will never be satisfied. by ex-songwriter · 2003-10-23 11:03 · Score: 0

Good point about Bruce Springsteen. And Nebraska, which was recorded at home, is probably his least-selling release. I love it when people talk about how you can make great recordings at home now. If that's the case, why is nobody buying them? Home recording technology has been relatively cheap for 15 years. P2P has been around for several years. Yet nobody is having big hits (or even gaining a large audience) with those means alone. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be because whether or not people realize it, they actually like music with high production values? Or that when they "discover" something via P2P, it has, chances are, already had tons of marketing money put behind it? I'm not defending the labels, but it is funny to constantly hear people talk about the "broken business model" when they don't even understand the business model.

re-downloading from iTunes by abaybas · 2003-10-23 11:19 · Score: 1

Here's an email I sent to iTunes yesterday and then the reply from iTunes:
>
I think I lost the files that I downloaded on my last purchase. I
thought that I could download them again, but after reading the FAQ it seem like
that doesn't seem to be the case. I was wondering why iTunes chose not to allow
people to download multiple times. If bandwidth is your concern, then you could
limit downloads to once a month, or come up with a similar solution. I don't
plan to buy any more songs from iTunes if this policy stays the same.
thanks for your concern, have a nice day.
(please forward this email to the appropriate person if it's not your topic,
thanks)

>

Dear Alkas,

Thank you for contacting iTunes Music Store Customer Service.

The Music Store Team has carefully considered your request for a new download.
As a gesture of goodwill, we have re-granted your download access for your order
history.

Please note that this is a one-time exception to the iTunes Music Store's Terms
of Service, which clearly states that you will be responsible for backing up
your own system. In the interest of fairness to all customers, the Music Store
Team will be unable to make additional exceptions for you. To download again,
open iTunes 4 and select Check for Purchased Music from the Advanced menu. .....more blah blah about backing up your music

Re:re-downloading from iTunes by abaybas · 2003-10-23 11:21 · Score: 1

so I think restricting downloading to one time is a bad decision made by apple. If I have to keep my music in CDs anyway, why not just buy the actual CDs and keep mp3s on my computer to listen to?

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by fname · 2003-10-23 11:25 · Score: 1

I predict you will be waiting a very long time for your uber music service. The idea of not wanting to buy from a store that does business with the RIAA is laughable. Your concept of paying the artists 75% of the costs is another nice one, too; tell me, how many items that sell for under a dollar have margins of less than 25%? I suppose that you would also require that the independent labels pay for all costs of producing the record and are limited in the return that they make.

Anyways, good luck waiting for this service. I doubt you could raise enough capital to run the server farms, as it looks like a terrible business proposition.

And honestly, enough complaining about the "evil" record labels and the angelic recording artists. No one is forced to sign a record label contract with a gun to their head. THe artists that go the major label route have obviously done the calculation and decided that's what they want to do. Many of the these artists are every bit as greedy as the record label execs (who, despite their consistent ability to ignore their contracts and steal from their performers, are only marginally profitable), and many record label employeers do it more out of love for music than money.

Until then, go ahead and stick with your RIAA-free music. I'm sure there are hundreds of labels that put out great music, and I bet most of these guys sell their stuff direct. But unless the artists pays for the album production out of their own pockets, they'll never see anywhere close to 75% of the retail cost going straight back to them.

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by Lochin+Rabbar · 2003-10-23 11:37 · Score: 1

OK then I'll give you a studio budget of $10,000 dollars per day, to cover a few session musicians, studio time, engineer and producer. That's a good budget, I know of very high prouction quality albums that have been put together for that sort of total budget. Now if it costs you $50,000 to produce a single track that means you've spent five days in the studio to produce that track. If it takes you that long to produce one track then you weren't ready to go into the studio in the first place, and your costs are out of control.

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by shark72 · 2003-10-23 11:58 · Score: 1

You're also correct that many ten-song CDs have been completed in just a couple of weeks. Then there are CDs like Dark Side of the Moon which took considerably longer. "Just start taking less time to make CDs" is also over-simplifying it.

With the vast variation in musical genres, speeds at which people work, and many other variables, I don't think there's a universal standard to which everybody should be held lest they be labelled "out of control." It may just so happen that the sort of music you prefer is the type that can be produced in a short amount of time and with minimal expense, and that's perfectly fine, but at the same time, you'll recognize that it's not everybody's preference. Music costs what it costs to make, and I don't think there are any rights or wrongs here.

--
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.

iTunes -> burn to CD -> rip -> Kazaa? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 12:02 · Score: 0

Forgive me if this is too obvious for me to understand, but from what I've read of iTunes it appears to allow you to burn the music to a CD. Well if you can burn the music to a CD, which is an open format, then what on earth is the encryption for? Can't you just rip it back from the CD and make your own unrestricted MP3 (or FLAC)?

