Slashdot Mirror
Dealing with Digital Music and Vendor Lock-In?
rahuja asks: "Buying and using digital music is a far from easy decision today - there are various competing and incompatible formats, stores and players out there in the market, primarily Apple (AAC + iTunes + iPod), Windows (WMA + various stores + WMA-compatible players), and Sony (Atrac3 + Connect.com + Walkman). How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?"
"Burning to audio CD and ripping back is always possible, but it is a painfully slow process and all tag information (song, album, artiste) is lost in the process.
In the past, I've used Sony Connect [Ed: IE 5.5+ only] (thanks to a $10 card I got with a Sony CD Walkman), which locks you in to Sony-only devices, and later, WMA with MSN Music and a Creative Muvo Micro N200. My player just died, and I'm too scared to lock myself into a new player/format/store now. iPod doesn't have an FM tuner yet, and my WMA tracks will be useless if next year I switch to Mac once the new x86 Powerbooks come out. I'm not sure how real Real's Harmony is, and JHymn doesn't support iTunes 6 yet.
In an ideal world we'd all have OGG-based players with FM tuner, and access to DRM-less music, or at least a universal, compatible format.
How are you dealing with this issue? Or is it just me?"
In the past, I've used Sony Connect [Ed: IE 5.5+ only] (thanks to a $10 card I got with a Sony CD Walkman), which locks you in to Sony-only devices, and later, WMA with MSN Music and a Creative Muvo Micro N200. My player just died, and I'm too scared to lock myself into a new player/format/store now. iPod doesn't have an FM tuner yet, and my WMA tracks will be useless if next year I switch to Mac once the new x86 Powerbooks come out. I'm not sure how real Real's Harmony is, and JHymn doesn't support iTunes 6 yet.
In an ideal world we'd all have OGG-based players with FM tuner, and access to DRM-less music, or at least a universal, compatible format.
How are you dealing with this issue? Or is it just me?"
I burn an audio CD out of iTunes and voilà?
No worry there.
iPod, iTune, iTunes Music Store, and MP3 is your best bet - period!
The player is both Windows and Mac compatible. It allows you access to largest and well known music stores in existence. It allows you to access music, video and TV episodes. It allows you to use MP3 from CDs you own or from other sources - wink..wink..
My wife has her iPod with all of our music and she loves it. We have the airport express with air tunes and play all our music to our stereo system, very cool!
I have my iPod, my wifes old iPod and I use it for the office and the car. I have a 1gb iPod Shuttle that I use when walking around, snow boarding and any other time I want to be portable.
Q: I am short, useless and provide no value. What am I? A: a sig
solution provided.
2 1337 4 u!
WMA won't be useless under OS X. There's always window media player for OS X, and if you don't mind some chance of quality loss, you can convert WMA to MP3 using free tools.
Just buy a digital audio player that supports mp3 or ogg, and don't buy from the vendors that lock you in.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Than buying an 8 track and then they come out with tape, CD etc?
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
With the few tunes I have from ITMS (mostly free ones), I just burn them to an audio CD for safekeeping. Then they can be ripped back in any time in a DRM-free format.
Unless you keep everything as a mp3 or some other format without DRM, you are doomed.
You want it easy(iTunes, DRM whatever) you get locked in. Eventually, things will go south and you will lose that investment.
I have hundreds of CDs that I should be able to rip again and again. Maybe someday I will upgrade to 256k rips, or maybe I lose my HDs and have to re-rip... Either way, I own the CD and it is mine to do with as I please.
Five copies and you can't move it again? WTF? Crazy that you even bought into that stuff.
I don't steal music, but I don't buy it either.
It's my way of sticking it to the RIAA.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Use either eMusic (http://www.emusic.com/ or Mindawn (http://www.mindawn.com./ It's the only way to be sure the music is yours to do with as you please. If either of these sites don't have the title I'm looking for, I buy the CD and rip it myself.
I choose mp3 because it works everywhere.
'Steal' music. No DMR there. When I do buy DMRed files, usually when I cannot find them in other less savory ways, I just burn them to a CD and rip them into unprotected mp3s. The second they stop letting me do that I'll go without or look harder for somewhere to download it.
~V
Left anonymous cause it goes with my tinfoil hat.
... iTunes and I'm happy with it. I burn cd's and re-rip them as MP3s... or alternately there are several programs that let you directly rip the drm from the files. No biggy. Shrug. Note however that I'm not a audiophile... and there may be some loss i'm not aware of that makes some cringe at doing this. Buck a song and being able to skip the filler crap on most cd's makes iTunes great for me. I don't mind giving artists compensation (including times i've mailed them money directly)
DRM is pathetic, most of the time I can find the MP3 online long before the CD hits the shelves. All drm does is hurt the people legitimately buying it.
Shadus
In an ideal world we'd all have OGG-based players with FM tuner, and access to DRM-less music...
Right. If you want to ensure future access, use unencumbered formats. Duh. You know this, you say it yourself, but what, you're afraid to fight for the truth? Go ahead, let corporate greed tie your hands. Better yet, become their patsies, and argue that it's for your own good.
My slashdot "confirm you're not a script" word is "captive". Perfect. Shackle yourself and throw away the key. I have no pity for you at all.
Just avoid Vendor Lock-in, and get a DRM-free listener. They still exist, despite the big company and RIAA attempts to force them out. I have (and like) Iomega's Mixx, a simple USB memory device with FM tuner and recorder (checkit out on iomega.com).
I don't have the time these days to waste it figuring out how compatible anything is. I refuse to buy songs online after having a terrible experience where I didn't understand the way the DRM worked, I have an mp3 player that I know plays regular run-of-the-mill mp3's, I rip all my songs myself and when I put a music CD into the drive I hold down the shift key.
It's just too confusing for me to waste time on learning.
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
I've got an RCA Lyra and I just copy (drag-and-drop) files to it using the USB connecter. If that ever fails, it also takes a SD or MMC flash card which I can create anywhere.
The device self-profiles, extracting the Artist, Title, etc. info from the MP3 header so I don't need any external application.
I've used this on a Mac, Windows (98), Linux, BSD flavours, etc.
TDz.
... live your own life.
pirate all music, save in .mp3 format, which is generally compatible with most players out there.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Simply do not buy into proprietary DRMed format and stick with plain MP3/OGG/AC3/etc. players.
This would pretty much restrict people to smaller online stores, P2P downloads and CD-ripping but at least these formats are freely transcodable and transportable.
you pirate
companies exist to serve the consumer, not visa versa
until companies figure that out, you don't use them
you pirate until the companies figure out that trying to own you is a turn off
and if they never figure that out, then fine, they die
the point is: you are the consumer, you are king
don't agree to any arrangement that makes you subject to something proprietary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's a simple solution really, don't buy into any of the 3's "unique" solutions schemes. If you absolutely must have that one hit wonder song and don't need the rest of the cd then after you have given over your $.99 to the devil then simply convert the song to a more open file type and move on.
Don't use any of the weird non-standard crippled formats like AAC, 8trac, WMA, etc. Use only MP3. Then you will be able to play it on the widest variety of devices and programs.
.MP3 files. Now you have portability, and no lock-in problems.
For the download service, use the subscription Napster, Yahoo, or Virgin. Then use "muvaudio" to convert the music from wma to useful
I don't. I buy the thing and then i scream that linux wont support my player.
Does Vorbis still have a place in the world, or would I be better off re-ripping my music to MP3 - even if I still think Vorbis is technically superior?
I know this isn't completely on-topic, but since we're discussing vendor lock-in, it feels like I've managed to lock myself into a Unix-only format.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
you do what the companies want you to. BUY EVERYTHING!
Stick to MP3s or OGGs or (gasp!).WAV files
Anything else is begging for trouble.
If you had MP3s, all of the players mentioned could play them.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Well, you really have no choice in the matter unless you go to an independant music provider like Vitaminic who will provide the music in good old fashioned mp3 format... but don't expect to see Eminem's entire music collection on there. Actually, don't expect many current major musicians at all. You could try allofmp3.com. The music is provided in the format of your choosing but the legality of their pay service in North America is questionable at best. I personally found iTunes to be a system hog and Napster isn't a whole lot better - but at least it works with Windows Media Player. Of course, that's useless to me because I can't stand the setup of Napster, iTunes, WMP, or even Winamp when it comes to handling my music library. I leave that to Foobar... but that means getting locked off my content. If you ask Apple or Napster how to use it on xx player, they'll just tell you to burn then rip to mp3. It works well enough, but expect a bit of quality loss from the transcoding.
I simply just stay away from DRM.
As a consumer I claim the right to re-formatting for personal use. DRM tries to prevent that.... stay away from DRM products.
It's as simple as that.
I agree. Buying CDs is the best bet.
Then use a service like MusicShifter.com ( http://www.musicshifter.com/ ) to have them all converted to your format of choice.
I just say no to DRM, it doesn't get any simpler.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Just buy a player and CDs and rip the music yourself. You have your CDs as a backup and you can rip them to whatever preferred format you want. It may be more expensive than most of the other models, but I have a format I can use to shift into any other format anytime I want.
I sure don't want my music collection to become obsolete instantly if I forget to pay a bill.
I think I'll always choose portable players that will play whatever I tell them to with no fuss.
Except for its awful interface I really like my lexar mp3 player. I put in a thumbdrive with mp3s and it plays them.
I have mp3s of vinyl and cassettes that are out of print, so no device that discriminates against mp3s will ever get my money.
Man, you really need that seminar!
In a perfect world all formats would (should) be compatible but since we live on earth with all these competing interests I took the only route I could. It's simply that I started out with mp3's and that is the only way I will store/listen/use from now on. With all the time invested in ripping/encoding/tagging already I cannot bring myself to change formats... even to try them out!
So no ITMS, SONY or other DRM-laden purveyor of goods. If it's not mp3 it's just not for me. They are the ones who lose my business by not embracing a true standard.
My Emusic account gets used monthly (as far as it goes) and because I've never been a *top-tier* music follower (*what's hot with the masses today*), I find plenty of great stuff and it's all DRM-less mp3's. (No you won't find titles on all the larger labels or SONY's labels but what you will find a lot of indie stuff that is listenable.
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
If you're going the Microsoft route this is a pretty good site for checking out the players/services available.
Buy CD
Rip MP3s (maybe ogg if your adventurous)
Uninstall illegal rootkit included with CD
Rinse and repeat.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
I've been using allofmp3.com for my music. It's a foreign website, they've signed agreements with the Russian RIAA-equivalent, and as far as I know, it's entirely legal to buy music there.
It's fast, I find the songs I want, the formats are unencumbered with DRM, and I pay a good price. ($0.15 per song is typical)
What's not to like?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?"
Easy, only buy music from people willing to let you listen to it. Places like emusic and magnatune sell completely unrestricted music files. And shit, archive.org gives away thousands of hours of music for free.
Vote with your wallet. If DRM is unacceptable, don't buy from people who would push it on you. There's plenty of music out there that's not DRM'd, and it's mostly better than the RIAA crap. Good musicians can afford to give music away, there's plenty more where that came from.
