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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?"
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
Than buying an 8 track and then they come out with tape, CD etc?
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
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?
Right, because CDs never have anything related to DRM...
(Just to list a few)
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.
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.
Simple.. do your research to live in a DRM free environment
Digital Audio Player
I researched around for an non-cripled (no DRM) player that would mount as a hard drive, allowing access to the music files without the use of any software.
Result:iRiver iHP-120 (which has better audio fidelity, plays more formats, and has many more options than the iPod [digital optical out/input, FM radio, etc.]) Not to mention I'm running rockbox on it so it's a wonderful experience
Music purchases
I buy CDs! I can rip everything in the FORMAT & BITRATE that I choose, and if, God forbid, I lose or destroy my DAP (& the duplicates on my computer) I can re-rip something. Also, if you search around, you can get CD's online for cheap & without tax.
Even better, buy used CDs. Same music, 3/4 to 1/2 of the price AND you can almost always sell it back (although at a lower price).
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...
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.