Slashdot Mirror
Online Music Stores Compared
prostoalex writes "DesignTechnica has a comparison of the leading online music stores. With the variety of services available they only concentrated on several top ones. Conclusion? 'If you simply want to download music from the charts, then Yahoo and Wal-Mart are your cheapest options. For your MP3 player, there are several options, with Yahoo the best of all. If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes.'"
"Stuck" with the most popular online music store?
Poor, poor us.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
But the real trick up Harmony's sleeve is its digital rights management (DRM) technology, which allows it to support virtually every kind of mp3 player - including the iPod
Of course I still believe in the ripping CDs myself method. If I want music I still want my little piece of plastic, especially since entire albums still cost about the same.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Basically, if you download a track from iTunes, it will only play on a computer in iTunes (and on an iPod), not on mp3 or Windows Media
iTunes is free so that doesn't really bother me much. I can just download my music and start playing it on my computer. I don't own an MP3 player, but if I were going to buy one it would be an iPod. That's not because I'd have to buy an iPod to play my music, it's because I think the iPod is the best MP3 (I know not technical MP3) player out there. Just my opinion.
Bradley Holt
Give me a break..... as an iPod owner, I don't feel "stuck" with the iTunes Music Store. It makes it sound like the iTMS is a piece of junk that we're "stuck" with. Personally I love the user experience of the iTMS and love all of the little nice touches.
I buy all my music via used compact discs (CDs) or directly from the artist.
No way am I paying $1.00 per song to Apple then having to re-buy everything after my hard drive dies and I lose the songs I downloaded.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
except this is one proprietry format against another. When buying a portable music player you have to consider which service you prefer. If you get your music from iTunes, you are forced to only ever use an iPod, even if something much much better comes along.
Don't ypou love vendor lock-in.
" For your mp3 player, there are several options, with Yahoo the best of all. If you're an iPod owner....then you're stuck with iTunes"
Because we all know that the iPod isn't a mp3player, don't we?
The iTunes (program) - iTunes Music Store (the store) confusion should be a clue to the cluelessness the review has.
(It's just DATA, folks. Back it up.)
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Oh, come on! How many times must it be told that you always need to backup your data? There is even a notice when you install or purchase songs from the iTMS to make sure you back up your data. Apple also helps to encourage backups by allowing you to play all iTMS songs on up to five computers. I personally have my 150GB music database duplicated on my workstation at the lab as well as in two places at home for convenience and...just in case.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
If you're not an iPod owner, you're stuck without the ITMS.
Aparently the trolls have mod points today, as someone found a troll post insightful.
Back up your data. If you're not smart enough to know that, you're not really qualified to have a conversation on this subject. In fact, you're not really qualified to discuss anything related to technology.
Out of curiousity, when you buy direct from an artist as opposed to buying a CD, what format do you get it in? Do they come play it in your living room? And what do you do to ensure a fire or theft doesn't remove your access to the CDs?
They are all MP3 players. Some also play AAC or protected AAC. Some also play WMA or protected WMA.
They also all play WAV, most play AIFF. Note these formats span the entire player industry - there is no 'lock out' other than what the labels create for themselves.
It is not a given that this idea (selling unprotected music) is totally outlandish.
Keep this in mind next time you see the labels gnashing and wailing about vendor lock-in.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I really like to buy music online, especially in the iTMS.
But none of the legal online music shops sell their tracks in a lossless format!
As long as they don't do that I don't see buying tracks online as an option.
Ehmmm, hello... backups?
So, let me just understand this. You have purchased *one thousand five hundred dollars* worth of music in the two years since the iTunes Music Store opened, but you could not find any way to afford a 100 GB external hard drive for $100 to back it up, and you could not cut out 30 minutes of your iTunes music browsing time to copy the music folder to the drive?
I mean there are lots of fancy ways to back up the music, but I just bought a drive, plugged in the USB cable, and dragged the icon of the music folder to the icon of the drive. How hard is that?
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
The iTunes program has a freakin' "backup" command in the menu! I'd like it, too, if Apple kept track of the songs, but how hard is it to actually do a backup? Buy a cheap external drive and just copy over the music folder if you don't want to keep feeding writable DVDs/CDs to the iTunes backup program. Yes, it increases the cost-per-song, but hard drives do crash, so it is a factor one needs to consider when making the conscious choice to buy songs from the iTunes store.
/. with major troll filtering in place soas not to see these types of exchanges - and I haven't seen much in this sub-thread beyond some of your stuff and the reply your ranting against. It's a shame some of the posts got modded up enough to make this type of crap visible when the *real* thing that we should all be bantering about is how absolutely crappy the article link was and that it's a shame their site got as many hits as it did today from the /. crowd.