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by Lochin+Rabbar · 2003-10-23 12:48 · Score: 1

Then there are CDs like Dark Side of the Moon which took considerably longer. "Just start taking less time to make CDs" is also over-simplifying it.

Pink Floyd could afford a lot of studio time, by the time they made Dark Side of the Moon they were an established act with a massive following. They could afford big costs, and they could afford to be inneficient. Most acts can't afford such a luxury. The big record companies complain that they make a loss on most CD's, and that a few big sellers subsidize the majority of acts losses.

Music costs what it costs to make

Now that is an over simplification. An efficient operation can undercut an inefficient one. The big record companies can afford to be inneficient because they rely on cross subsidies, and the artist bears the biggest brunt of any losses.

It may just so happen that the sort of music you prefer is the type that can be produced in a short amount of time and with minimal expense, and that's perfectly fine, but at the same time, you'll recognize that it's not everybody's preference.

Actually my taste in music is broad and varied. But since you brought up Dark Side of the Moon, here's a link to an album that more than matches it for production quality, and complexity. I couldn't tell you off hand what it cost, (next time I bump into one of the guys involved I'll ask), but i can guarantee it wont have cost anything like $50,000. In music, like software, there is little correlation between cost and quality.

Lots of reasons - by phandel · 2003-10-23 13:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

1) You can buy the one track you like for $.99; saves you $8.99!

2) AAC at 128 sounds great to me.

3) You do get the cover art.

4) Of course you can convert the AAC to MP3 ... it's been mentioned here a million times.

Music value. by ex-songwriter · 2003-10-23 13:08 · Score: 0

If you bought The Beatles' Revolver in 1966 it cost about $4. Adjusted for inflation that's about $26. today. Nobody was complaining about the price of music back then. Perhaps because they found it to be valuable. Now you can get a song for 99 cents delivered directly to your home in seconds. I think that's a good value. Of course you could choose to spend that money on a can of sugar water that you will pour into your toilet in a matter of hours. Or spend 50 times that amount for a ticket to a sporting event that will be over in a few hours, etc. I still think music is worth paying for. I also don't think a buck is much money. But I have a pretty good job.

Trust a journalist by cyril3 · 2003-10-23 13:35 · Score: 1

to write 1400 words when a small table would do nicely

i care... by thegnu · 2003-10-23 14:24 · Score: 1

...

i do.

i can't get cds where i live so i download them off the internet. i have bought about half my cd collection as a direct result of downloading music off of napster, kazaa, winmx, edonkey, overnet.

so they have made musicians money. they've cost musicians money too. but some people don't suck.

i mean me. --*I*-- don't suck.

--
Please stop stalking me, bro.

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by laird · 2003-10-23 16:05 · Score: 1

Let's draw an analogy to physical CD's. If you buy them in the US, you can then move abroad and play them. But you can't (legally) buy any more US-only CD's. Of course, with physical products the usual answer is to buy from a US mail order company, paying with a US credit card, then shipping abroad. It's a hassle, but not exactly a new issue. Try ordering (from the US) from amazon.co.uk and you run into the same issue.

If it makes you feel better, Apple did in fact allow they guy who complained about losing access to his music after moving to Canada to re-authorize his music. He can't buy any more from iTMS (darned contracts) but he didn't lose access to anything, other than for the time it took to wrestle with customer support, which I recall was a few days.

You make a good point, that DRM gives some degree control over stuff you've bought to the content owner (or store, etc.). In Apple's case, they only have control at the instant when you authorize your computer, so once you've got your music they'll leave you alone. Except apparently that if you move to a new machine you need to authorize it against an account with a US credit card. But they don't check permissions every time you play, or every time you boot, etc., which is what could allow them to revoce someone's license" so it's a fairly benign DRM scheme. Of course, if you're really concerned, burn everything to an audio CD after you buy it, and it's yours as long as you keep the disk. CD-R's are cheap. :-)

Apple's also said that once you buy music it's yours, and that if you move, etc., they're not going to disable it. Pragmatically speaking, once your computer is authorized for your music, Apple never hears from it again, so there's no way that they could disable it. Even when you buy music, it doesn't affect the DRM, though they could decide that they can't sell you more music if you've moved to where they can't legally sell you music. But they can't disable your music (AFAIK) once it plays.

This is in contrast to some more "enthusiastic" DRM schemes (pretty much all of them) which check permissions on a per-file use, and can limit what actions you can take with your music. I've seen systems where you _can_ disable files on your computer whenever the content author wants. That's seriously creepy. So I agree with your basic point. I just don't think that Apple's DRM is a good example of that risk. Admittedly, Apple could modify their DRM software to be more intrusive, but so far they've acted with the consumer's interests in mind more than any other DRM vendor, so they don't worry me as much as others...