If you were treated the same way in a physical store that Apple or Napster treats you online, you'd storm out angrily and never shop there again. Why should online stores be any different?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Everyone I know who actually bothers to pay for music buys it from the company, then throws the CD/DRM'ed file away and downloads an mp3 from a P2P. They buy the media simply to be a good citizen, not because they want the crippled files.
All Hail the Maggott Show
1. Buy a device that playes mp3s. Any device.
2. Buy all your music from http://www.allofthemp3.com, in mp3, FLAC, OGG, or whatever, for pennies.
3. With all the money you save, buy a giant foam middle finger to wave at the RIAA, Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else pushing their proprietary, imcompatable, DRM encumbered formats.
I have no problem. DRM only works for Microsoft Windows, and sometimes Apple Mac. So far nothing targets linux, so I think as a FreeBSD user I won't have a problem for years.
Though I keep writing my congressmen about each attempt to make DRM law.
There is a problem?
.ogg, etc.) which are unencumbered by any DRM. I have not and am not going to buy any music in a DRM wrapper.
:-)
I only use plain-vanilla audio files (.mp3,
I haven't experienced any difficulties in playing my music on commonly available hardware on in transfering it between various devices
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Buy teh CD and rip it. It's the only way you are going to retain archival rights across multiple formats and devices.
How in the world would you play DRMed AACs, etc on car mp3 players? I hate DRM!! The only way around is to burn an audio cd and rip - too much trouble!!
Its simple:
m it=GO&Range=1&bop=and&description=Jetaudio&InnerCa ta=23 [JetAudio]
1.)Buy from sites like www.audiolunchbox.com, or www.allofmp3.com.
2) If thats not possible, make use of DVD Jon's pymusic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyMusique
3) Buy an audio player, that plays all of the good formats such as ogg, flac or musepack:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Sub
http://www.neurosaudio.com/
Both of these brands produce players far superior (IMHO) than any ipod or creative player, and both manufacturers support Open Source Ideals, and work on Operating Systems other than Microsoft windows.
4) Enjoy your new music, knowing you're not being controlled by DRM.
Copy protected CDs? Pah. ABCDE and Foobar2000 both saw through that (CD writers can see both the audio and the data, allowing for easy ripping) and the proof is in my music collection.
Not to mention, there's the whole feeling of going into a record store and buying the CD, actually having it in your hands and getting all the artwork and other paraphenalia that comes with the music...and a whole stack of CDs on a shelf looks a lot better than a load of MP3s (acts as a nice conversation point too).
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
or at least they fail to do so effectively. MarcNET's HiMD Renderer extracts audio data from secured atrac files. At that point you're left facing the rough decision of transcoding audio that was clearly compressed in a lossy fashion, but it is in .wav format and unlocked.
The most "locked-in" thing about Sony's Connect software is poor coding. The site from which the software must be downloaded is very much MSIE dependent. Quite a lot of people do not use Windows and IE for their browsing and so would have to use some other pay site for music.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I think your real question is not about why you can't convert music from DRM format to non-DRM format. Honestly the fact that DRM music exists is what makes the only online music purchase possible. Did you expect the recrod companies to publish the music in any other way in our changing world. I forsee a time when CDs are phased out, because they can be copied easier than DRM music downloaded from an online store. Originially CDs and albums weren't that easy to copy when they were first introduced.
I guess your real question is why isn't there an open standard for DRM? Beats me. I think it is ultimately very self defeating for companies to maintain closed standards.
I work in the field of live pro audio, and there standards are openly published and manufacturers readily adopt them because a) it is a selling point by itself and b)in that industry its widely assumed that your company doesn't make the best product of everything an end user needs. In other words, they know that you are going to be using ABCs product together with XYZs or Blah company's product. Therefore they must adopt open standards in order to even be a consideration.
I guess in the computer industry that attitude doesn't exist and everyone thinks that their product is the shit or whatever. Frankly that needs to change, and what its going to take to execute such a change, I do not know.
-Mikey P
Hold down shift? Just disable autorun.
with the group policy editor:
start
run
gpedit.msc
local computer policy
computer configuration
administrative templates
system
turn off autoplay
enable
or with tweakui:
fire up tweakui
my computer
autoplay
types
remove checkmark from 'enable autoplay for cd and dvd drives'
NO DRM
NO APPLE ANYTHING
NO SONY ANYTHING
Look into iRiver....
OGG
Drag and Drop from any OS
Get a Clue....
And not the copy-protected variety. When new albums come out they are typically priced at $29.99 or $34.99. If you wait 6 months they're $25. Wait another 6 months and they're $20. Eventually they're $10, sometimes even $5. There's still plenty of good music to choose from and there's no rationale to owning the disc when the music is less than a year old; the radio will be playing it to death anyway.
The benefit of disc is you can create mp3, ogg, atrac, whatever you damn well like, If you rip it first to ALAC or FLAC then you don't ever have to touch the disc again but you've got a reliable archive just in case you lose the digital rips.
The online purchasing of music doesn't appeal to me until it's FLAC, it's cheaper ($1.69 a song is pure robbery), and it has no DRM. For $8.99 I can get a 20-song disc delivered to my workplace within 24 hours, so paying $33.80 to get a crappier version with no cover art or disc really isn't attractive. Your priorities might vary but hey, this is Ask Slasdot, I'm telling you what I'd do. Stick with disc and don't give legitimacy to second-class crippled music formats.
Yeah, but did the Apple experience turn you into one of these--i.e., an intelligent, well-rounded aesthete with a sense of style? My guess is no. You've either got it or you don't. So if you weren't born with that special je ne sais quoi that makes a Mac user a Mac user, don't even bother trying, because in the end, Macs are for different thinkers.
* * * gallery updated Nov. 5, 2005 * * *
For the most part cd's are your safest bet. You can rock out with more clarity using mp4s and for the most part drm is not issue. I've heard the horror stories on-line of a few cds like the whole sony root-kit debacle but personally i've never had an issue.
Later,
Phil
Mod parent up. Rather than follow the usual /. "DRM is bad, m'kay" argument, the poster shows how Apple has ways to make sure you never lose the ability to play your music.
Just remember to keep backups of those m4p's folks!
For AAC, unlock the files after purchase with Hymn. For WMA, decode to WAV and re-encode as VBR MP3. Both are fast. And forget about Sony due to their position on compromising computer security and user trust in order to protect their music that is already available via P2P.
General-purpose devices like the iPaq 3835 and up have made these one-use computing gadgets more or less unnecessary. I use a 5550 as my MP3/OGG/MPG/MOV/$whatever player, because it's not just a player but a laptop proper: it's also my notepad, game console, email client, and word processor. Built-in 802.11 and bluetooth, SD slots for memory expansion, PCMCIA sleeve for NIC/modem on the road: it's an optimal solution. And it runs Linux thanks to Familiar.
You can find devices like these on eBay for $200. Let the iPod and its ilk go hang.
Personally, I get my songs from Yahoo Music where the songs are 79 cents (since I'm a Yahoo Music Unlimited member). And the downloaded songs are 192kbit/s (the best you can buy online) as protected WMAs. Then, I use Tunebite to convert these songs to unprotected mp3/wma/ogg files. Now, these files can be used easily since they are unprotected. You can even convert the DRMed songs you get from Apple Store to unprotected wma/mp3 using this cool tool. I bought this application for 19 USD. And, it works like a charm. It is also available to download (only old version - No digital dubbing) via torrents. Also, you dont need to buy an IPod.
Clearly, Google is the next Microsoft.
I buy from Magnatune, Audio Lunchbox or one of the many other sites that sell open, non-DRM music in MP3, OGG Vorbis and FLAC formats.
Why should I buy things from people who don't have respect for me and my wishes as a customer?
No major label will ever again get a single penny from me until they say "screw DRM" and mean it too. If they don't, that's just fine with me. They can just wither and die for all I care.
Solution provided.
You seem willing to pay for the tracks you want, so just buy them in some DRM'ed format, and then if you need a non-DRM'ed version, download it from whatever filesharing site you want. You can probably find it with all the meta tags still intact.
You didn't mention where you live (USA?), but in many countries this will be legal because you own a copy of the recording, hence fair use allows you to have other copies (for backup, to listen in other contexts, etc.), and you're not even breaking the DRM of the file.
I know it's a bit of a hassle, but it could work. (Note: if someone believes that downloading copies of music you have laready purchased is not legal (in the US for instance), then please correct me, and if possible provide some additional information so I can understand why this would not be legal.)
So is AllOfMyRussianBrides.com.... And I still use them once or twice a year... Tho there no refunds policy is hurting me.
Seriously. I've never understood why anyone would buy compressed audio for the same price as uncompressed audio. Of course, I never buy new CDs, either. I troll the record stores and get lots of cheap used music.
Analog ripping. Just plug your audio out into the motherboard's audio in and... ta-da.
Fully working since the good ol' times.
They pay the fee for the music. The police in Russia checked their licenses in response to an RIAA complaint and they're all in order.
Globalisation doesn't just work for corporations importing cheap shoes, it works for you too.
Neuros Audio is very community oriented and has been mentioned quite a bit on Slashdot recently, and are known as being very friendly to open source.
IAudio isn't quite as friendly to open source as Neuros, but having a player that had USB Host functionality and would play OGG, FM stereo, Video, and (if I feel the urge) WMA 10 based files from Rhapsody or Napster was too good to pass up.
Bottom line, if there is any music I hear and want to keep, I go to the used CD store, buy it, rip it, and move it to my player. No DRM, no loss of audio quality as part of a conversion, and, since both players report as mass storage devices, OS compatibility is not a problem.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
I buy CD's. Period. I must have hi quality source to listen to on my >$1000 Hi-Fi set-up when I feel in the mood for a serious listening session.
I have generated PC back up of every one of my 300+ CD's for use with portable playback devices, MP3 is acceptable in this situation as the sound quality form portable devices using ear-phones is far worse than on home hi-fi solution with speakers.
I use an MP3 encoder on my PC at VBR level 1. I am up to approx. 40 Gb of used space. Or $10 of storage space in present Hard Drive Gb/$ rates (after rebate of course).
I have two further backups in other PC's in my house, so another ~$20 or so of storage space.
I have an offsite backup as well.
Why such a high bit rate, why so many copies? Because it took me several months to get all the CD's ripped and I don't want to do it again because I decided I didn't encode them at a high enough quality or a Hard Drive crashes.
Now, if an MP3 player or portable device I want to use does not support MP3 (VBR) I do not buy it. So Laptops, PocketPC's and Sony Ericsson S710a phones are all acceptable, iPods are not (I want plug-n-play Mass USB storage device or Bluetooth File Transfer or network SAMBA support, not some Software Kludge of a third part program I have ot install on every PC/device I want to transfer music too/from).
Now I am up-to-date on my ending, when I buy music CD's and only have a handful to encode at any time.
I buy CDs. I rip them to FLAC and then make copies in ogg-vorbis. If my Rio Karma dies and I have to get a player without Vorbis support, I just go back to the FLACs and run them through LAME. What's the big deal?
And no, I don't buy downloadable music. If I wanted pop slop in a crappy-sounding format I'd just get a $5.00 portable radio. I'll consider buying downloadable music when I can get unencumbered FLACs for half the price of the equivalent CD.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
Buy from itunes or any place with DRM.
Open an audio program like Logic, Protools, etc.
