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Free iTunes Over a Browser
Ade writes "One may now listen and search for Apple iTunes music via this front end or any webserver running the perl script called iTMS-4-ALL, which was written by Jason Rohrer, programmer of the secure filesharing system MUTE who hopes the script 'helps revive everyone's ITMS interfaces.' Music activists Downhill Battle, who organised the Grey Tuesday protests for disseminating censored music, run a copy of the script and say 'this is a cute tool, but it has the potential to become a powerful weapon to fight the major record label monopoly' in the ways they outline. Playing the music requires QuickTime for the ~600kb downloadable MP4 snippets to be heard." Update: 04/19 01:41 GMT by H : Thanks to Aaron at Punboy for sending us a link to a faster server.
The real news is that the protocol has been reverse-engineered, so you can write whatever iTunes frontend you want.
Descriptions isn't: "listen and search for Apple iTunes music " ... " for the ~600kb downloadable MP4 snippets to be heard."
Title probably implies free as in speech (can be accessed from anywhere) rather than beer (you get free songs)
Look at some of the suggested uses for this... Constantly downloading free previews? Using them for P2P? What makes you think Apple will allow their service to be abused like this? They control both the server and the only client that they want to be accessing it, it would be trivial for them to break this without affecting anyone using iTunes at all.
It's this zero-tolerance attitude that will cement hardware DRM's inevitability. Apple tried to meet customers halfway and they still get attacked.
would be to port iTunes to Linux. I can't think of any reason how that could hurt Apple.
And because their Windows/MacOS ITMS covers 95 % of their clients and they don't give a f*** about the rest (hey, long haired hippies don't buy music anyway, they don't even buy their OS, doh...)
It would cost them a great deal of money to port iTunes to Linux, and it is not immediately clear that such a port would provide them with any tangible financial benefit. duh.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I'd like to thank the jilted, bitter, preachy musicians who created the Downhillbattle.org website and are hosting this script. The search engine is actually more responsive than iTunes, so I can find the songs I want to buy from iTunes even faster!
Please, guys. Get off your high horse and work on finding a new way to do things rather than just trying to take the old system down. When you find a better way, the rest will work itself out.
They claim that this is great because you don't have to use the iTunes interface. But the interface to this perl script is horrible. It reminds me how perfect Apple got it the first time.
Why recomend quicktime? How about VLC, or MPlayer? Both play the files just fine. If you're going to go the closed-source route, just run iTunes in the first place.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, try and keep your scope proper next time you post. iTunes is, and always has been, entirely free to download. The Apple Music Store meanwhile is also free to use, although the actual purchasing of music costs money as the definition of 'purchase' requires.
"Stumble before you crawl"
How long until someone figures out how to buy songs through it? The DRM stuff has also been reverse engineered (as in it can be enforced on without using itunes).
And now I'm wondering how long it will take before the protocol will be changed slightly to lock out this program...
Look, apple isn't doing anything heroic. They're not offering anything special.
I buy completely legit, DRM free, albums...any album you can name for $7 each, brand new (shipped to your door for that price). That comes out to about $.50 a song, and I can resell the CD's when I'm done.
CD's are only expensive for the impatient. The "oh, I can't wait 5 days, I must have that song NOW!" crowd. But if you can wait 5 days. FIVE days. Then you can get great deals.
Or there are used CD's.
But I don't get why Apple is "magic" but KMart offereing essentially the same thing is "evil".
Look. I'm typing this on a powerbook. I own 6 apple computers, I have 2 iPods. But I don't think iTMS is magic. its not special. I don't think Apple has done anything special except convince certain people that iTMS is something revolutionary.
Is isn't.
Paying $10/CD for 128kb DRM encrusted music may be your idea of fantastic. But I think I'll pass on that kind of generosity.
It implies free as in samples. It has nothing to do with free as in speech. I could not take a bunch of those samples, create a song from them, then release it without legal issues.
"This is an amusing distraction that Apple will (and should) shut down. Fast."
Wow. People like you exist.
Okay.
1) Why do you think you need to "defend" apple against something that doesn't harm them?
2) What do you care if apple shuts this down? It must be tough for people to be around you with your misplace "I think I know what I'm talking about" attitude.
I mean, somebody writes a front-end to iTMS, doesn't hurt anything, its a cool hack. And you think apple should sue.
