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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."
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.
A mass suicide of iPod owners has been reported on the eve that they discovered they were "stuck" with iTunes.
"If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes."
That's bullshit. I have an iPod, and only a tiny fraction of my music has come from iTunes. I would think by now that everyone would be aware that the iPod is very capable of playing mp3s, regardless of where you got them from.
The review contradicts itself and contains factual errors.
eMusic allows MP3 downloads but iPod owners have to use iTunes?
No. You can use eMusic downloads on your iPod too.
iTunes downloads with fairplay are only playable in iTunes and on iPods?
No. iTunes downloads with fairplay are playable in any application that supports QuickTime. There's a very simple api for extracting the decompressed audio data from those files. The user must authenticate with the music store before the files can be decrypted, but that's it.
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.
I loved iTunes too until my disk drive stopped working and I had to buy a new one.
I thought, well, I'll just download iTunes again, log in as me, and it'll start re-downloading the $1,500.00 worth of digital songs I bought from Apple.
Well, I was wrong, and haven't "bought" a song online since.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
" 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.
Been fairly pleased with Emusic. High-bitrate mp3s for 0,25USD. Yes it's a monthly subscription and they don't have mainstream crap, but other than that they're great. Did I say that they offer mp3s? And then there's allofmp3. 0,02USD/1Mb. Using a loophole in russian copyright legislation. Been operating for years.
"Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
If you're not an iPod owner, you're stuck without the ITMS.
For long, the best music store for me has been AllOfMp3
.WAV music, unencumbered by DRM, quite cheap and easly. (Oh and they have a damn lot of music).
I can buy lossless formated music, ogg or even raw
And also, there are a number of different ways to pay (in case you do not trust Russian stores):
-Credit Card
-Pay Pal
-Xrost
-Bank Transfer
-WebMoney
Cool uh?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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?
Right, because I'm such a moron that I can't figure out how to get an mp3 onto my iPod.
eMusic does NOT require you to download their "music manager" (At least it didn't 2 weeks ago), though it is necessary if you want to download an album at a time instead of track by track. Another thing the reviewer didn't mention is that members get one free track every day for downloading their IE toolbar, and that it's the only service of the bunch that has no DRM whatsoever. As you might imagine, I'm a satisfied customer.
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.
The article was good, from 10,000 feet, but I thought it missed a few points.
Musicmatch is owned by Yahoo - why is it different? (Yahoo Music engine is a 3 meg download for Windows - a tiny player with pretty good functionality, especially compared to Napsters memory hogging skinned Windows Media Player).
With the Windows Plays for Sure stuff (Yahoo, Napster to Go) it only transfers to a Plays for Sure portable. While the article briefly touches that mentioning it's only a handful of players now, they should have specifically called "Doesn't work with iPods!" As someone already noted in the comments, iPod has 80-90% share of the portable MP3 market.
And last but not least, licenses. With the exception of Yahoo (I believe), if your hard drive crashes you lose your license for tracks you've purchased for 99 cents each. Gone, poof. Like losing a CD. You'd think that buying a song online, they'd have a record of your purchase and let you re-download, but no.
I've used most of the services, except iTunes on a Mac, and if Yahoo puts some marketing muscle behind YME they have a shot at 2nd place and displacing Napster. They offer the same functionality for less than half what Napster and Rhapsody try.
As a Linux only user, I'm contiually frustrated by my lack of music buying options online. I suppose I should try out SharpMusique as an iTunes interface one of these days.
I don't understand the frustrating part. The author tries to make an issue of having to convert iTunes songs into mp3 or WMA. But why would you want to? iTunes also plays songs bought from the iTunes Music store.
The only possible reason to do the unweildy conversion is to get rid of DRM. But the author is willing to accept DRM from other stores and, IMO, worse conditions:
Napster You don't own the music, however, and if you cancel your subscription, all the tracks you've downloaded disappear.
Looks like once you start with Napster, you're also stuck with Napster.
Yahoo However, as with other subscription services, you only have access to the music as long as you maintain your subscription.
Same with Yahoo.
Maybe the full disclosure should be placed at the beginning of the article?
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.
Where's thepiratebay.org in the comparison? They have the biggest selection, DRM free, for the lowest price! (free, as in free beer)
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
Ifyou're gonna pay all that money to "legally" download/buy your music, you should probably do it with a service that's ACTUALLY LEGAL, which AllOfMP3 is not.