Might want to investigate menu options more closely and avoid condescending tones next time (the latter is one of the only reasons I bothered posting). Some of us read
Mind the gap...
I had always assumed that iTunes did what you are suggesting. I have an iPod, but have not bought a single song of iTines, and now I'm glad I didn't even if only on principle.
Thank you for telling us about this gaping flaw.
The iTunes appologists who lecture you about backing up your data are hilarious. iTunes doesn't implement a reasonable, I would say vital feature in their product, which you paid money for, and they have the gall to act like you are the one who screwed up.
I have always thought that Apple appologists have their heads up their asses and these guys have proven it beyond a reasonable doubt. Hey geniuses, why do you think there are a dozen 3rd party applications for loading mp3s on to an iPod?
So, you don't have the time to back up your data, but you DO have the time to read Slashdot? Uh, I think you have your priorities mixed up.
Since the data in question resides on your hard-drive, then the existence of that data relies on you. You can't assume that some magic elves come to your computer and back up YOUR data while you sleep. If you don't back up your data, and your HD dies, it's YOUR problem.
Sure there is. It costs money. And everyone would start claiming that "uh, my dog ate my HD, can I re-download the songs?". The key to safekeep your data is in YOUR hands. If you choose not to take the necessary precautions, it's your decision, and your problem.
Seriously, what is this "I want others to take responsibility of my data, and back it up for me, because I'm too lazy to do it myself!"-mentality?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I loved buying CDs too until my house burned down and I had to buy new ones.
I thought, well, I'll just go back to Best Buy again, show them my receipts, and they'll replace my $1,500.00 worth of CDs I bought from them.
Well, I was wrong, and haven't "bought" a CD since.
Yeah, that sounds just as stupid was what you said.
iTunes isn't some mysterious special format for storing songs. It is simply a well-organized folder structure that is augmented by an XML index file. What iTunes does is rename all of the music files based in the ID tags of each song, providing a GUI on top of the file structure. What's really nice about iTunes is that it encourages proper, decent tags for each song file. I used to see such crappy tags (or none) from people using software other than iTunes. Tagging is much better now which implies either many people use iTunes or others have caught on to how useful proper ID tagging is.
It's locked in to iTMS as far as DRMed music stores go. eMusic is great, and the way forward, but a lot of major labels just won't contribute material to non-DRMed stores. The article is talking about popular, chart music. In this respect, you are locked in to iTMS, because you are locked into Apple's proprietary DRM technology.
Of course, personally I'd prefer if there was no DRM at all, but if you want to deal with companies who will not release their content without DRM, you're locked into iTMS (unless you particularly feel like transcoding DRMed Windows Media content).
This is the lock-in issue. It's a valid issue. DRM in general is a bigger issue, but in this case its presence, and the unwillingness of major labels to release content without it, absolutely locks one who wishes to get their content to iTMS.
Wrong answer: You're stuck with iTunes, because it uses a proprietary format which isn't compatible to anything Apple doesn't want you to use.
Right answer: Since you're going to strip the DRM off any music you keep anyway, isn't it nice that iTunes makes that so easy and convenient?
DRM is evil. If you aren't burning the music you buy to audio CDs you're just asking for the fuckup fairy to turn your music collection into digital hash. And once you do that it doesn't matter what format it was originally... it'll play for sure on any player.
(yeh, there's a miniscule loss in fidelity that I've yet to be able to detect... if yuo cared about that you wouldn't be buying lossy-compressed music in the first place)
IANAL, but what I've been able to drudge up from lawyers about this is, there is no clear legal answer for US citizens as to whether downloading from AllOfMP3 is legal. It could be argued, for example, that the purchase takes place in Russia, and therefore it is a legal sale by Russian law, and that the downloading constitutes a private individual importing a good purchased overseas. There are laws about what goods can be imported and how, but nothing barring purchased data being transferred over the internet.
Therefore, (according to this interpretation) if it is legal to buy in Russia, legal to import, and legal to own in America, the purchase is legal.
I thought the whole thrust of the RIAA/MPAA was that UPLOADING was illegal, not downloading. You share with no one when you use allmp3.com. So, how is this illegal?