Import DRM protected song.
Bounce as any file type compatible with your player.
And there you have it, DRMless library of music.
I'm not really an audiphile, but I plan to get my wife an iPod for Christmas. I don't really like the proprietary format, but with audacity I should be able to convert anything to mp3, as this software has the ability to create an mp3 from anything playing on the soundcard. (I haven't done this yet, I was told about this functionality, so it's possibility not even available). I don't know if this would lose quality, but unless it's obvious, I don't really care. It may be a solution others are interested in looking into.
Others have mentioned burning to a CD and re-ripping, I didn't realize that would be an option, but it sounds like a good backup plan.
A modern day witchhunt.
I have a shift key.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Personally, I own hundreds of CDs and all my iPod music is 100% legally ripped from them. Many of the CDs are used, many are greatest hits compilations, both of which save money, and I've purchased them over many years. I also buy my ipods when the new version comes out and the old version drops in price so I get a good deal.
If you want to "pirate" to "make a point" the only caveat is this: any time you commit civil disobedience (breaking the law to embarrass the legislature into changing it) you have to be willing to face the consequences of breaking that law (fines and jail) in order to make your point. Remember, Gandhi insisted on being jailed (I think it was for making his own salt) in order to embarrass the government. In Canada, Mortgentaler went to jail repeatedly to uphold the right of women to abortion. In your own country, Doctor Death did the same.
Otherwise you're not a crusader, you're just another whiny punk who wants everything for free immediately. Considering you could do what I do, there's an obvious alternative to pirating to avoid DRM.
Here's something 'they' wouldn't want you to know:
Ripping a track and compressing it to AAC or MP3 is lossy, but _decompressing_ it to burn onto CD is not. Decompression is essentially lossless and can be perfectly inverted.
So just burn stuff onto audio CDs... When someone gets around to writing the software, you'll be able to extract DRM-free compressed versions exactly equivalent to your originals.
There's only two real choices nowadays: WMA or AAC. Microsoft or Apple. That's pretty much it, really. Each has advantages and disadvantages...
With Microsoft, you have the whole enforced compatibility thing with their "Plays For Sure" initiative.
-Pros: Yes, this stuff does actually work, and fairly well at that. There's a few minor functional problems, but they're really minor. The integration with Media Center PC's is nice, as is the complete XBox integration if you have one of those. As long as you stick to Microsoft products, and Plays For Sure compatible player devices, you won't have any problems.
-Cons: You cannot use anything that isn't Plays For Sure compatible, not with the online stores or subscription services. Want to play those Napster downloaded songs on an iPod? No dice. Microsoft is very vocal about blaming Apple, but the fault is not Apple's, it's Microsoft's *incredibly* restrictive Janus DRM licensing. Not only would Apple have to implement WMA, but they'd have to implement a secure methodology such that the files cannot be copied back off the the player *at all*, and an expiration methodology such that if you failed to sync the player to the computer for a time period, the files would expire and/or delete themselves. Apple's not willing to go there, and frankly the hardware design of the iPod precludes some of that capability anyway. Oh, and Microsoft's DRM has yet to be cracked in a good way/
Or you can bite into the Apple for your music. They have the iTunes Music Store and the most popular music player devices.
-Pros: High quality AAC music support (AAC is much better than WMA, anyway). A pretty lightweight DRM that's easy to work with and somewhat easy to work around if needed. MPEG 4 support becoming very standardized. Apple is (mostly) sticking to open standards, basically, which is always nice.
-Cons: Drink the Apple cool-aid only. iTunes works with iPod's, but not with anything else. iPod's do have lots of other support though, from Real and many free and/or pay programs. Even the XBox 360 will support them, in a sense. You also pay the Apple tax, as everything Apple is a bit pricier than the competition. But this stuff is popular for a reason, you know.
In the long run, it seems more likely to me that Apple will win this war. They've been awfully stingy with licensing their FairPlay DRM, making it difficult for vendors to add support for iTunes Purchased Music, but that hasn't stopped them from being the only music store to show a profit. The subscription model (ala Napster) doesn't seem to be picking up a lot of adherents in the long term. People bought CD's at stores and didn't much like CD clubs either. Same principle, really. Not to mention that the evilness of the Microsoft Janus DRM is readily appearant if you make the mistake of buying into it and using it for a while. And vendors seem to be falling all over themselves to add iPod and iTunes support to their gear, even if they can't play iTMS purchased music. MPEG 4 is also the wave of the future, as the standard becomes better defined. Divx and Xvid and other variants will eventually fall off the map, as Apple has a fairly solid base system going there, and everybody is going to be rushing to be compatible with it. I expect a device more dedicated to video than the iPod Video is to be introduced by Apple within a year. Maybe they'll partner with Sony for video support on the PSP. Dunno.
But WMA is dying a slow death, and with the death of Microsoft and Blu-Ray, they're being left behind, really. WMA might be the format used on the next new disc format somehow, or Microsoft might have a hand in it, but Apple is getting into the digital distribution business over the internet in a big way and ignoring the business of data on physical medium. Apple's moves seem smarter to me.
Oh yeah, there's also the Sony option, where you buy nothing but Sony equipment because all Sony's stuff *only* works with other Sony equipment, but frankly that option has no pros to speak of, so it's just best avoided.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Music I want to own, I buy the CD.
All else I get from Yahoo!music. I don't own that, I rent it, so I don't care what the format is and I don't care if it changes.
Same thing with Linux users.
Let's be realistic here...There is no end-all solution here. The obvious answer is to have all your music in .mp3 or .ogg and tag it yourself. mp3 is really the only vendor neutral solution. If you want all the niceties that come with the electonic stores, i.e. album art, proper tagging, etc., then you have to play by that vendor's rules.
The masses don't seem to care right now about vendor lockin as long as they get an easy, pleasant experience purchasing music online. And if the masses are buying iPods, what motivation does a manufacturer have to design and produce a player capable of .ogg with an FM tuner if there is only a handful of geeks buying it?
On a side note, can we save our Ask /. posts for something relevant? The answer to the question is so blantantly obvious, why discuss it?
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Apple's DRM is called FairPlay. ACC is an audio format not DRM.
And what if Creative or iriver releases a new kickass player that blows the iPod out of the water? You're stuck with your sub-par iPod and your large collection of DRMed music that plays on nothing but.
The truth is there is no answer. Apple, Sony and MS don't seem to get the fact that if you're going to go DRM make it standard across all devices. I don't give a crap if its Fairplay or WMA or whatever, if i buy a song somewhere I want it to play everywhere.
So no, I don't want ITMs becuase I don't want to be locked into an iPod.
Until content providers and middlemen (Apple/MS) get their act together, its Limewire for me.
My best advice is to use your right to private copying if you live in a country where such a right exists (like Canada or France). If you don't, I'd recommend either civil disobedience (doing it anyways) or political action (get elected to the US Congress and fix it ;)
There are many good peer-to-peer networks where you can get music for free without restrictions or lock-in. I have an iPod, but all of my music was acquired using my right to private copying.
Beer is too expensive. Until the vendors start selling me beer at a price I want to pay, I'm going to shoplift it. I am the king after all (though I don't drink the King of Beers).
The real answer is, if you don't like the terms that the people doing the selling are giving, then you don't buy from them. Go make your own record label and compete with the bastards. But, pirating isn't the answer.
Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun -Troy McClure
...rip to the format you need (I use Ogg Vorbis) and make sure your player will work with that format. IF you ever need to change formats because some braindead corporation decides that all music must now be in another format you can take one of two approaches:
:)
1. Keep listening to old music on the player that already works in the format that already works and find something that works for the new format only for new purchases.
2. Find a new player based on an un-DRMed format and migrated from your CDs to the new format.
The only problem with my approach is that it "breaks" when the music industry decides to stop making CDs. So far, I've only been through two music players in six years. One for my car that I bought in 1999 that uses CD-Rs to play MP3s and my more recently purchased Rio Karma (with Ogg Vorbis support!). The nice thing is that I now carry my Karma and a transmitter with me everywhere. Nothing nicer than carrying more music than you'll ever listen to in one sitting with you at all times.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The various illegal solutions are vastly superior to the any of the legal ones.
They give you access to a limitless supply of high quality rips unencumbered by DRM and give you opportunities to find new independent artists you like. When you decide to support an artist, you buy a t-shirt, an album, a concert ticket.
Once you're plugged in, it won't take long to discover that the shit pushed by the RIAA these days is just that - shit. Don't waste your time and money on bad music sold in a bad format.
So what if Jhymn doesn't support iTunes 6.0. All you have to do is revert yourself back to iTunes 4.9 with downloads that can be found on www.ilounge.com and use Jhymn still. Last I checked (admittedly a while ago) you could still buy music with 4.9.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
http://www.allofmp3.com/ lets you buy DRM-free music and instead of paying per song, you pay per bandwidth... you choose your format that you want and you choose the compression rate. It's pretty sweet. It's based out of Russia and is legal to buy from.
i'm not whining. it sounds like you are though. there is no emotion or name calling in my message, there seems to be a lot in yours
...and try not to be emotional this time, or someone might accuse you of whining ;-)
here are some cold hard facts-
corner 1: international music conglomerates
corner 2: poor teenagers with a lot of time on their hands and a lot of technical know how and a strong motivation to listen to music
now you tell me what happens
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Use iTunes and get an iPod. 75% of the market has already figured that out, but I guess you're in the 25% still on the fence. Don't assume that because iTunes is DRM'd that it's bad. You can have up to five computers at once authorized to listen to your music, you can burn your songs to CDs as often as you like, and everything "just works". Should the iTunes music store or Apple fold, you're not screwed. Once your computer is authorized, it does not need to "dial home" just to play a song. So, simply burn your songs off to an audio CD and re-rip in your new software.
Suppose I buy a song from iTunes. Then I decide to download that same song in another format from somebody. Am I legally and/or morally wrong?
"Derp de derp."
First, I don't believe the original poster did much research before posting this Ask Slashdot article. For example, Griffin makes an FM tuner for the iPod.
However, it must be said that of all the choices so far, iTunes allows the consumer to do the most with the music they purchased, and has been rewarded by consumers for their actions - to the tune of controlling 85% of the market in portable digital players and online music.
Because of this dominance in the market place, more and more people are realizing that to get a piece of this market, they are going to have to go through Apple. This is why you are seeing the ROKR, iPod branded speakers (complete with iPod docks), and iPod docks being built into new automobiles. How many manufacturers are providing great accessories for other mp3 players, including recharging stations and integration with other established products? It is clear to anyone who has been following this market that the future is iPod, iTunes, and Apple.
Oh, and as for that Macintosh you want to buy next year? You will be happy to know that you will be able to play your WMV files on it.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
Download your music through a P2P application. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'd happily pay for the service so-called "pirates" provide, but I wouldn't pay for the service legitimate sellers provide. The reason being that the pirates, these amateurs who aren't making any money, provide a better service than these multinational trillion dollar businesses. And that's because the illegally obtained music isn't tied up in all this DRM fuckwittery. Oh, and spare me the whining about "think of the artists". It's their own god-damn fault for signing to a label that cripples their music.
it seems like everyone is trying to justify the middleman here
the internet is disruptive technology, it removes the middleman
why is everyone trying to defend companies who made their money in a bygone era when you got your music on vinyl, tapes, or cds?
this is what i propose: all music files free, bands make their money with live appearances and corporate sponsorships, no middle man anywhere
sound crazy?
welcome to modern day china
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't buy music from iTunes (I don't like the low encoding rate or the DRM).
