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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.
solution provided.
2 1337 4 u!
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
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.
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
I just say no to DRM, it doesn't get any simpler.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
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.
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.
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.
But digital _IS_ different. The promise of digital data of all sorts is that you should be able to keep it around forever. You might have to transfer it to your new holographic 20 terabyte drive at some point, but that should just copying files over, which is trivial provided you do it before your obsolete hardware fails. To believe that this is just like any other "format war" is to buy into the premise of DRM.
That's why I encode all my CDs to FLAC. It may not be the way of the future, but at least i'm not losing data. I can always convert it to the format-du-jour from flac, and keep the original files. If you go from OGG to MP3 to VFQ, you end up with a file that's got a lot more loss then going straight from the CD to one of the formats.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.