Actually legal?, Where?. IIRC where [I suppose] you live it is legal to DOWNLOAD music, although it is illegal to SHARE [upload] it.
Now, IIRC again, in Russia [where this service is given] it is legal [maybe it is not fair but it is still legal and, you know some laws/practices in the US that are not fair but again, they are LAW].
So, when someone is downloading a bought music file from allofmp3.com they are not doing anything illegal.
So, could you explain me where is the "illegality" of this?
Cheers.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
[From beginning of article] ... ... since Apple turned the iPod into a necessary fashion accessory ... To be fair, Apple did a superb job with the iPod and iTunes by making it easy for people. And, by making the software proprietary, they made it a lot harder for the competition; what you downloaded from iTunes wouldn't play elsewhere. ..."
... If you're an iPod owner....then you're stuck with iTunes. ..."
"
Online music has come a long way
Read carefully, you see either a predetermined bias (fine, it's in everything we read and the wise know how to look for it) or misunderstanding of the topic (not fine; he's offering advice here).
iTunes is a software product that runs on Windows and Macintosh computers. You can't download music "from iTunes". What he means is downloaded from the iTunes Music Store with the iTunes application on your PC and I would be fine with that if he just said that once, at the beginning of the article, but he doesn't. Most people are more careful to differentiate between the iTMS and iTunes itself.
"
You know, he writes in such a nice, matter-of-fact style that even after reading the entire article, I'm not sure whether it's bias or ignorance we're reading. But, for the record, the iPod will play pretty much any music format except ogg vorbis and WMA audio, you can get music files from any source, including some of those listed in the article, and iTunes-the-software will happily import and play other formats on your computer or upload them to your iPod, whereupon you can happily enjoy them just like any other mp3 player.
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
One place I used recently has been Magnatune.com.. they are teh good.. .5 to the artist, .5 to Magnatune)..
(price per album $3 -> ?? (you decided)..
thier downside if they don't have the huge selection you'd expect of alot of places.. but IMO if you check out thier licensing scheme and the formats you can D/L (VBR MP3, VorbisOgg, FLAC, raw WAV, and AAC) it outweighs that.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
Probably for the worse, however I still enjoy it.
.WMV format using Tunebite and back into MP3 so the music is *mine*. Yahoo's Music Store ALSO recommends music to me based on the same ratings I've made over the last three years, and I see the technology of recommending songs getting better and better as my choices are getting more broad, and now with the Music store, even easier to acquire. Before the YMS, I would listen to a song on Launchcast and then scour the P2P networks or the web to find the song to add to my collection. Many times, and I'd say more often than not, I would go out and buy the CD.
:)
I have long since been a subscriber of Yahoo's Launchcast -- their internet radio station that could play music based on your ratings. And as a work day went on, I would tag songs 1, 2, 3 or 4 stars, or even "Never Play Again". Yahoo would learn my tastes and has since then, recommended countless songs that I'd never have heard before. Bands like Nightwish, Evanescence, Lacuna Coil are bands I heard of before many, many people.
Now with the advent of the Yahoo Music Store, the same great benefits exist except that I can put them into my MP3 player and take it all to go. I admit freely however, that I convert all my music OUT of the
Now I'm paying a low monthly fee ($4.99 prepaid one year in advance) to get my grubbies on all the music I can handle. And probably, there are people that take advantage of the $5 price a LOT more than I do. But as a casual music listener, who is always looking to find new types of music that might pique my interest, Yahoo's Music Store has nailed my needs on the head solidly, and I'm glad to pay for that benefit. If you don't want to pay $5 a month to get unlimited downloads, then the RIAA has a good reason to go after you; however given their greed they want to come after me as well.
Oh well... at least if they bust down my door I can prove I'm legit
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
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?
Nice article, but it seemed to be stacked in favour of the larger players, iTunes, MSN and eMusic. If the world of online music was governed by five or so players it would be a dire world! Oh wait...it's dominated by the big four record companies...forgot about them! ;)
Currently, I'm using http://www.karmadownload.com/ as it seems the most geek friendly (and legit) site going at the moment. High quality MP3, no DRM, plus they support the independent artists. The only bummer is the Flash they use. Oh well, can't win them all.
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.
" ... Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't Fair Play a Microsoft thing, you know that little badge that shows up on their mp3 players and cdroms? Isn't Fair Play the CD DRM that Apple refuses to support? ..."