What I do is:
** buy CDs and rip them
** buy music from Magnatune.com
** buy music from AllofMP3.com
While MP3 is patent encumbered, the patent enforcement to date has allowed MP3 to remain the default format. I'd love to use Ogg but my iPod hardware doesn't support it.
However, you forgot to ask if the parent poster wanted to disable AutoRun for all his CD/DVDs. After all, perhaps he likes it that when he inserts a game that the game is automatically started (or a choice is given). I hate it, but not everyone does.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I'll admit I haven't bought any DRM'ed WMA tunes from music stores online, but I can attest to the ability to play WMA-format songs I put together a long time ago on my PC on my new iBook. My husband was totally surprised that I even had a copy of windows media player for OS X. Just an FYI that it might not be as big a problem as you might expect.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
There are various DRM removal tools for the various formats out there, and once you've done that you can convert to MP3, or even OGG with http://www.dbpoweramp.com/.
I then treat the high quality oggs as though they were my masters. I transcode them to other formats as necessary. For example, 128k mp3's for mp3 cd players, or 96k oggs to fit on my 1gb usb key.
This seems almost too easy from where I sit. Everything plays MP3. I can play MP3 tracks on my iPod. I can stream them to my Roku Soundbridge. I can burn them to a CD-R and play them in a lot of recent CD and DVD players, including car stereos. I can get MP3 tracks off Usenet, or Limewire, or allofmp3.com, MP3tunes.com, Broadjam.com, music.download.com, or any number of other sources. I can rip my CDs to MP3 tracks with the encoder and bitrate options of my choosing. I don't have to worry about compatibility, I don't have to worry about DRM schemes or that things will someday stop working for any reason.
What do AAC and WMA have to offer that MP3 doesn't? DRM, basically. Somehow that's not a big selling point for me.
Hey guys, duh, I can't be bothered to Google or get any insight to a very common question answered almost a millenia ago.
The very [b]vast[/b] majority of MP3 players are USB mass storage devices and will play MP3. Only consumer retards by Apple or Creative players.
I was lucky enough to have access to the Internet, and thus Google and found myself the iRiver H340 a lovely device which will play both OGG and MP3 and after a surprising firmware patch, movies too! All for around £250.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?
iRiver supports ogg, for ages. Lots of others as Qoolgee, CM-Tech, newers Mpio too. Qoolgee and CM-Tech even advertise the firmware is updatable for future file formats. Nice gadgets for hacking, too.
Generally, vendor lock-in seems to be typical for U.S./Apple or Japan/Sony markets, here in Europe we gladly buy more advanced taiwanese or korean products based on open standards.
There you are, staring at me again.
If you burn a CD out of iTunes, your music is at a lower quality (AAC is not a lossless format), and everytime you re-encode it, it will be at an even lower quality than the original AAC since each lossey encoding chooses to drop different pieces of the audio on the encode. Usually you wouldn't notice this, but if you burn the AAC to the CD, rip to DRM-less mp3 (1 transcode) and then have to transcode to get them to another vendor-locked format like WMA (2 transcodes) - you might notice some loss of quality.
I know how you feel. I have an iPod Photo. I have a car stereo and Treo cell phone that use MP3s natively. My "workout music player" is a Cretive Labs Muvo TX that plays MP3s and Windows Media Files.
i mediaPlayers/itunes.html, or version 5.x is over at: http://www.oldapps.com/itunes.htm.
The key for me is to use "lowest common demoninator" file formats, which means MP3s. iTunes is a fine Ripper, so I have it set to "Import Music" (that is, rip from CDs) in MP3 format (usually 192 kpbs, but sometimes 160). Stuff winds up in iTunes' library automatically.
OK, so that handles ripping my CDs and making them work on the iPod.
When buying music from the iTunes Store, it comes as AAC files with DRM. Big hassle, since it only works in the iPod (and iTunes, of course.) Fortunately, you can use Hymn (or JHymn) over at http://www.hymn-project.org/ to convert these store-bought songs into MP3s with just a few clicks. Problem: it doesn't work with iTunes 6, at least yet. The solution here is to keep using older iTunes. Since I don't need to download and play video, I still use iTunes 4.9, available from http://www.5star-shareware.com/Windows/Music/Mult
Now how to pull out iTunes files for other players? idleTunes to the rescue! It can take any playlist in iTunes and copy the MP3 files out to another folder, with the files named and numbered how you like them. It does other good things too. And for free. Get it from: http://www.idletunes.com/.
And that's how I keep my music flowing between all my devices. Works great. Hope this helps.
Looks like several of the posts are not reading the question correctly (typical). Having run into this myself, I know how hard it is getting to be. Walk into any local store and look at their variying audio players. All of them list MP3 (plus usually their own format). However, having originally purchased a Sony Psyche due to the size and advertised usability (MP3, Sony's format, standard usb memory device design), I thought I could plug it into my Linux system, copy my legitimatly made MP3 files to the mounted usb device, and play. After spending about 2 hours trying to figure out why it wasn't detecting my MP3 files that work with all my other player software, I discovered (buried deep in their online forum), that their Windows software will easily convert your MP3 files to their proprietary, DRM riddled format, and that the player only recognized that format. Otherwise, it was a $130 512Mb usb memory stick.
I returned it after doing more research on linux-usb.org, and purchased an iRiver IFP-795 (works great with MP3 & OGG files). I recently learned that iRiver's new line of players in the US & Europe are now Windows Media Player only (Austrailia's versions will apparently work fine). They did this because of a new "Agreement" with Microsoft (or, "Do it this way, and Bubba will let you continue walking").
The original question is quite valid. Media players, while not advertising Linux compatability, don't advertise their lock-in either. The RIAA is putting a stranglehold on the market, and other corporations are eager to jump on board with the promise of proprietary , locked-in revenue. Microsoft, being the OS monopoly that it is (as found by many government courts world wide), has the advantage of telling non-conforming manufacturers (iRivier, etc), that they won't have access to their wma formats if they don't comply.
Even Intel is developing this DRM technology, right into the processor and chipset (the real reason Apple is converting). Don't believe it? Do a google search on "Intel DRM".
But Piracy isn't the answer either. That only legitimizes the need for DRM, which is just another glorified locking mechanism. Locks wouldn't exist if there wasn't the threat of theft in the world. The only way we can say we don't want this, is through our wallets. Buy non-drm format media only, whenever possible. Learn to spot the signs of DRM enabled cds (they all have specific, if not obscure, markings when they have DRM protection).
Write to your government representatives. Stop them from passing more Disney bills (DMCA, Copyright extensions, etc). It's time for government to represent the people, not the corporations. And it's time for corporations to respect their consumers, not their wealthy stock holders interests.
"companies exist to serve the consumer"
Wrong, they exist to make money for their stakeholders.
"Until companies figure that out, you don't use them; you pirate until the companies figure out that trying to own you is a turn off"
The free market gives consumers a choice: whether or not the good they want is worth the asking price. If you decide the good is not worth the asking price, that does not entitle you to that good for free.
"don't agree to any arrangement that makes you subject to something proprietary"
That's fine, but it still doesn't justify copyright infringement.
And if you're one of those people who compares your gripe with the RIAA to womens' sufferage or the civil rights movement, you are badly in need of some perspective.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
You have to pick the one that is the accepted the widest. Right now, it seems like iTunes+iPod is the winner. MS+WMA seems like it has the larger possible usier install base. However, the MS+WMA soolution is not available to all OSes not all MS OSes. iTunes_iPod has the truest possible largest possible user base and the their catalog is the biggest (or at one time it was).
Anyone know of a nifty one for OSX? I, for the life of me, cannot find a decent one.
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
The music that is sold isn't even worth listening to.
p hp?collection=etree/
Want free lossless music?
-> http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisting-browse.
Support trade friendly artists to "stick it to the man".
Go to their shows.
Buy their swag.
Have fun.
I actually got into a Usenet argument with a guy who wouldn't believe me when I said that a decompressed FLAC would be identical to the WAV file it was made from. Forget the bits - he was worried about noise modulation, gain riding, etc.
Sometimes I wish I could be totally amoral long enough to make a few million dollars bilking audiophiles.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You have pymusique and its descendants (at least used to - not sure if SharpMusique, etc work anymore. I haven't purchased anything in a few months, basically not since the Slurpee/iTunes free music partnership ended.). AAC is an open standard as long as it's not DRMed, and in the case of pymusique and its descendants, you get un-DRMed AAC.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
that companies who existed just fine in a world of vinyl, tapes, cds can or should exist in the world of the internet
that they have a right to exist
the internet has been called disruptive technology for a reason: it disrupts things, like business models
do you have anything to say to the incans? the aztecs? the arrival of the spanish pretty much screwed up their system. do we stop history? do we rebuild the aztec and incan empires because it's unfair what the spanish did? immoral? unjust?
well here's the internet. and here's a business model based on moving boxes of cds and tapes and vinyl around
you figure out what happens next
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They pay the fees, they do support the artists, well at least the record companies.
If any record company doesn't like it, they are free not to license their music to the Russian re-licensing agencies. Nobody compels them to sell their music in Russia.
Yes. Fuck em. RIAA continues to sue old women and old men, 12 year olds, and people without computers.
Buy it with whatever store you want. If it doesn't allow you to use it on your player, go to the black market, download an MP3, and say fuck em! If they sue you, look the judge right in the eye, and say it's your right. You bought digital music, it said it would work on your digital music player, and you made it work!
When I go to my mechanic, and he says he's going to charge me $35 for an oil change because prices went up, and he can't do it til next week, fuck 'em, I'll do it myself. Especially if I have to agree that I not use his oil in non approved cars.
the types of music I listen to (Classical, "Western Art Music", Jazz, Opera) aren't served well by iTMS anyway.
And poorly served by CDDB, etc., I might add.
what is right, and what really happens
Of course, you don't get to make that decision for anybody but yourself.
that's kid of funny that you bring this up. because i'm not talking about what i decide to do. i'm not talking about what you decide to do. i'm talking about what just happens, without any decision making involved, by either you or me
so since we're not deciding, let's take bets about what actually happens, rather than what SHOULD happen according to you, or according to me, shall we?
i'll bet on the legions of poor, smart, technically sophisticated, highly motivated teenagers
you bet on the conglomerates
good luck!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
buy music on CDs and rip/encode to mp3 under Linux (using lame and grip, if you must know). I store the CDs on a couple of vertical racks which take up about square foot of floor space. If that's too much, you can always get one of those big CD binders to hold the CD and artwork and pitch the jewel cases.
DRM hasn't really been a problem for me yet. I've found a grand total of one copy-protected CD that I considered worth buying and I managed to rip it on an older computer with a couple of days' effort. (Note to music industry: making me work harder to listen to music I've paid for than I'd have to just to pirate it is a bad idea). Your mileage may vary, of course. However, if you rip under Linux (or *BSD) using an old CD-ROM drive, you're pretty much in the clear. I'm not sure about how this works legally, though. In Canada, it's (currently) allowed and I think that an unmodified CD-ROM drive isn't going to count as a circumvention device (but IANAL).
