iTunes, One Billion Suckers Served?

Thomas Hawk writes "Apple is out hyping their one billionth iTunes download today, but is building your music library in a format that could be obsolete in the future really the best strategy? Will the consumer once again have to someday replace their iTunes track just like they had to replace their LP, cassette, and CD only to get their music on their hot new non Apple mp3 phone of the future? "

Comments

Not very likely

[Calibax]

I understand how media can be obsoleted when players for that media are no longer available. However, it's much more difficult to make a data format unuseable.

Surely that can only occur if the format can only be read by a non-open source application that is only available in binary format and where the hardware to run that program becomes unavailable. I suppose it could also happen if the media you use for your iTunes storage becomes obsolete and you don't remember to copy your music to another media format.

I think a billion downloads (and counting) will ensure that iTunes music will remain playable for a long time to come and will sound just as good then as it does now.

Re:Not very likely

[HairyCanary]

HYMN does not work on the latest Apple DRM.

And despite the fact that people routinely say "everything gets cracked," there is evidence to contradict that. DRM is going to get "Good Enough" that for all practical purposes it will not be crackable.

Not only that

[cosmo7]

But when the sun explodes your music won't play whatever format it's in! And what does Apple do about this? Nothing!.

It's a class action suit waiting to happen.

Pimp my blog

[MyLongNickName]

... and post something ranting about DRM.

Blogger admits he has never used service. Does not address the fact that you CAN covert to another format if you wish.

Is iTunes perfect? No. But I have purchased 20x more music than what I would have otherwise.

And even if iTunes shut down tomorrow, I would lose 0% of my music.

Only thing I wish is that it would serve up a higher bit rate....

Is this article baiting?

[fak3r]

Look, I have an iBook, but have bought very little from iTunes Store, however I think everyone understands Apple's decision to go with an audio format that would support a DRM; which they see as key to keep the people coming to them for tracks, and not to someone else who just bought them. It *is* annoying that you can only play the tracks on 'authorized' systems, and the other contrastrants, but people know this. By your arguement then people that bought games for Nintendo 64 were 'suckers' because they bought a game that was 'locked in' to a certain platform and wouldn't play on the Gamecube.

In this throwaway society of ours I really think that for most people the idea that something they buy might not always be around forever is OK. Hell, I guess we could start talking about other things too, cars, cameras, hot water heaters, etc...

Re:Is this article baiting?

[wootest]

Your argument is fallacious.

Apple went through hoops to add DRM to the files - it was a requirement from the **AAs - whereas N64 vs Gamecube was just a fact of progressing technology. AAC (MPEG-4) being incompatible with MP3 (MPEG-2, Layer 3) because of technological advancements would be a more apt comparison to N64 vs GC here.

I was going to bring up how, with DRM, we'd need to repurchase the same damn songs on new media, but in fact that's just the way it's always have been, even without DRM. Media, regardless of it being books, music, movies, games, etc, is consumed and will always come out in new forms, just like any other case of consumption. (However, DRM and crummy quality is most likely the labels' way of making sure they can continue to resell you the same stuff tomorrow, despite how they could actually do something that we could conceivably play, no problem, on a computer in 100 years.)

At the end of the day, DRM sucks, and we all know this. However, I'm also confident that Apple's one of the vendors least tied to DRM, because Apple only offers 'buying', and not 'subscribing', which literally hinges on DRM - otherwise you could just keep the music, like with 'buying'! Apple's simultaneously the most and least likely to speak up against DRM: most because they use DRM, hate it and could say "all these sales we racked up for you? we could make them stop coming unless you offer DRM-less music"; but also least, because they know the labels would just make up a new store and Apple would lose profits itself (and it actually does make a slim profit on the store).

Doesn't work quite so well

[DreadSpoon]

Converting to any other format is going to cause a loss of quality. Even if you go to WAV or CD Audio, if you ever want to rip it back into some compressed format, you're going to lose quality.

Also, if you rip to WAV or CD, you lose all the meta-data for the track. So if you want to know the Artist, Title, and Album, you're going to have to re-enter that info on your own.

There's also no clean/easy way to export to MP3. Even if you jump through the hoops to do it, though, you're back to loss of quality.

I just went through the hell of exporting all my iTunes-purchased songs into Oggs so that I can play them on my Linux box, which has the nice sound system. That took quite a few burned CDs and I still haven't gotten the Oggs all retagged yet. Plus there's the quality issue, which while I've only noticed anything in a couple songs, that's still more quality issue than I would prefer.

It's a dollar. Or twenty. Or two hundred. So?

[ScentCone]

I always find it amusing to hear people use the word "sucker" when talking about a person paying $0.99 for a bit of portable entertainment they like from a musician they respect... as they drive in their car - which they'll never fully own, on which they'll pay thousnds in interest - to a friend's house, where they'll talk about how smart they are ("Ogg Vorbis, dude!") while they drink $2.00 imported beers that will only be in their collection for about an hour.

Re:Worst post ever

[dorkygeek]

Like all other lame articles did. Surprisingly though, Dvorak seems not to be involved this time.