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!

#1 issue == cost by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 17:09 · Score: 0

$0.99 a song is a ripoff.

I still haven't heard some bleeding hard San Francisco technology wimp hippy liberal say 'we have to help people in Africa, they are starving for music and the evil music companies charge too much. Government foreign aid subsidy handout needed...'

I figure you will puke too when someone actually proposes it.

Re:#1 issue == cost by dswan69 · 2003-10-25 01:21 · Score: 1

$1 is far too much for an audio track in a lossy format, not to mention including annoying restrictions on playback. I'd pay at most 25c for lossy audio. I'd pay $1, including dowload costs (at the very least 25c per track).

AudioIP.com by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 17:40 · Score: 0

Wait to see what happens with AudioIP.com - To bad it's not a public company or I would be buying up stock like crazy.

OK, my equally biased itunes review.... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-23 18:24 · Score: 0

Actually, Mossberg has been pretty hard on Apple over the years. He started to give good reviews with the powerbooks a few years back, the ipod and the iapps but on the whole I would say he is pretty fair. He is also big on the fact osx is derived from the cousin of unix.

My biased user review of itunes and store: (Cannot compare to napster/musicmatch because i am happily marooned in OSXland)

Only had the new itunes (OSX) for a dew days. Works really well. Great jukbox. It is now better that soundjam. Went online with the iTms several times. For most music I still want the album and higher quality tracks (umm 320 ACC), so I just browsed. It is still missing lots of indie stuff (neko case and the waco brothers...) but i was urprised by how much indie stuff they had.

I changed my mind when I saw a Lone Justice greatest hits album. Didn't buy the whole album because I am still searching the used bins for the originals but for 99 cents "ways to be wicked" is a steal. This will tide me over until I find used copies of their albums. I was pretty skeptical of 128 AAC but the quality is pretty good. Doesn't compare to 320 MP3 but is definitely better than 128 mp3 and at least as good as 128 ogg. Registration took seconds. Dowload was fast and seemless.

The store is far from perfect. They need to add an option for 256 (or 320) AAC and continue to add independents. Lyrics/liner notes would also be nice. I would rank this higer than artwork. It would also be nice if they set up a few of their own radio stations playing the new releases in each genre. If they put a 'buy' button up there while the song played I would likely find myself spending some real money at the store. Now, if they gave you the option of putting up your 'own' radio stations (would be okay if you could play 'only' your songs bought from the iTms) I would be thrilled. Hey they have the bandwidth and the xserves. All we would have to do is upload our station playlists and they could serve it up. This last one is probably too much to ask.

The player is nearly perfect. They do not have an easy way to add artwork to whole albums for your own music if it is already ripped. (or at least I have yet to find it) You have to drag and drop for each song. This isn't a big deal because I'm not certain I need to see album covers every time I play a song but I wanted to give it a shot. Smart playlists and the automatic volume adjustment (soundcheck) are great. Encoding is good (AAC and MP3, I haven't added the ogg plugin yet because I want to use my ipod). Burning has always been amazing with itunes.

The new ipod is great. On the go playlists work really well. I agree that it is absurd that they don't add ogg to the ipod. They can clearly do this with little efort and would likely sell a few thousand more ipods. Apple, why wouln't you do it? Perhaps, Steve Jobs is worried they might get to much /love.

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by Ogerman · 2003-10-23 18:27 · Score: 1

And a sizeable chunk of it goes to the record company, which invested tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into the CD's production. ...
If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce (remember, studio time can be upwards of $500,000.00 for an entire album nowadays)

This argument is 100% BS. I personally know people in the music biz who have built fully-equipped, acoustically optimized home studios for less than $50,000 and the recordings they produce are every bit as good as those that come out of Nashville. In fact, I've heard recordings of cover songs that sound better than the originals simply because they were better musicians and had more time to relax and do things right.

By the way, I run my own online business. I call the shots, and I've put a lot of work into it. The business wouldn't be around were it not for the software I've written myself. I don't deal with hard goods and my expenses are low. Yet I don't make anything close to the 75% net margin that you say that musicians should get. Most people don't. Your expectation that musicians should get 75% net margin is unrealistic.

The net margin a musician makes depends on their own costs. They do the recording. They do the touring. (And touring is far more profitable than recording anyhow) All the online service does is provide a mechanism to easily distribute to a very wide audience. Their overhead is very minimal so they don't need to charge much for their services. That 75% actually gives a very large margin to the online service. Reportedly indie artists using Apple's store can get around 90%. Competition will make this a driving factor.