Better still, of course, is to just not buy DRM'd CDs, but you can't have everything.
DRM-encumbered download services suck. Don't give them your money.
http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/guide/
How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?"
buy the actual cd?
The easiest way to prevent the consumer from being locked in to anything, is to offer as many formats as possible. With our music store, we use Ogg Vorbis currently, but in January we will have MP3 and AAC support (with NO DRM). The difference is that we are an indie music provider. However some people don't like indie music, and that is perfectly fine for them. There are way too many mainstream music providers that all do the same thing, and we want to offer something different. Because we are an indie music provider, our business model is also different. Our bands get 40% of the net sale right off the bat. Also if a band sells more, they earn more. The system really does work. I wish the major labels (and the RIAA for that matter) would get a clue and realize that things can be done differently and be profitable for both sides.
I have nothing clever to put here...
.. as long as it isn't from Sony. With their new DRM rootkit I'm never buying another Sony product again.
is it legal to buy a CD and then download that same album in mp3 or OGG form from a bittorrent? Since you bought the CD, could it be considered comparable to ripping it yourself? I ask this because I honestly never want to put anything a recording company makes into my computer, but a cd just lacks any versatility since I like using my Ipod and car cd mp3 player dash. And I'm still skeptical of the AAC format whereas I've come accustomed to mp3s and now I'm trying to replace my less than legal collection with a completely legal alternative without DRM.
Refuse to buy tunes from the stores until they remove the DRM. I can sort of just about maybe understand (if I get drunk and look at it reflected in a wobbly mirror) some of the DRM technology being put on CDs. I can't understand why anyone in their right mind would buy a track from iTunes et al. It's like buying a CD and saying I'm only ever going to use it on these 4 machines. Worse than that you have to buy the machine from the same company you got the track from. People must have more money than sense.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
iPod, iTune, iTunes Music Store, and MP3 is your best bet - period!
... Well, I guess resistance is futile! Sheesh. What an idiot I've been, thinking that listening to music in Ogg Vorbis was possible. How did I ever survive without DRM?
...
Funny how the submitter was asking about how to avoid being locked in to a vendor
The player is both Windows and Mac compatible. It allows you access to largest and well known music stores in existence. It allows you to access music, video and TV episodes.
My wife has her iPod with all of our music and she loves it. We have the airport express with air tunes and play all our music to our stereo system, very cool!
I have my iPod, my wifes old iPod and I use it for the office and the car. I have a 1gb iPod Shuttle that I use when walking around, snow boarding and any other time I want to be portable.
Let's suppose for a moment that you are not from Apple's marketing department
Okay, so your wife has an iPod, and you have an iPod for general use, an iPod for work, and an iPod for walking around. Are you saving up for an iPod for sitting down as well?
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
The only was to get round this is not to buy crappy products. Wait till iTunes 6 has a DRM crack available until you buy music over the web (or use iTunes 5), or just use regular CDs with your iTunes/iPod or whatever.
Or even better: just download your music from the internet illegally, it may be crappy quality but at least it will play.
Good luck, and write to your congressman/MP/dictator.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
because a 15 year old, the type of person most rabid about their music, is usually bringing in over $50K a year (snicker)
nobody is bringing down anything, you act like the whole goal here is kill the riaa
this isn't some retarded team sport
people want to listen to music, they are going to listen to music. people don't have a lot of money. then shit happens. that is ALL that is going on here
there is no goal, there is no good versus evil, there is just new technology, changing things for good and for worse, beyond anyone's control
when europeans came to the new world did they say "let's decimate the native american populations with smallpox." no, but that's what happened. my example is actually pretty retarded, but you get my point: nobody is going around saying "let's destroy the riaa and big music conglomerates." but that is what is happening as an unintended consequence. get it? no one in control. no morality. no ideology here. no good versus evil. simple cause and effect brought about by new technology beyond anyone's control
get me now?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but I don't think you're gonna like it.
How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?
In a Microsoft world, you just make sure to look for the Plays for Sure logo on everything you buy! Then you can sleep safe and sound at night knowing that your music can be played anywhere and anytime.
Or you could just refuse to buy DRM'ed crap. That works too.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Wow. That is the funniest thing I have seen all day.
My other first post is car post.
Remember you'll probably always have the capability of burning music to Redbook, no matter what format/DRM their in. Microsoft is the biggest DRM, so purchases in WMA will probably last the overall longest. Sony comes in second because they've been around soo long that they maintain a good chunk of the consumer electronics market, so odds are they aren't going out anytime soon. The real thing that should be worried about is the possibility of music stores going out of business or music stores discontinuing purchased music distribution. When they take down their DRM license and music servers then you can start worrying. LiquidAudio did that to me. They sold their music in their own format LQT (ATRAC3/AAC derivative) and WMA since before 2002. Then they stopped selling music themselves and just became a content catalog like MusicNet. They recommended me just burn to a CD. And that's they way that went. Same with MusicRebellion.com.
Simple! Try http://www.cdresale.com/. This is neat. You can buy a CD from them, download the MP3s for that (they do 192 Variable bit compression) CD, then when you are finished you can sell the CD for almost what you paid for it. They don't even shipped the CD to you, so the buying and selling is fastr. Right now their CDs are going for $15 or so, and they only charge 3 bucks to find a buyer. And its fast, they usually find a buyer in a couple of minutes or so, depending on the CD of course. The cool thing is, since they are relying on the fair use and first sale copyright law, their MP3s have no DRM whatsoever! Not bad. And they have the Beatles and Led Zep and other good stuff you can't download right now. Very cool model.
i don't care about the riaa
this isn't some retarded team sport
people want to listen to music, they are going to listen to music. people don't have a lot of money. then shit happens. that is ALL that is going on here
there is no goal, there is no good versus evil, there is just new technology, changing things for good and for worse, beyond anyone's control
when europeans came to the new world did they say "let's decimate the native american populations with smallpox." no, but that's what happened. my example is actually pretty retarded, but you get my point: nobody is going around saying "let's destroy the riaa and big music conglomerates." but that is what is happening as an unintended consequence. get it? no one in control. no morality. no ideology here. no good versus evil. simple cause and effect brought about by new technology beyond anyone's control
the rules of unintended consequences. get it? when they built the original arpanet in the 1960s did they go "let's build a fantastically superior music distribution model that requires no middle man"
of course not, but that is what happened. get it? i'm not talking about what should happen, what is right and wrong. i'm not talking about morality.
i'm talking pure, unadulterated unavoiable inevitable disruption of one reality because of new technology
what did the printing press do to history? make a list of consequences. is that what the inventors of the printing press indended? or did they just want ot crank out some more bibles faster?
do you understand what i am saying now? or do you have to pigeonhole me and my argument into an ideological or moral stand, a stand i am not even taking, because you are unable to see forces at work beyond anyone's control?
disruptive technology, shaping the world with consequences no one controls or foresaw
like removing profit and a middle man in the distribution of music
get me now?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
read the title, CDs are dangerous to the average consumer until windows stops autorun-by-default
You want something that detects your player like an external drive when you plug it in.
= 213>Creative Zen Micro. They both work great and are completely drag drop with your explorer of choice. (Only support mp3 and wma)
I have an iRiver H10 and my brother has a http://creative.com/products/welcome.asp?category
I first started down this road when I got a free Rio 256M after buying a bunch of 3com switches (I dropped it on the subway platform a week later) this device supported MP3 and WMA files as I wanted to get as much on it as possible I started to rip all my CD to WMA (yes yes I have red all the arguments on it sounding like crap but is ok for me) I then went looking for a new device I stupidly chose the Sony MiniDisk format the box said it supported WMA but you have to convert to there format first and it did not work so well but I could get 4hours on 1 MiniDisk but the interface sucked and it was slow so I saved up and got a creative Zen Touch 20G 10,000 tracks I love this thing fast and supports all subscription services. Ok to my point I did do a lot of research on all this before buying but every one has an opinion and well you cinda have to pick what you like best and some times that means wasting money on crap and all you hear now is buy a IPod I refuse to do this because it took me 3 years to finish ripping all my CDs to WMA and I still am not done I used to work at a record store and I have allot of CDs I have no idea if this is helpful but I am happy with my purchase I have no ides why any one would want an FM tuner on there player because FM in Washington DC sucks! Maybe it is better elsewhere.
Well, you can de-protect your ITMS purchased files with Hymn.
I don't know what the hell you'd do with protected Windows Media files. Cry I guess.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Truth be told, you probably get locked in the least with WMA due to the number of stores and player vendors that support it. That said, I own an iPod and occasionally shop at the iTMS. So although I'm locked in to some extent, at least it's with the market leader. Sony is famous for bending over backwards to lock you into more Sony products, you really should have seen that coming. Really the best solution (unfortunately) is to not buy music online. I'll buy individual songs from the iTMS, but personally I would never purchase entire albums there. I'll pay the extra few bucks for a CD so that I at least have non DRM'd originals that I can encode to whatever the format du jour happens to be.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
this isn't good versus evil
the spanish came to the new world and destroyed the aztec and incan empires. was that right? was it wrong?
no, it just happened
you have to break out of a mode of thinking that doesn't really address what i am saying. i am not talking about what should happen, i am talking about what just happens. do you understand the difference?
there is what is right, then there is what actually happens in the world
so along comes the internet. it disrupts. it disrupts a business model
so am i saying what i am saying because i hate the riaa? i don't care about the riaa. i am simply talking about inevitable cause and effect, the rule of unintended consequences
when they invented the printing press, did they do it to fuel revolutionary movements? no, but that's what happened. they built the printing press to make more bibles
when they invented arpanet, did they say "hey, we have a better music distribution model that removes the middle man." no, they built arpanet so they could still communicate in case the russians ever nuked us
do you understand me now?
this isn't a retarded team sport, us versus them. this isn't ideology: communism versus capitalism. you don't udnerstand where i am comoing from or what i am actually saying. i am beyond what SHOULD HAPPEN. i am talking about what JUST HAPPENS
this is just: new technology, and shit happens no one planned for
that's the SUM TOTAL OF MY ARGUMENT
so stop trying to pigeon hole me into some ideological position i don't have, only because that is the only way you can think about the problem
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and why SHOULD they pay? the answer is, with the internet, they don't have to. is that right? is it wrong? i'm not saying i don't care about what is right and wrong. i'm simply saying that what is happening is beyond that question. disruptive technology, doing what disruptive technology does: disrupt... disrupt business models
when they invented synthetic rubber, did the rubber plantations have a right to stop people from using synthetic rubber to preserve their profits?
if they perfect the diamond making technology, does de beers have a moral argument against the technology for destroying their monopoly?
does the hudson bay company have a legitimate position to demand ownership of canada? that was once a very powerful company
things evolve, things change. once mighty empires turn to dust. and so it is the way for music conglomerates to go: to die. nothing lasts forever. this is not good. this is not bad. this is not communism. this is not capitalism. this just is
it's not about morality, ideology, right and wrong
it's just about new technology, changing things, for better or for wrose BEYOND ANYONE'S CONTROL
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I just buy CD's and encode all the music myself with grip. Grip is pretty good about adding in the track names and other vitals automatically. If it can't find them it prompts you.