You're one of those people who think iTMS is a special gift that keeps the forces of evil at bay. You hold up iTMS like a magic totem that protects you against...I don't know... being such an asshole.
No really, get a life. Let apple worry about apple. You seem more worried about it than Apple themselves.
Because they can tightly control the itunes viewing experience. Trying to make everything web-browser accessible may be a proper goal in some areas, but in others it just doesn't make sense. With the way it is structured now, they can add tags at whim to redefine how items are presented on the screen, etc and be completely certain how it will look to the user without trying it out on upteen hundred browsers, or adding the silly "best viewed on {insert web browser here}" icon.
A similar line of reasoning is why you must use apple hardware to use apple software...they don't have to cater to the masses, only their customers.
It says this is a powerful weapon to fight the major record label monopoly, but it doesn't fight major record labels any more than it does minor record labels.
I think there's a EULA for that in iTunes's installer, if it's not, the DMCA probably prohibits it.
You are absolutely correct. Whover thinks your comment is flamebait doesn't understand simple logic. Unfortunately, the guys at Downhill Battle are just punks who believe in vandalizing other people's property instead of finding real solutions. I certainly wouldn't want to count them among MY allies.
i installed itunes just to hear previews so i could grab the songs elsewhere, purchase or download. (cause aac is not my fav)
i cstore. and whatever else they want to stick in there.
amazon is good for this, and there used to be other websites, but amazon seems to have got them all now (cdnow, musicblvd, etc)
especially because itunes is very bloated. and its understandable for a webbrowser/mediaplayer/medialibrary/cdburning/mus
You forgot three things:
Apple needs to interface with the iPod.
Apple has it's pride in design and usability.
Profit (tied tightly to the iPod of course)
You attribute to malice and stupidity when there is real, technical, reason. Apple's key to making money is ease of use, high design, and quality, and if it can't do that, why is it Apple? If it is none of those things, then you might as well have a third party reverse engineer and develop the software to browse, buy, manage, play, and synch music files... notably which has happened with regards to:
Quicktime
iTMS
iPod
AAC/iTunes
So whether they are right or wrong, I doubt it was a gut anti-Linux move so much as a simple return on investment calculation. Simply put, without lifting a finger Apple has accomplished all of the goals by relying on the characteristic DIY nature of the Linux and OSS movements.
Your bias works against you; unless you don't believe in thinking intelligently and instead suppose we should always turn first towards our biases and second to external evidence?
GPL Deconstructed
"Once we make this script developers can integrate it into filesharing clients, and we'll always know what we should and shouldn't pay for."
Heres a concept.. how about paying for what you listen to? Or is the concept beyond these people?
... and, so began, the legend of the Five-point Atkins Exploding Heart Technique!
Apple could save themselves money and not support Mac OS X, since they are not making much money from those users.
.....
Actually, I've got a strange feeling that they make most of their money from those users.
So Apple has an equal and very soon, larger market in Linux users then Mac OS X users.
You've been looking at numbers too long, this statement ignores the realities of the situation.
For one thing, Linux is not a single entity. There are dozens upon dozens of distros, and incompatable versions of those distros. There is nothing close to a 'standard' GUI. Audio playback is hit-or-miss. Nothing is solid. That 2.8% of
desktops is completely fragmented.
It also doesn't distinguish between home and work. I suspect
that a huge portion of those Linux installs are in offices, and
not in the home, where I suspect the greater portion of
Mac OS installs exist. For something like iTunes, the home
installs are the ones that really count.
Jesus, I've just been reading your other posts and it's pretty clear you don't understand Apple's business, or really any business. I'm waiting for you to call Apple "beleaguered"... Nevermind, this gets posted AC...
All that has changed is that the potential number of users has been increased because you no longer need to[...]run the official iTunes client.
How in betsy's name is that an attack? This is free publicity for iTunes Music Store on more platforms than Apple can officially support. This guy is basically increasing the market for Apple.
First, consider that this script affords this so-called "increased market" you speak of no possibility of actually purchasing this music. Rather, it simply allows anyone to leech Apple's bandwidth by downloading 30-second samples, database info, and album art--and all this with no potential for increased sales because users of this script will have no way to purchase songs!