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by Ogerman · 2003-10-23 18:49 · Score: 1

The idea of not wanting to buy from a store that does business with the RIAA is laughable.

People said the same thing about other "unstoppable" monopolies... IBM, Standard Oil, etc.

Your concept of paying the artists 75% of the costs is another nice one, too; tell me, how many items that sell for under a dollar have margins of less than 25%? I suppose that you would also require that the independent labels pay for all costs of producing the record and are limited in the return that they make.

The cost of producing albums, besides time to write the music itself, is negligible today. And I never said that 75% wouldn't be shared with people who help put the band together. Any smart musician today starts their own "label" (aka. personal business), so it's kinda the same thing anyhow. And equally, any smart musician realizes that the big money is in touring, not recording. That's how most RIAA artists even exist, since they typically don't even see any royalties unless they're in the top 10%. Ergo, if an album is now negligibly cheap to produce, why even bother trying to limit its popularity by charging money for it? That just limits the advertising for your performances! Sure, that doesn't work for everyone, but more no-name folks need to give it a shot.

And honestly, enough complaining about the "evil" record labels and the angelic recording artists. No one is forced to sign a record label contract with a gun to their head. THe artists that go the major label route have obviously done the calculation and decided that's what they want to do.

Just like people willingly choose Microsoft products because they're the best around, meet all their needs perfectly, never break, and are really cheap too! You don't need a gun to force people; you just need a monopoly. Before the Internet, the RIAA was the only game in town. All things change.

Re:To the astroturfing moderator by MrBlint · 2003-10-23 23:47 · Score: 0

Someone please explain to me why "astroturfing" should be considered an insult.

--
That's very perceptive of you Mr Stapleton and rather unexpected in a G Major

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by JayBlalock · 2003-10-24 04:37 · Score: 1

Let's draw an analogy to physical CD's. If you buy them in the US, you can then move abroad and play them. But you can't (legally) buy any more US-only CD's.

Uh.... HUH? There aren't export restrictions on CDs. And the only restrictions on DVDs are those which the DVD Consortium artificially imposed. Which is technically in massive breech of a number of international free-trade treaties.

But you're right about everything else. Perhaps Apple is a bad example, since they're at least trying to be the Good Guys here. But just as a matter of principle, I won't buy music which the copyright holder can suddenly decide to take away from me. Like those suckers who bought into MusicMatch (I think that's who), who later discovered that if they don't continue paying a monthly fee, all their paid-for music goes away.

--
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.

Re:Does anyone know how iTunes handles OS upgrades by laird · 2003-10-24 04:52 · Score: 1

"Uh.... HUH? There aren't export restrictions on CDs. And the only restrictions on DVDs are those which the DVD Consortium artificially imposed. Which is technically in massive breech of a number of international free-trade treaties."

If you live in the US and you try to buy a CD from amazon.co.uk they'll tell you that they can't sell it to you. This isn't due to an export restriction, but because they're selling products that they're only licensed to sell in the UK. You have to go to amazon.com to buy in the US.

This is because (for example) the same album may be licensed to different companies to sell in the US and UK, and those companies have exclusive contracts. So if you have the exclusive license to sell an album in the US, you'll complain if a company in the UK is selling into the US (and costing you money).

It's not a matter of export restrictions, but of licensing contracts.

I agree, though, that the region coding on DVD's is pretty miserable. Companies can control where they allow their products to be sold, but once they're sold they shouldn't be able to control where they're used. Good thing region free DVD players are becoming so common (outside the US).

--
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!

Re:My opinion: None of these services are acceptab by shark72 · 2003-10-24 12:21 · Score: 1

Huh? Because you know somebody who's completed a track for less than $50K, my argument is "100% BS?" It was an example, folks, and despite anecdotal examples of spending more or less, the fact remains that many albums have cost tens or hundreds of thousands to produce. This isn't a fact that you or I can change.

Do you have a citation for the report that iTMS pays indie artists 90%? If so, that's great news.

--
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.

Rubbish, nonsense, wrong by dswan69 · 2003-10-25 02:40 · Score: 1

It is a great way to check out music.

Real artists do what they do because they love to, have an uncontrollable need to create. Earning a living from it happens to be a bonus.

As a musician I wouldn't want to have to make money off live performances. There is nothing worse than having to run from place to place playing live. We can make money from selling our music, if we can cut out the current criminal syndicates that control music distribution.

Re:Copyright will be abolished, then... by yourmom16 · 2003-11-01 14:25 · Score: 1

Why then would anyone invest their time in writing?

You do realize there were many books before the first copyright laws were passed in 1708.

--
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park

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