One large advantage of encoding it yourself and using a non-DRM player is that you can play the same file from {Linux,{Free,Net,Open}BSD} and from the portable player. They player I have is a Digital Minds DMC 500. It isn't the smallest player in the world, but it plays mp3's and oggs and takes a normal laptop 2/5" drive. That means you can easily slap a 100G drive in there and carry a few weeks of music on you.
After a 3 years of recording 9 hours of radio shows a week I've finally managed to fill the disk. Unfortunately the disk drive capacities haven't really gone up as much as I'd hoped.
it advocated no political or moral stand
it was too brief for you to draw that conclusion
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
buy vinyl. steal the mp3s off the internet. that way you have a physical, high quality analog copy that nobody can mess with, an mp3 file that has no vendor lock in, and the artist and his or her label get paid.
the one that makes the most money is the one that keeps the consumer happy
any company that disregards the wishes of the market, ceases to make money
so you can't decouple happy consumers and making money as you suggest
one does not exist without the other
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not really. Companies exist because somebody had an idea that might earn money. The goal is to make money - nothing more. Non-profits may exist to serve the customer, but I don't see too many non-profit music vendors.
the point is: you are the consumer, you are king
No argument here. Given the Company's existence to make a profit, it only comes through some form of sales (ignoring profit models based on litigation or scams). If your product doesn't meet a customer desire at the price they are willing to pay - no sale... no income... no profit.
don't agree to any arrangement that makes you subject to something proprietary
Good advice. It ultimately leads to a choice:
1. Purchase the product and accept the terms.
2. Find another vendor with terms you accept.
3. If #2 is not possible, Do without.
4. Obtain the product illegally.
you pirate until the companies figure out that trying to own you is a turn off
Doesn't work. They end up sueing some poor sap (maybe not you) who they can get charges to stick to, and the settlement earns more than makes up for the sales lost to all piracy.The other problem with this... No income from legitimate sales means less variety in what they can offer. In the music industry example, Insteady of dying the companies focus on the biggest revenue artists, creating the lack of variety that those who opt for piracy often use as an argument.
Looking at it another way...
More Piracy yields Less Variety, which yields More Piracy, which Yields ... , ... which yields 5 copies of Brittany Spears, rather than 5 unique and diverse artists.
More Piracy yields Higher Prices, which yields More Piracy, which Yields ... , ... which yields CDs that cost more than movies.
More Piracy yields Lower Revenue, which yields Cutbacks, which yields outsourcing your job to India.
More Piracy yields Lower Revenue, which yields executives looking for new income streams, which yields revenue models based on litigation, which yields the argument that Piracy lowers Revenue.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
I asked myself "just how dumb can the poster above be that (s)he doesn't clue in on what obviously a purely rhetorical question?" The I noticed the username and in a flash, it all made sense.
I purchase AAC files from allofmp3, the files are generally smaller than the 128 mp3 counterpart and sound great. Play perfectly on the iPod and have zero DRM.
The best of all worlds according to me.
http://homepage.mac.com/chevyorange
Companies do not "exist to serve the consumer". Companies exist to provide work and income to the worker. That's why society permits them to exist! The consumer is at best a benign parasite, like the e. coli in your gut - necessary to the company's survival, yes, but certainly not exercising direct control over the company.
I don't have to pirate anything. If I don't like your terms of sale, I can make my own music.
with that attitude
it's impossible to decouple happy consumers from the financial health of a company
there is no such thing as a profitable company with unhappy consumers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oddly enough, I have an OGG-based player with FM tuner and access to DRM-less music (via ripped CDs and allofmp3.com). Works pretty well for me.
Companies exist to provide work for the citizenry and an effective distribution of resources in accordance with a society's values.
Notice I didn't say "a fair distribution of resources". That's not the point at all, unless you happen to live in a communist society. Effective yes, fair would be chrome.
What you are advocating is plutocracy, which is not really a representative form of government.
These are slightly bogus arguments:
just get tunebite and re-encode your "locked-in" format into mp3, ogg, wav, whatever you like.
.wma files into the more portable .mp3
:P
i'm 3/4 of the way through a total re-encode of all my (70 gigs or so worth) napster
it basically plays the file using wmp or itunes or whatever and records the audio off your sound card. the best part about it is if you have a card that supports it, you can dub at 4x speed so that 70 gigs or so has taken me about two weeks instead of two months
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
And poorly served by CDDB, etc., I might add.
....though they are hard to play on the go. :)
Really?
YES. And for classical music folks, iTunes/iPod is a nightmare (try organizing 20GB of existing classical MP3s onto your ipod- what a mess. You have to make individual playlist for each cd, pretty much on the ipod). CDDB is especially bad. I just turn CDDB off when playing a CD.
Not to mention iPods have a 'gap' in the playback- a short pause before advancing to the next track. It's not so great to hear a violin solo being cut in half with a gap, as a new movement starts. There have been lots of complaints about this. This flaw went unfixed in the new ipods.
And then putting an ipod in shuffle mode with classical music... Tchaik 4 third movement; then Brandenburg 2 second movement; Brahms 3 first movement; etc. Not really made with classical music in mind, but I suppose the larger market share is into pop music.
I say you can't beat good ol' LPs for classical music.
In an ideal world we'd all have OGG-based players with FM tuner, and access to DRM-less music, or at least a universal, compatible format.
With all due respect, what's with this assumption that OGG will be around long after AAC and its ilk? Personally, I think it's much, much more likely that we'll have backwards compatibility with AAC 20 years from now, than it is that OGG or something based on it will be around. Yes, I am fully aware from a geek perspective OGG is better. But Apple has the business and marketing muscle to keep AAC around, and it will be important to making money down the line for Apple to provide backwards compatibility.
But OGG? Once some new interesting open source project comes along, there will be--maybe--three people trying to keep it competitive.
Usually I'm rather anti-capitalist, but in this situation I think it's working right.
Unfortunately, you're probably too late to get pre-iTunes 6 (jHymn is broken now in iTunes 6).
I buy from iTMS and immediately strip off the DRM with jHymn. I won't upgrade iTunes until JHymn can remove DRM from the files. I don't do this to pirate the music, but so I can play it on any of my computers (unencrypted AAC is a standard format - Xine plays it very nicely on Linux). You get to keep all the metadata with iTunes+JHymn.
Hopefully the encryption in iTunes 6 will be broken soon so I can upgrade. If at any time I'm forced to upgrade to a version of iTunes where I can no longer remove the DRM, this is the point at which I stop using iTMS.
Unfortunately, the record companies seem to believe they are giving us a 'privilege' to play music on non-Windows systems. This is not so. It is actually us who are giving them the privilege of receiving our money. As soon as record companies break things such that I can't store and play the music I paid for how I want to, I will revoke their privilege of receiving my money.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It also supports unencumbered MP3 and wave files.
I dont see any 'lock-in' here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just always remember to look for the "Plays for Sure" logo on all the music and media devices I buy from my favorite stores. With the "Plays for Sure" logo I'm guaranteed it will work on all my Windows(R) computers and play with my existing Windows(R) music!
"Plays for Sure" sets you free to chose - just how and when you want to play your Windows(R) Media products on your favorite Windows(R) devices from the universe of Microsoft. "Plays for sure" sets you free from vendor lock-in!
When you pirate music you join ranks with the RIAA and the other amoral bastards who are exploiting the talents of musicians. You are morally equivalent to them; you don't want to give value (money) to the person (musician) who has provided value (the music) to you. You require regulation, just like they do. I favor the idea of granting hunting licenses to musicians, myself; I like the idea of Roger McGuinn gunning down record company executives and self-indulgent teenagers. Hell, I'd buy him some ammunition.
No idea if there's any truth to Russian organized crime connections to Allofmp3.com, but at least the Russian mafia won't use my money to buy out my politicians to restrict my rights, whereas the RIAA does. As such, I'm much more comfortable giving my money to Russian organized crime than to the RIAA.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Why limit yourself to inferior hardware players just because u want to support an "open" format. AAC is not "closed" by any definition.
From a legal standpoint AAC has the exact same problems as MP3. That is that several aspects of the encoding / decoding process are patented, and you must license them in order to legally distribute an encoder or decoder. This makes it impossible have a legal open source implimentation. In fact, one such project has already been shut down after receiving a cease and decist letter from Dolby Labs. If anything the AAC patent holders have been less lenient with open source developers than the MP3 patent holders.
So, if you were happy with the legal restrictions on MP3 and choose to switch to OGG for purely technical reasons, then the legal restrictions on AAC should be no problem. However, the reason that the OGG project was started, and the reason that many people switched to it was to get away from the legal encumberances that surrounded MP3. It is a format that is patent free and anyone may write an implementation, without any licencing requirements. For people who care about that AAC definitely NOT open, and is not acceptable.
Only wimps buy music online: _real_ men just buy cds, rip it, put it on a p2p network, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)
for more reasons than you know.
Anyway, Exxon and Pacbell seem pretty profitable to me.
I gotta split, supper's waiting. Ciao!
I'm of the "Buy the CD, so you have a (real) lossless unprotected source" camp in general... but I'm also a Yahoo Music subscriber ($60/year, all you can eat, DRM'ed WMA files @192kb/sec). The first time that the licenses on my portable device "expired" while I was 3,500 miles from my authorized machine, I swore I'd never travel with another DRM'ed file.
http://muvaudio.com/ can circumvent the DRM associated with WMA files (or anything else that WMP10 can play), giving you an unDRMed file in the format of your choice. In my case, I go to MP3 and then load them to my portable.
Its problems like 'locked in' vendor formats and DRM programs on my MUSIC CDS, that make it really hard for me to want to but cds. Why pay money for music, when i can get a better product cheap (read:free), in the comfort of my own home through a p2p and then convert it into whatever format my portableharddrivemusicplayer uses. The RIAA needs to seriously consider taking restrictions off of cds, pay downloads, etc. which are only making their product worse compared to the 'product' generated by p2p's.
(1) buy the CD
(2) rip to ogg and mp3
(3) file the original CD safely
(4) burn copies of CDs for car, etc - original never leaves safe storage
I don't know how many car CD players have scratched and destroyed the CD going over bumps... Plus if someone steals 200 CDs and they are original that's alot of money down the drain, versus 28 cents per CDR
(5) use MP3 on ipod, or don't buy an ipod (or ogg hack on ipod (if ever available))
(6) refuse to follow any DRM by never purchasing music in that format
(7) buy ogg compatible players (iAudio is outstanding)
"I have, and most of the time I can't. If the point is academic, I completely agree, as data is being lost as the decendant generations are created, and that eventually those losses will become audible, but in practice can you actually tell the difference on just the third generation?"
But that's hardly an argument for or against in general.
If you can't hear the difference, that's great. But a lot of people can; in fact, I find 128kb/s (either ogg/mp3/aac) just slightly better than FM; yes, AAC is better, but its not CD.
So the problem in general is that this method makes sound that is marginally acceptable and instroduces another generational loss which makes it to me unlistenable.