Would you claim it was an attack on car sales if people starting P2Ping the TV commercials?
Now consider that audio tracks are a product which is easily copied, not one which customarily must be purchased (or stolen, at great risk to the thief), like cars. Your analogy is inherently flawed.
What this script is like is those people who spend three hours with a salesperson of the local computer shop learning about what they should get in their computer, and then they go home and order it from Dell. Wasting their resources with no intention to purchase.
I doubt Apple cares about music sales very much, since it's basically a loss leader. What I think they do care about is iPod sales. Now let's think about this:
The people who make use of this script, unable to purchase from the iTMS, will, by necessity, either:
- use P2P to infringe copyright on the tracks that interest them,
- go buy the CD, or
- use one of the 10,000 WMA music stores to download the track.*
Now let's consider: The users is likely going to then end up with, let's say, VLC, and a bunch of MP3s or WMAs. Which will play on the 10,000 WMA players out there, but (if WMA) not on the iPod. In addition, VLC, in this example, has no integration with the iPod, so it provides none of the impetus iTunes does to "upgrade" your experience by adding an iPod. Which is the main goal of the iTMS. Get that through your heads. Repeat after me. Apple is not a record label. It's a hardware company.What the script author and most of the Slashdot audience is advocating is that Apple should:
- provide unlimited use of the store's resources to persons who cannot and will not ever make a purchase from it
- facilitate one or more of the following activities:
- copyright infringement over P2P networks
- further domination of the Windows Media format and non-Apple music players
This is where you explain to me how this is beneficial to Apple (besides getting the blessing of ~20% of Linux users who would be happy if Apple did facilitate this kind of thing. The rest would still bitch and moan about Apple's "proprietary" this and "closed" that).Basically, this reminds me of a Mac OS X shareware app that would download album art for you using a backend interface provided by Amazon.com. Amazon blocked that program because it was leeching incredible amounts of bandwidth but contributing little to nothing in terms of sales. Apple may try the same, and they would be equally justified in my book.
---------
* Also, they could be (3) using it for CDDB or something equally daft (since there is a thing called, um, CDDB, that does it just as well--except for album art, which is a bandwidth hog.) MusicMatch does integrated CDDB and album art, though, but i guess it's not available on Linux.
That's where being able to buy individual songs can definitely save money over buying a full CD, even at $7.
But I actually agree with most of what you say. I don't like Apple's DRM either. It may sound like they are very generous, but they are just trying to lock you in to their software and hardware players.
As much as it pains me to give Microsoft any credit, their WMA format is, in a way, more "open" than Apple AACs, since they license their DRM to other software and hardware vendors. Just look around and you will see that almost every portable or car MP3 player out there can also play WMAs. I was thinking about starting to buy songs on ITMS, but since I have not found any portable or car players other than iPods, I nixed that idea. I can buy a car stereo that plays WMAs for $160, or a portable CD WMA player (with a car adapter too) for $40! I have no choice with AACs.
Since I don't want to contribute to Microsoft's monopoly, and thanks to Apple's greediness and lack of vision, I'm afraid I will have to buy used CDs and burn my own MP3s. If Apple ever decides to license or give their DRM to other software and hardware vendors, I will reconsider.
So what if you can browse the iTunes library thru a perl script? WHERE IS THE PURCHASE BUTTON NEXT TO EACH SONG. That's the whole point behind iTMS. And you know, actually listening to samples without having to fire-up a separate application.
*sigh*.
How about writing a useful interface to the Amazon API, which, by design, lets you search its large inventory, is all about metadata (descriptions, reviews and more), gives you direct convenient links to sample audio files for previews (unlike the iTMS links in that interface which my browser is having difficulty understanding), *AND* offers a convenient token-based interface to create a shopping cart of albums that can actually be bought. The Amazon API lays the ground work for a highly-interactive, open market place. Sure you can't buy songs individually, but you can't do that either thru the perl script.
There's absolutely no point in writing significant amounts of "client" code to reverse-engineered, non-standard server protocols, especially without the approval of the entity that runs the only current implementation of that protocol.
If anything, take what's useful from the little you've reverse-engineered, implement a better, open protocol based on that, and convince all major record labels to input their data into your system. Oh wait, that might be a bit of a challenge.
Either way, Apple gets increased mindshare.
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