.m4a (everyone), and FairPlay encoded AAC with the .m4p extension (iTunes, the iTMS, and iPods only).
Umm, yeah, sort of, but not quite, exactly.
Microsoft's Fair Play program is a promotional tool used in some countries. It's a registered trademark of Microsoft, and basically gives sales staff prizes for selling software. For example, here's a link for those of you who speak Russian:
http://www.microsoft.com/rus/fairplay/
If you don't speak Russian, well, note the URL.
Apple's FairPlay is a DRM encoding/decoding scheme for music files. It's added onto Advanced Audio Codec format audio (which is not, as you hear often, a proprietary Apple format and works fine in many players) to create a file in the encoded format (which is proprietary).
So it's Microsoft Fair Play (TM) versus Apple FairPlay (TM). And it's AAC with the
The most annoying thing I find is that it's not even true.
.zip archives and you can re-download stuff as much as you like if you have an active subscription, the only thing I don't like about it is the 'subscription' model rather than the more traditional pay-per-song model).
iTunes of course is software that Apple provide that allows you to upload to your iPod (the sort of software you'd expect any MP3 player vendor to provide with their hardware), and there are 3rd party utilities - both commercial and free - that also offer this functionality.
This is distinct from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) which was added after iTunes and iPod's had already been available for some time, but is a feature of the software (for logical reasons, as it would be much less user friendly if it had a completely separate application window).
You can of course use music from stores with the iPod. I buy from the iTMS, but I also buy MP3's from the outstanding Emusic all the time (I like the service as you get plain MP3's so there is no messing about with keys or authorisation, and you can entire albums as single
The 'problem' is that the iTunes Music Store only supports iTunes, which only (officially) supports the iPod (though unoffically it's possible to use it with a number of devices using 3rd party plug-ins), NOT that the iPod is somehow 'locked in' to the iTMS, which it isn't.
This is a premise that a 10 year old should be able to grasp, but is apparently way above the heads of Chris Nickson, the editors at Designtechnica, ScuttleMonkey and prostoalex.
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.
About that, look at this other post where I cite the breakdown of a USD$15.99 CD:
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
So, pretty much the artists are not being really paid too much, as anyone can tell you, where artists earn is in live performances. So, my opinion is that each RIAA CD people buy is only giving money to them [the RIAA] and almost nothing to the authors.
If people really want to support their artists they should go and watch them LIVE.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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.
LoL exactly! Sorry, but anyone who claims they "don't have time to make backups" gets exactly what's coming to them. Making backups is just one of those things you HAVE TO DO. Period. There is NO rationalisation/justification for ever not backing up. I own a small business, and believe me, no matter how overloaded I am, even during the tough times when I'm working 18-hour days for a few weeks solid, I always stop at month-end and spend a few hours making my monthly backups. Problems like hard disk crashes, theft, lightning damage etc. are inevitable. My strict backup policy has saved my ass a few times - I've practically never lost anything in fifteen years in the business, it's all filed away and well-organised, I can pull up work I did fifteen years ago with my eyes closed. It's completely moronic to think you're "saving time" by not backing up, because it's going to cost you far more time when you lose your data to redo what you've lost - if it's recoverable at all (e.g. photos, invoices, whatever). I would never hire anyone - not an employee or a subcontractor - who thought that there was ever a valid reason not to make backups - they are going to lose your data. A couple basic rules of backups, and most common mistakes: (a) always do backups regularly, without exception - don't "skip a few" because you're busy - when you're busy is in fact when you can LEAST afford to have data loss. Disasters are not 'less likely' to occur when you're busy. (b) always TEST your backups. it doesn't help to dutifully write that tape once a month, only to discover after a disaster that a mistake in the process was making those backups unrecoverable - I've seen companies lose important databases due to this error. (c) ALWAYS DO BACKUPS YOURSELF - it's your data, don't think anyone else is going to look after it. I've seen website developers who lost their entire websites because they didn't even have a local copy (come on, how stupid can you get?) - the only copy was on the host itself, and the host got hacked and only had an old backup!
Ask any artist how big their royalty checks are.
I'm sure he means that CDs are his data source, not necessarily his final data format.