The only way to deal with this is to not put up with lossy compression in the first place. Buy your music on CD; I find if I buy used, I can get CD's for well under $10. Now you're future proof, you have an "archival" copy, and you can move it to your ipod, your whatever-is-new-this month and you're always with a format that is up to date.
Yes, I understand it is a burden to some people to wait 3-5 days to get a CD; that this method doesn't work if you have to have it in the next 10 minutes, but as music is entertainment, I find that I can wait a few days to get (a) lower cost (b) high qualtiy (c) lack of DRM.
Buying CDs not only sounds better, its common sense to avoid vendor lock-in and DRM and best of all, its cheaper if you shop a little bit.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Except, unless you rip them all as WAVs or some other uncompressed format you're double-compressing the original file. A lot of compressed files sound bad to begin with, but they sound terrible when you compress them a second time. I doubt we all have room to keep files as WAVs. Besides, isn't the bigger issue that we're paying for something that we might not be able to use in the future (at least not uncompromised)?
The iRiver H10 is one of iRiver's flagship products. If you hate vendor lock in stay far away from this piece of junk. At first glance it's a really beautiful product, crisp screen, nice volume slider, but it has a lot of flaws ranging from physical design flaws to good old vendor lock in. The H10 uses MTP, Media (read Microsoft) Transfer Protocol. Microsoft's MSDN web site seems to indicate that MTP can work on computers running 98/ME...XP, but iRiver has chosen to further lock people into Windows XP, by also requiring Windows Media Player 10, and at least Service Pack 1. (I tried with both, but found it didn't work until I updated to SP2 with a few additional updates). This leaves out Windows 9x-XP (pre SP1 users), MacOS users, Linux users (though I heard there was some chatter about trying to get something that would work with MTP in the kernel, but I think it got shot down because of licensing issues). More on MTP here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/downloads/d efault.aspx
I won't rant about the design flaws, since the issue is vendor lock in, but who's to say that when Vista comes out iRiver won't drop support for the H10?
Cheers
am i the only person alive who doesn't care about an fm tuner? i have the mp3 player for a reason if i wanted to listen to the radio i would use a walkman.
"I typically don't buy "used" CD's, because 90% of them are from people doing something wrong"
Oddly enough you could make the same argument for new CD's, because 90% of the record companies are doing something wrong (i.e. screwing the public and the artist, payola, buying lawmakers, refusing to pay artists royalties due to them, etc), and so by that argument you can never buy a CD because hardly any of them don't come with some sort of legal or moral baggage.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
People want to buy a format that has longevity. You can still buy a huge range of record players, CD players and even tape players. Any of those media will last 20 to 100 years with basic care. Can you still buy an 8-track player? DRM is artificially making all formats like 8-tracks, they have no inherent longevity. Some *may* last that long and keep up to date with your computer hardware/software but I think that's a ton less likely than previous formats we've had.
Also, don't forget that there are tools out there that will allow you to remove the FairPlay protections in ITunes. Personally whenever I buy something from ITunes, the first thing I do is remove the DRM from it. Thus I can play it on anything that supports AAC files.
I increased my concert attendance to give my money directly to artists.
Problem is that in a lot of places, people with the cash to buy a ticket and the time to attend a concert cannot attend the concert because they aren't 21 yet.
Ogg files are pretty big with game companys.
Affordable handheld video game players aren't powerful enough to handle game graphics, game logic, and Vorbis decoding. Many games still use tracked (mid/mod) music.
What's the deal with Apple Lossless? Couldn't Apple just pick up FLAC instead of inventing their own proprietary codec from scratch?
Oh wait, Apple can't support open formats, because they couldn't lock you into their multimedia platform (QuickTime/iTunes) with them. Silly me.
And before you ask, no, AAC, MPEG4 and H.264 are NOT open formats. They're all patent-encumbered.
Now, I admit that in terms of video codecs, until Theora becomes stable there's not many good open ones out there, but as far as audio codecs go, Apple has no excuse.
Download a program called TuneBite. Install it. Go to either Napster or Yahoo with unlimited downloads for a small monthly fee. Play all your music through TuneBite (WMA encrypted format supported). Use the high speed recording feature to process thousands of songs. TuneBite automatically recreates each file in MP3 format leaving the DRM behind.
You now have a library of music that can be played on any MP3 player, any operating system, and is all labeled nicely.
Cost for doing this: $20 bucks for tunebite, plus 5 bucks a month on yahoo for all the music you want.
Problem solved
Information Technology White Papers and Research
www.mindawn.com no DRM, provides FLAC and Ogg files, so with the FLAC you can burn CD's or re-encode to any other format. System works on all major computing platforms and the FLAC files can be decompressed to WAV or AIFF as pure losless and then put on any portable device.
As to your other points: well said.
Best antivirus software
I can rip everything in the FORMAT & BITRATE that I choose
;(
Unless the format you choose is AAC, right? Did I misread the handy chart on that link you sent along for Rockbox that shows that you can't listen to AAC files either with the iRiver's own firmware or with the Rockbox firmware?
Well, AAC is my format of choice. I guess I'll keep using my iPod.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
then you are happy with the product exxon gave you
what you are unhappy with are issues larger than the company itself
don't confuse issues
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
a rockstar can exist wihtout a record label
a rock star can't exist wihtout fans
it will become like it is in china: corporate sponsorship and paid concerts
everything else will be free
it's a better world
a more "moral" world
i just love how the world moral and amoral is thrown around in the defense of a goddamn economic distribution model
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I use dBpowerAmp and keep my music in the mp3 and FLAC formats. If I get music as a WMA or maybe buy it from iTunes (only did it once because a 128kbit mp4 isn't my idea of quality audio), I convert it immediately to one of those ubiquitous formats. There are codecs available for every major audio format out there, and the dBpowerAmp preserves all the id tag information. The beauty of the app is that as long as you have the codecs, you can always convert your music to whatever format you need.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
"but you're not burning copies for all your friends. Are you?"
I hope not. Madonna was counting on that new country estate for her horses. When you pirate software, you're not encouraging Madonna to produce more "music".
It took IBM to establish a standard and "legitimize" the PC. It will take another IBM-class major player to establish a music standard format. My guess it will be Apple and iTunes.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
More details will be found in my forthcoming bestseller, Pouring Sand Out Of A Shoe For Dummies. For those of you confused by such transparent schemes to defraud you as, say, iTunes, there's a chance of a manga version to follow. It may take a while: they can draw that crap in nothing flat, but reducing a sprawling 5000 word Dummies title to brief snippets of short words suitable for the genre will take some real effort.
This is why there are three iPods in my house: I originally bought my wife an iPod and we have been using it for 3 years. It still works and is in use today. This was a first gen iPod. After three years I decided I wanted an iPod for myself so I did bought my wife a new one and took her old one. She nows has a 4th gen. I was looking at the shuffle because I bike, skateboard and snowboard. All three are very tough to do with a non-flash based player. I just treated myself to one for those reasons, I can afford and I'm sorry if you think that's weird but it's my choice.
Q: I am short, useless and provide no value. What am I? A: a sig
They paid their fee to another Russian organization set up at approximately the same time as AllOfMP3 with the stated purpose of distributing royalties. The RIAA has received no money from that organization ever. So yeah, AllOfMP3 paid some other Russian front operation. The band will receive the same payment from AllOfMP3 that they receive when you download for free on P2P. I don't feel sorry for the RIAA, but you're on no moral or legal high ground by buying from AllOfMP3 either.
There are many uncommercialised amateur music groups out there that produce music licensed under Creative Commons, and very often in the Ogg Vorbis format. Just change your music habits and listen to music produced by artists who prefer to give away their music on the Internet rather than signing up a commercial contract with the recording companies. They are the people who really love their art. There are portable players for Ogg Vorbis files, too, and please avoid MP3 because the patent holder requests money from developers of MP3 encoding/decoding software.
Then use JHymn to unlock the tunes. I don't pirate music, I use it all by myself. But I would not buy from the iTunes music store if JHymn wasn't available. I've already had problems with songs not authorizing on my computers for one reason or another, and it is just about the most annoying thing.
In fact, the latest iTunes patch broke JHymn, and I'm not buying any more from Apple until JHymn has a way to get around their latest tricks.
That doesn't really answer the AAC on different platforms problem... does it? I don't know -- I only listen on my Mac at the moment. But I can always rerip them to mp3 if I have to for a small quality penalty. A bit annoying, but I'm also betting AAC will be common enough in the next few years...
Cheers.
If I buy a UMD movie and I don't have a PSP, do I now have carte blanche to whine about not being able to view? Likewise buying a movie on DVD and only having a VCR. Hell, even buying a normal music CD dictates that I must have some compatible device in order to actually be able to use it.
Vendor lock-in? No way. It's called price of admission. If you desire the ability to play a UMD movie or watch something on your PSP, you have to satisfy the requirements. If you want to be able to travel to distant locales, you have to satisfy the requirements of a lic, car and gas. If you want to use Apple's music store or store music on the ipod, then you have the responsibility of making sure what you purchase or use works.
The real solution is easy: don't use any of the above. Stop supporting proprietary music vendors. And stop posting stupid analog hacks, thats so incredibly lame.
u sic_service/
Here's a legal loophole and dirt cheap. There are Russian mp3 services that don't pay royalties to american companies though weird damn-the-man laws in the motherland. It comes out to like 5-30 cents a song and it is DRM free in a high bitrate. Enjoy:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/28/russian_m
On and off topic - I think the whole enforced royalties thing is an awful, hurtful system anyway. Music should be free or dirt cheap and plentiful, sucks that I have to budget so much for a product that is consumed virtually with no resource hit but my own hardware and bandwidth. I'd have less beef with the labels if they used royalties for something useful, like to pay the country's school teachers so my morning newspaper isn't dumbed down to 3rd grade english, dammit. Modern day witch hunt.
-y
'm still a fan of buying CDs and avoiding the DRM issue altogether. But for those of us with a ton of CDs that we want to convert over to digital format (be that mp3, aac, flac, ogg, or even wma), there are services out there that can help. One great service in particular is Riptopia http://www.riptopia.com/ Since most of us are tech minded, ripping a CD doesn't pose a technical challenge, but the sheer volume of our collections might. They charge about a $1/CD and can handle a wide variety of formats. mp3 format is probably the most portable with respect to players, and will continue to be for some time, I think. This kind of approach is fair and does away with the DRM headaches, IMO.
I finally gave up and bought a cheap mp3 player and made a script of two to randomly copy oggs, convert it to wav and then to mp3. That works, but it's a pain.
Another workaround for people confined to their desks is to use an fm radio transmitter and your laptop. The cheap mp3 player has an fm radio, setting it to my tuner's frequency fixes the play problem. An antenna mod makes it easy enough to move around the room without too much loss of quality. When I need to be in the mood and on more than one computer, this is working OK for me.
I'm still waiting for a nice ogg player. One day soon, I'll try a Samsung and see how that goes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Out of curiosity, how do people pay for their allofmp3 purchases? I mean, isn't it playing with fire to hand them your credit card?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Does your site have a system where I can enter the name of a dependent artist/song that I like, and get recommendations for indie artists?
..."?
