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iTunes One Year Anniversary Sparks Comparison
An anonymous reader writes "CNet News is running a story about the upcoming one year anniversary of Apple's iTunes service. It gives a pretty good summary of the year in online music, with a nice chart comparing each service's user base now and then. The most interesting quote in the article is from a record executive stressing that the industry is quietly hoping that the online music stores will start selling songs in compatible formats. As a sidenote, the headline story at the beginning is based off this page."
Unlike the hinges however which were a real problem the "burnt powerbook" photos are faked.
The DRM in the iTMS files is acutally very limited. You can share the music on a few computers, copy it to your iPod, and even burn to a standard audio CD. It only prevents you from sharing it with a bunch of people you don't know.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
- WMA9 - 192k
- WMA9 - 160k
- WMA9 - 128k
- WMA9 - 96k
- WMA9 - 32k
- WMA9 - 20k mono
- AAC - 128k
- AAC - 256k
- MP3 - hifi VBR (lame -preset standard)
- MP3 - 128k
- Ogg Vorbis - q6
- FLAC
In-house we use FLAC to store everything, then have shell scripts to de-code those FLACs to WAV files to convert to the various other formats.Looking at the comparison table, it isn't fair to list Rhapsody in there, with Rhapsody being a streaming service and almost every other player in there is a download service. Interesting to note that , RealPlayer music store is listed in there too and has a pretty good download number for something that opened just one-two months back.
Rhapsody with a user base of 489,000 is doing pretty good I beleive with each user paying $10 / month . Thats like 4.89 million. Apple is way ahead in the competition with almost double the users compared to its successor.
My current favorite download service is Bleep
http://www.warprecords.com/bleep/
Great electronic stuff from guys like Squarepusher and Plaid in un-DRM'd 192k LAME-encoded mp3 goodness.
I wish iTunes had a higher quality option. It's not that 160k AAC sounds bad, but if the download is all I get, I'd like a higher quality format to get at the same time.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
If you are my kind who prefer to keep searching for variety of genres of music that are not mainstream like global music and celtic, then you should definitely look into Rhapsody. Its something that you begin to appreciate once you try. Unbelievable collection that is very eclectic and different comprising a wide range of genres on world music (mali, rai, west african, new age). Its defintely worth 10$/month
"the industry is quietly hoping that the online music stores will start selling songs in compatible formats" we already have a compatable format arseholes, it's called mp3
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I call bullshit.
PlayFair/iTunes allows burning of the same playlist to a CD up to 10 times without modification, and rearranging tracks or tacking on a 1-second silent track counts as modifying and entitles you to another 10 burns. There is no reasonable way you should ever run up against that limit in anything resembling normal use, it seems to me.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
True, but pedantic. Not everyone has an etymological dictionary with them all the time, and I suspect that most people wouldn't happen to know the roots as well as you do. Usage is a critical mass thing - once a certain expression or meaning becomes popular enough it becomes domninant...
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Apple's PlayFair files only allow burning under limited circumstances, particularly that the same mix of songs can only be burned three times.
That's simply not true. What are these "limited circumstances" you speak of? And where do you get three times? Even Apple says ten is the limit for a given playlist, and IIRC, once you reach that limit you can just make a new, identical playlist. There is no per-track limit.
Microsoft's WMA format allows the DRM applier to set whether they want to allow 1 burn, 5 burns, any other number of burns, or infinite burning. Again, Microsoft's just the software provider, it's up to the store to make the deals for these things....
What this means in reality is that any two tracks even from the same store might have different limitations. If you make a mix with tracks A and B, with burn limits of 1 and 5, respectively, you won't be allowed to make two copies of that mix.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
You're right, P2P applications are certainly available for the Mac. However, fortunately for Apple, most of the general public aren't aware of this, and so see iTunes as their main source for downloading music.
And once iTunes had become extremely successful for Mac users, it was only a matter of time before they moved into the Windows market.
You should read it more closely--It's saying that artists get 8 to 14 cents from the record labels (who get 65%). Apple doesn't pay the artists, record labels do.
I'm going to chime into the "bullshit" on this post. I've burnt at least 6 copies of the ERROR - S/T EP I bought from iTunes. I've put the Green Day - I fought the law single on about 10 mix cds, in a mix of Fairplay AAC's, non-DRM AAC, and mp3s. There is no limit on burning that i've been able to find.
Why don't more people seem to mention or know about the legal alternatives to these services.
www.allofmp3.com
www.3mp3.ru
club.mp3search.ru
It's legal even in the US due to international copyright law.
(www.museekster.com/allofmp3info.htm)
Nice post, but a little out of date, as I see no mention of Poisoned which is a front end to giFT. giFT supports FastTrack (Kazaa), Gnutella, and OpenFT (a hot little network). Personally I'd rather run Poisoned than Kazaa any day.
Furthermore, the BitTorrent community is alive and well on OS X. Azureus works really well, and there's a hot little native client that is better than the standard one.