He buys used cd's and cds direct from musicians to avoid the RIAA tax. In case you don't know, there are shops in most communities that resell used cds for a fraction of the original price. Often you can get them for only $2 or $3, and are usually allowed to preview to your hearts content to verify there are no scratches you can't live with. Likewise, many musicians sell their music direct to the fan either by their website of at concert venues on cd, again cutting out the RIAA and selling for much lower than the price of a new cd.
Then presumably like most normal people, he rips his cds to mp3 and puts them on the mp3 player of his choice.
I'm really unclear why you thought his post was trolling, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Maybe you weren't replying to the post you seemed to be?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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"
Actually, iTunes *does* remember what music you've purchased *and* indicates it when you're shopping--there's a "Purchased" playlist (which is automatically updated) right underneath the "Music Store" link on the left-hand side, and if you attempt to add a track you've already purchased to your cart, you'll receive a pop-up warning message which asks whether you're sure you want to buy it again (note this only happens if you bought it with the same account, of course).
"Secondly, I should be able to re-download those tracks in the event of a hard drive crash or if I'm on the road and forgot to grab a song while I was home."
I agree that it should be *easier* to do this, but they actually *will* let you re-download tracks under certain circumstances, if you contact them directly (via support). However, I don't think they should *have* to do so--after all, if you purchase a physical CD and then break or lose it, Harmony House isn't gonna give you a second CD for free. It would be a nice touch, however.
"The biggest thing I'd like to see them add is song purchases count towards a credit on buying the album. In other words, if I buy two songs on an album, and then later decide I wish to purchase the album, I shouldn't have to re-purchase those two songs as part of the album."
Agreed.
I call bunk. Here is the US Code:
d e17/usc_sec_17_00000602----000-.html
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usco
Pay particular attention to a), 2.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Nope, they are not in violation.
d e17/usc_sec_17_00000602----000-.html
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usco
So long as purchasing from all of mp3 is legal in Russia and the US purchaser intends to use it for their personal use everything is fine.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
I've been using the full Yahoo music service for a couple of months now, and so far I love it. It has changed the way that I listen to music.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Yahoo, and I don't use other Yahoo services (I'm a googlite). I do know someone who works for Yahoo, but I don't believe that has influenced my opinion of this service.
I can't compare the Yahoo service to the other services (because I haven't tried them) other than to note that it appears to be a fair bit cheaper. I wouldn't be surprised if they had to raise the price at some point.
The selection seems very good to me, but I have noticed that often they will have an album minus one or two songs.
The sound quality is very good: 192, rather than 128.
The client software was very buggy initially but is much better now. I'm running it on a Win2K notebook with a PII 366 CPU. It's not fast but it is acceptable.
But most of all, I like this subscription model. It's really great having access to everything. This way I do a lot of trying out new music and following up on suggestions. As soon as I joined I looked around and gathered some albums that I hadn't heard in years. I'm listening to more music now and I'm discovering lots of new stuff. It's a great feeling of musical freedom to have everything available at your fingertips.
The problem is that now I'm hooked. If I wanted to quit I would have to look at all the music I've collected, decide which songs I liked the best, and purchase them for $0.80 a song. On the other hand, I could just keep subscribing and still pay much less than I would if I wanted to buy even a few of these albums I've now collected.
My biggest complaint is that they manage your music data the same way that most other big music apps do. I heard someone say that iTunes stores everything in your folder structure in the tags and xml files. That sounds like a much better way to do it. I wouldn't use the iPod/iTunes because of the price and lock-in, but kudos to them for using such an open and sensible system.
Funny how that works..
Oddly musicians have to pay for there recording sessions (a fixed cost usually fronted by the studios). If the musicians wrote there own music they get the publishing royalties as well.
Its not a great deal for musicians, but the publicity spending (payola?) is why most musicians fall over themselves to get a recording contract.
Why the hell would you transcode it more than once?
Yeah you got a point about transcoding. No, I don't like DRM any more than the other guy, but give me a break! That's the weakest anti-DRM argument I've seen in a long, long time.
Maybe I'm not that a sophisticated user, so would you please care to tell me: Why the hell would you transcode it more than once?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Why is it BAD to have vertically aligned Windows/IE/Office and GOOD when its iPod/iTunes?
Vendor lock-in is vendor lock-in.
I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player. I can look at anybody's HTML in IE, and I can look at RTF generated from Office in other office apps.
Is this just a case of: MS, bad; Apple, good.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
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