When I am looking at songs from one artist, do I get something like "people who like these also like
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Last.fm lost a lot of mindshare when they decided to suddenly stop letting users use their own players and force them to use the Last.fm player. As far as I can tell, this happened overnight, without prior notice. The player is open source, with binary downloads available for a select few platforms, and I think the protocol specs are available, too, allowing plugins to be written for other players.
Unfortunately for me, my platform (Linux/ppc) is not among the ones they offer binary downloads for, there's no package for Kubuntu/ppc (at least I haven't found it), and I'll be damned if I spend the time and effort to build it from source, only to discover I don't like the player (which is what would happen in all probability). So, until I can either easily try their player and like it, or I can use the player of my preference again, Last.fm is out for the moment.
One last kick: yes, you can develop your own plugin. But who guarantees that they won't change the protocol again?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I do hope everyone realizes that if you do this, you loose quality every single time you reencode that audio to a lossy format. What I mean is, if you burn that MP3 to an audio CD, you decompress it, so, if you later decide to rip it to another MP3, you've lowered the quality. If you are using CD-RWs and decide to do this again later, then the next time you rip from the new disc, you've lost quality AGAIN. The average person might not hear one reencode, MAYBE not two, but, eventually you're going to end up with some audio that sounds even worse than an old cassette tape. Simply put, there is no 100% solution. Vendors insist on using proprietary formats and copy protection methods to maximize their profits -- or so they assume (keyword: assume.) Realistically speaking, they'd make more money by stoping all this throwing of all their cash into stupid copy protection schemes (some of which install rootkits, you know who *coughs*) and proprietary file formats that lock the user into not being able to choose from anyone else. Actually, if you made it dirt cheap to buy a song from you, millions of users would gladly just click that buy button because, well, why not, it's just a buck, so they don't buy a coke from the coke machine tomorrow, they get to listen to that nice new song, right? It would cost the users more time and effort to get the song for free than it's worth, hurting the people who make illegal copies rather than the company (and the copy protection schemes/proprietary formats cost them far more than it costs the illegal copiers of those songs in the grand scheme of things if you average out the costs of those lawsuits that actually are won against them and, I suppose, toss in all the settlements that some were strongarmed into.) Well, if there's not a 100% solution, all you can do is your best. Research file formats and such carefully. Find out very thoroughly what the product you buy offers. If that MP3 player won't play WMA, well, darned well make sure you don't get any WMAs. I'm not really sure if ANY of the online vendors honestly are truly trustworthy, but, stay the heck away from proprietary formats, even if one of them seems to have a great deal. Do the research and find out if they use copy protection schemes and go elsewhere if they do -- it's just not worth it in the long run. Personally, my method of handling all this is to use a standard MP3 player that plays only standard MP3 files, no weird proprietary crap sold by the maker or anything, and I make backups of my audio CD-ROMs using good extraction software, then put the discs up where they won't get scratched or anything. You're legally entitled to one backup -- though some rich people who wanted to get richer managed to get a law put in there that makes it illegal to bypass any copy protection schemes to make that backup, so avoid crap like the DRMs if you want to listen to the music you paid for. If you stick to nice standardized file formats, you'll never have to reencode and you can keep your audio files for as long as you legally own them no matter how much your os or MP3 players change. This method has worked for me since I first was introduced to MP3s, back in the late 90s I think it was. Back then I just stored them on my harddrive, then later on a MP3 CD, and now on a nice little MP3 player/thumbdrive device. Same MP3s. Some I never had to redo (some I did because back then I had crappy barely amplified 2.0 speakers and didn't realize that 128Kibps sucks.) A few I've long since lost my original CDs to various accidents (and one which I swear was not an accident, but, that's another story,) but, the MP3s remain today and still work despite that. That they were encoded over half a decade ago and still work on my hardware today says to me that this method, while maybe not the easiest, is really about the best you can do. PS. For archival storage when you don't want to decrease quality, look into lossless codecs such as FLAC. Unfortunately, few hardware players and even some software players will never support some o
> It's just too confusing for me to waste time on learning.
George, is that you?
Don't buy locked in formats.
POKE 36879,8
DRM is the reason I don't buy .WMA or shop on iTMS. The majority of my music collection (close on 200Gb) is .mp3 with a smattering of .ogg & .wma. All of which are being converted to .mp3.
.ogg but unfortunately its not widely supported so that leaves MP3's as the only alternative. While it is technically a proprietry format it is the most widely used format around. You've a better chance of the .mp3 format still be used in ten years time than anything Appl or M$ throw up.
.ogg & .flac formats to become more widely supported. Buy any music player that supports .mp3 as is and then lobby those companies to support open formats.
Like it says in the article in an ideal world we'd all be using
If you want to tell the music industry to stuff it. DON'T buy DRM. And push for
Appl own 70% of the world MP3 player market. Thats 70% that supports DRM, think about it. If we could persuade ppl to stop buying from iTMS and other DRM stores like HMV & Virgin they'll have no choice but to change their ways.
We have the power. We just don't realise it.
I'm not advocating anything.
under british law it used to be the case that you could only form a company by charter from the king. a typical charter would be to increase british influence in (for example) the north east of india. as a reward for doing so the company owners would be allowed to make a profit from their endeavours. which is pretty much what you are describing.
however, that is not the case now. a company exists to make a profit for its owners. in order to do that it probably employs people, it probably keeps its customers happy, it probably upholds the values (and laws) of its society. but those things are contingent to its primary purpose, of making money for the owners.
With those media you can do as you please with it.
You can buy any player you want to listen to it.
You can copy it for backup purposes.
You don't need to pay to anybody to listen to it.
You can share it with your friends.
DRMed files hinder all the above fair uses and then some. You may be willing to put up with it, to lock yourself in with a music vendor (or explain to us, what are you going to do with that collection of 2000 iTunes tracks if your iPod dies?), I would say that DRM is the Microsoftization of music, but many people (hopefully) aren't. This situation clearly means that we are in front of a completely different situation when compared with the media evolution you are highlighting.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You chose the word "piracy". I would prefer to use the word differently.
Now I don't even get to use the word "happy" in a traditional context? Do you plan to redefine the entire English language? Or are you just asserting that you are the arbiter of what happiness is?
I haven't bought anything from Exxon since the Valdez incident. Curiously enough, despite your claims to the contrary, they are still highly profitable.
Most of my closest friends are in bands and make music for a living. The simple fact is, all but a new bands lose money touring. The tour is a publicity tool that allows you to sell more product - cds or tshirts. Many bands would be better off financially staying at home and working their crap side jobs. I'm glad that they tour despite this - touring is rough, but I'm very happy when my favorite band rolls into town to play.
While merch is often a good money maker for bands, often even this money ends up mostly in other hands (venue, label, agent, manufacturer).
Using supposed knowledge of where a band gets their living from is shaky ground if you're looking to justify music piracy (and please save your semantic battles for someone else).
Sure, go ahead see live shows. For those musicians that really play live this is often better than listening to a produced CD. But not all music is created as a live performance - but it is no less valid just because it is the product of programming.
If you want to stick it to the RIAA, don't support bands on major labels. This requires that you actually know what labels are majors - the majors often try to look indy (to be cool) and the indies often try to look like majors (to get taken seriously). They only way to know is to look it up.
Stay away from "lock in" products.
Just because they are popular or slick, does not mean they are the best.
Here is my criteria:
1. Can I plug it into any OS and have it be seen as a regular USB Mass Starage device? (No special drivers, no "secret agent" proprietary transfer programs that only support certain OS's, etc. etc.)
2. Can it play a majority of NON-DRM related formats? MP3, WMA, OGG, etc. etc. The more the better.
3. Does it have a battery solution that would render the player useless if the original battery were to wear out? Is the battery solution user replacable at a resonable cost? Is the battery solution rplacable even if the company that sold it to you goes out of business or only supports their "current models"?
4. Is the device firmaware upgradable? Are firmware upgrades and updates activly provided? (firware upgradable does not mean much if the parent company never offers them)
The funny thing is -- I don't think the device that is the most popular (iPod line) even comes close to meeting any of those reqs.
My Archos Jukebox does (HD Based)
My Frontier Labs CF based player does
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
we're talking consumer issue versus environmental issue
can you keep track of the issues?
exxon sucks, but not for the same reasons we're talking about
you're way afield of the subject matter here
you don't have a valid point to make when you change the subject
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My mistake, you were not advocating anything. My apologies! But what you were describing was a plutocracy, where the good of society is subservient to those who control accumulated capital. Mussolini's facism (which he said should be more properly called "corporatism") is similar; so is Ayn Rand's ant-hill.
The first poster said "company exist to serve the consumer" and you said "companies exist to generate profit for the owners" but neither of these is correct, they are just opposite misconceptions.
Societies don't have to allow companies to exist. A government can insist that all industries be single-owner single-worker cottage industries and enforce those restrictions with bloodshed. This has happened repeatedly in human history - in Cambodia for example. An anarchistic culture could also (theoretically) impose the same limitations, though it's harder to imagine without a central government. Eliminating companies, however, greatly limits the population that a society can encompass - which would make such a society ripe for military takeover by a more co-operative society, which is kind of what happened to Pol Pot.
Don't confuse the incentive (profit) that is provided by society to the holders of capital (business owners) with the reasons a society allows a company to exist. Those reasons (speaking from the viewpoint of an observer and not the owner) are the *purpose* of the company.
So, the reason for the owner to buy or found the company is the expectation of profit. But what allows the company to exist at all is that the society that surrounds the company gains value from the continuing employment of workers. Depending on the company's activities, the value delivered to the society could include all kinds of other things (like land reclamation or consumer goods) but the one thing that *all* companies deliver to the society is gainful employment for citizens. It is their function, the reason they are allowed to exist.
If a business owner trangresses the cultural values of a society in search of profit, a healthy society will crush that business. Unless we're talking about a plutocracy or an Ayn Rand wonderland, where the business owner only has to generate wealth for himself and owes nothing to society.
Oddly enough, given all your diversions, I am still tracking the issue.
You recommended that everyone pirate music.
I say that is an amoral position, that puts you at the same level as any other exploiter of musicians.
You want to redefine the meanings of profit, happiness, consumer activism, and anything else that comes to mind in order to defend your lack of moral fibre, and I'm laughing at you.
If you refuse to buy the stuff that offends you, you are taking a moral stand.
If you seize it openly without paying and go to jail, you might still be making a moral stand.
But if you secretly take it, you're just a petty criminal.
Or until iTunes is upgraded to the newest version.
One ticket concert is equivalent to 3 or 4 CDs. It is not like they will pay 100 or 1000 ...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
One ticket concert is equivalent to 3 or 4 CDs.
Even if you have the fifty dollars in hand, the cashier won't take your fifty dollars because you are not 21 years of age.
im not talking about what you SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do, i'm talking about what is going to happen regardless
reference another reply to someone else in this thread under my initial comment on this very same issue, that i had to repeat to another joker
i'm not repeating the same argument a third time for your benefit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'*
All actions have a moral dimension. Observation can be passive (arguably) but when you advocate, you act.
*Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6
I subscribe to a music service that keeps a history of my downloads. If they ever change formats, all I have to do is re-download my songs in the new format at no extra charge. I don't buy CDs any more, and my subscription is less than just one CD.
Give serendipity a chance.