I've been using the Overnet command line client, which sucks but gets the job done better than the various front-ends floating around.
And then there's Hotline, Carracho, and the new open-source client-server model "Wired".
Enjoy.
Audiolunchbox offers non-DRM mp3s or OGG. It's mostly independent music though.
In practice, this is complete BS. Aside from Playfair, there are innumerable programs out there that provide "virtual sound cards", so you can rip the output of any sound player straight to your hard drive.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Microsoft is only entering the game as a software provider? No Microsoft music store? Did you think Microsoft could really resist leaving any pie untouched?
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5176411.html
Really, how much can you respect a group of people who state their primary purpose is to support the artist, but advocate downloading songs and sending artist a dime or more for their efforts. Downhillbattle is a silly protest group, who hasn't decided who they should protest.
If you want to support independent artist at least get your stats from the Future of Music Coalition--independent artist who support and organize independent artist. You'll actually see muscians who want to stay independent, who aren't seeking the Big 5 for a quick fame, but working hard and living off their music. Go visit http://www.futureofmusic.org/
There are at least two online music stores for Australians to use. http://bigpondmusic.com/home.asp and http://www.destramusic.com/.
Sure, they are both Windows only (and they both suck), but they are there. Personally I use www.allofmp3.com in Russia. See today's Age newspaper for more details.
AAC is open; WinAMP will rip CD's in AAC format.
Now the FairPlay system is proprietary, but then so is WMA's DRM. In fact, of all the music services, Apple's comes closest.
But you knew of this, right?
I wouldn't actually use it, though.
I don't want to be offensive, but you should read and understand the posts before you reply to them (specially if you are going to quote them).
The 10-copy limit applies only to burning a playlist to CD. And, as the other posted said, once you reach that limit, it is trivial to restart the counter (by rearranging or recreating the playlist).
So, in practice, the 10-copy limit is irrelevant to the regular end user. It's only intended to slow down the pirates who want to burn dozens of copies of the same list.
"While you're happy to have the choice made for you now, that might not be the case in the future. Could be tricky moving your entire music collection over to another format."
For iTMS, converting to another format is quite easy -- burn to CD (or virtual CD) and RIP into other format.
Yes, converting between lossy formats does cost you some sound quality, but:
- you can't hear it under normal listening conditions, and
- there are hacks that let you strip the DRM and leave music in AAC, and
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Everyone should keep in mind that what Apple says right now might not be what Apple says in the future. The rules may change and the changes can apply retroactively to music you've already purchased. If you're prudent, you will immediately burn any music you download from the iTunes music store to non-DRMed media and hang on to that copy.
Once it's on an ISO CD format, it's fair game. Just make a binary copy of that CD as many times as you want.
Sure, you can do the same thing with CDs made from iTunes, except you don't need to.
I consider it a point against WMA-based services that you need additional 3rd-party software to do something that iTunes has no problem with in the first place.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
iTunes 'could cost $2.49 per song'
w sI D=8493
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?Ne
Can you play your iTunes music on your non-iPod MP3 player without someone getting around the DRM? Can you play the music on your computer with a non-apple player? Can you play it in an OS that isn't made be Apple or Microsoft?
If your music isn't an iPod, or your OS isn't a Mac or Windows, then iTunes isn't aimed at you. It's also not aimed at you if you aren't American (so far). That means that I, (like you?) can't use it. That doesn't mean it's bad for the people that can.
Don't try too hard - Apple appears to have a fix posted inconsicuously at apple.com/support - the bastards!
If that doesn't work, and I have no idea how technical you are or if you are interested in making this work but this guy looks to have had the same issue - can do everthing but buy music via his firewall. (Start at bottom of page and read up.)
Lastly, try a Google search for 'itunes firewall 443' and see what pops up!
It isn't that difficult to figure this stuff out man. And just for comparrison, try talking to someone live about your issues with other freeware (iTMS is free) and see how far you get.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Some Mac supporters fear that this may change someday to increasing the number of iPod users out there. It seems that there is an increasing difference between being a Mac supporter and an Apple Inc. supporter.
Interesting, though in my case the iPod had a huge direct influence over my decision to get an iBook over other PC laptops. I would tend to believe that iPod sales and Apple computer sales are not completely mutually exclusive.
Little Bricklets
You are misinterpreting the numbers. These are subscriber/member numbers and have nothing to do with downloaded tracks, albums or revenue generated.
For all we know WalMart as 2.7 million members, but only several thousand have purchased music.
For example. we know that iTMS has sold at least 50 million tracks, but has less than 5 million accounts.
The latest numbers I'd seen released showed iTMS with something like 70% of all legal music downloads, that means that iTMS is selling more than all the other services combined.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Well, when there's a will, there's a way. You can use QTConvert to batch convert between any two known QuickTime formats, including from Protected AAC to AAC, Ogg Vorbis, etc. And it comes with scripts that run from within iTunes so that you can select tracks within iTunes and convert them.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!