---
You can use any kind of HTML formatting that Slashdot accepts.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
Why? That's not the case with the majority of software sold. Lose that, and you have to buy another copy. I think people need some education if they believe in such fantasies. But I'd say most people do know that they aren't entitled to another copy. Only the wilfully ignorant or over-expectant would think like this. Do you have any evidence to suggest most people expect replacements of products they lose or damage? You break it, you get a new one, is the conventional logic.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It's locked in to iTMS as far as DRMed music stores go. eMusic is great, and the way forward, but a lot of major labels just won't contribute material to non-DRMed stores. The article is talking about popular, chart music. In this respect, you are locked in to iTMS, because you are locked into Apple's proprietary DRM technology.
:-), but effectively all the vendors are using proprietary DRM technology - sometimes their own (in the case of Sony and Apple) and sometimes from 3rd parties (in the case of DRM's Windows Media content players). AFAIK none of them really open in any meaningful sense though, even Real's Harmony.
I appreciate the point your trying to make, and it's not entirely invalid (and I'm not just trying to be perverse
It's correct to say that it does not support other vendors proprietary DRM technology - any more than they support the iTMS - it's still true to say that it plays music from other vendors though, it just depends on how the other vendors encode their music (which really, is up to them and the record companies).
Given this and overwhelming dominance of the iTMS in online music sales, it seems absurd for the author to claim the iPods are 'locked in' and assert the other players are 'open', when the other players are just as locked, but to different systems (and a smaller share of the market to boot).
This is not an attempt at a fanboy post defending the iTMS - I'd prefer non DRM'd music too (even though the iTMS lets you burn unencumbered to audio CD, which is at least something - I just think the assertion made in the article is false and that its the music stores and their proprietary non-interoperable formats that are the problem, not the players, which by and large handle common formats (would be nice to see more Ogg Vorbis support though).
I think most people, when they buy music, want to support the artist who created the music. After-all, that's the point of the copyright laws the RIAA uses in the first place. Allofmp3.com doesn't send any of their earnings back to the artists who originally recorded the music. Whether it's legal or not isn't the issue, whether it shows support for the artists you like is.
Comment of the year
Sure there is. It costs money. And everyone would start claiming that "uh, my dog ate my HD, can I re-download the songs?". The key to safekeep your data is in YOUR hands. If you choose not to take the necessary precautions, it's your decision, and your problem.
The cost really isn't that high, and I'm sure most people would happily pay a couple bucks a gig to redownload their purchases if need be.
What I think would be a logical and equitable solution would be to allow people to redownload their tracks, any and all tracks, only once a year. That way, if you lose your HD, the first time you'll have not done it yet, so you're good and Apple will let you do it. It will also come with a warning that you won't be able to do it again for a year. That way, if you lose all your music again in less than a year (how often does that really happen?) you'll at least know all is not lost, and that you'll just have to wait.
From the point of view of the RIAA and the labels, they really want to have you buy the same song as many times as possible, so they aren't going to help you. But from the point of view of copyright infringement, I don't see how it's a legitimate concern. You can already copy the songs you downloaded and send them to anyone you want. They are locked with DRM, so it really makes no difference, does it?
Seriously, what is this "I want others to take responsibility of my data, and back it up for me, because I'm too lazy to do it myself!"-mentality?
What's with the "Screw you, you idiot. When bad luck befalls you, don't look at me for help!" mentality? This isn't an unreasonable request.
Why, exactly, shouldn't a person request quality service? I really just don't get it. It's like when the airliner crash-landed recently and people were upset that the CNN feed was cut/went out during landing so they couldn't watch it live. A lot of people responded to complaints with, "Hey, it's not your airline, they can do whatever they want. You don't like it, fly someone else!" Aside from the fact that you don't know ahead of time all the little details you might want for all sort of contigencies, nor do you really have any way to verify that you'll get them, I don't see how it's wrong, at all for the customer to request such service. How it's wrong to be upset or displeased when the service doesn't match their wishes.
In fact, it seems the opposite of wrong. It seems like exactly what the customer should do. They should demand better service. They should request features they don't currently have.
iTunes is an excellent store which provides a great service. Still, it can be better, and this is exactly one of the many ways it could be improved.
As an iPod owner, I really don't care if iTunes remains the best, most integrated, etc... because the premise here is false. I have about 1500 songs on my iPod, and I bought about 3 of them from iTunes. The rest I got from CDs I already owned, allofmp3.com, etc. "Stuck with iTunes"? Hardly.
/. lately. Not only is it very shallow treatment of the subject (no mention of allofmp3.com?), they apparently didn't bother to even run a spell-check. "Napspter"? "Micrsoft"?
This is one of the more worthless articles to appear on
Try again when someone writes a real review of online music stores.
Sean