Lame.

[d3kk]

"Personally I've never bought an iTune and I don't own an iPod."

I stopped reading right there. It's kind of hard to criticize a service without actually ever using it.

Re:works half as well...

[johnrpenner]

> Converting to any other format is going to cause a loss of quality.
> Even if you go to WAV or CD Audio, if you ever want to rip it back
> into some compressed format, you're going to lose quality.

the quality you get from converting from aac > aiff will BE what you hear,
because the aac file has to decompress for you to hear it!! -- so it is not
less quality doing your aac backup to AIFF (and then you could convert
back to apple-lossless encoding if you want to save some space).

your second point, however, is correct -- you will lose quality
if you convert back from aiff TO some other lossless format,
due to dithering and artifacts.

in short:
i) lossy (aac) -> lossless (aiff) = no quality loss
ii) lossy (aac) -> lossless (aiff) -> lossy (mp3/ogg/whatever) = quality loss

How is apple's DRM "terrible?"

[LupusUF]

Maybe this will cause me to get nailed by mods, but I feel that it needs to be said.

The blog rant that is linked to complains that apple's DRM is "terrible." I simply don't understand the argument. The DRM is as lax as possible while still keeping the music industry from having a fit. Sure there are limits to how many times you can burn a playlist, but if you change the list by only one song you the counter resets. How many times have you burned more than a couple copies of the exact same playlist anyway? Perhaps the sound isn't exactly the same as a CD, but it is good enough that it really doesn't matter on most sound systems. What the blogger really misses is the fact that itunes gives you what you can't get at the CD shop. The ability to buy just one song off of a CD. If an artist makes one good song and the rest crap, you only pay .99 and get that one song.

Since you can burn your ACC files and then rip them to mp3 if you want, there is no danger of not being able to play your music in the future like the blogger claims. Yes you have to pay for the songs, yes there are some restrictions to prevent piracy, but itunes is still a great thing. It should be something that slashdot readers support, it gives us cheap music and DRM that has plenty of flexibility.

Re:you can backup all your itunes purchases

[cmdrbuzz]

itunes 6 only allows you to burn 5 CDs then burning is locked out forever.

Got any proof of this, because iTunes 6 on my Mac says:

If your playlist includes songs that were purchased from the iTunes Music Store, you can only burn seven copies of the playlist to an audio CD. You may have exceeded the number of times you can burn this playlist.

You can then create a new playlist with your iTunes Music Store songs on and burn again 7 more times....

Maybe your getting confused with the play protected songs on 5 authorized computers at a time?

Re:Worst post ever

[bobdotorg]

This post is just stupid. It's full of lies. How did this get onto the main page?

Stop your rant. Save your breath. You'll need to rest up for the dupe.

Re:works half as well...

[StevieZ]

jeezus, man, whatever happened to just putting on a godam record.

That blog's comments made me cringe

[TubeSteak]

Literally, I cringed at how many commentors thought they were soooooo clever for burning to a CD then re-ripping to MP3.

I remember (when I had just discovered MP3s in 9th grade) re-encoding them to a higher bitrate. I thought I was clever, I mean, higher bitrate right?

Fark I was stupid & so is every n00btard who says "burn it and re-encode it."

I think part of the problem is that people now have something 'invested' in iTunes or their iPod and because of that, they'll defend it. Even if you give them proof they may have made a bad choice.

Remember folks, denial is the first step.
Then comes anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

I'm not saying iTunes is bad, but the people who have invested money/time/credibility into Apple will have a lot of trouble stepping back and looking at their decision objectively.

Re:you can backup all your itunes purchases

[jrockway]

> Maybe your getting confused with the play protected songs on 5 authorized computers at a time?

That's also easy to deal with. Backup your /Users/Shared/SC\ Info/SC\ Info.sidb. Deauthorize your computer. Replace the SC Info.sidb. Now you have authorized 0 of 5 computers but can still play the music.

This guy is looking down on ME for buying iTunes?

[balloot]

I think it's stupid to pay $15 for most new CDs. I think it's stupid to pay for an entire CD when you want only one song. I think it's stupid to have to clear out a lot of physical space in order to hold your CD collection. I think it's stupid to force yourself to either a) go to a store to buy a CD or b) wait days in order to receive your purchase when the whole process can happen instantly. So I buy songs online. The DRM isn't really an issue to those of us that have actually used iTunes and know that it is very possible to get mp3's out of your m4p files.

Oh, and about the author's brilliant scheme of buying CDs and returning them the next day - if I wanted to get music while screwing the artist out of any money, I would just download the song for free.

Re:works half as well...

[klez23]

You read my mind. I was honestly just thinking exactly that. I've lately been enjoying listening to LPs largely for the simplicity of it. Not only is it a simple process, but I also (mostly) understand what's going on with the whole set of devices I'm using.

Also, many audio equipment manufacturers used to consider their craft an art, in that their goal was to provide a beautiful sound, rather than a necessarily "perfectly accurate" sound. Using equipment designed with that intention adds to my enjoyment of listening as well.