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iPod Users Buy CDs, Shun iTunes
twitter writes, "The BBC's summarizes a Jupiter Research study, 'iPod fans shunning iTunes store.' From the article: '83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly... only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites... [T]he only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music — especially CDs.' This is despite years of iTunes promotion and apparent success. Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."
Yeah, I've bought more CD's now than before not because of iTunes, but because of Pandora.com. Points 1, 2, and 3 are very valid. Also, you're unable to resell your iTunes music collection if you wish.
I find it odd how I'm so anti-iTunes due to the stated reasons, but I'm more than willing to buy games on Xbox Live Arcade, seeing as they fit within similar restrictions. Well, only if they're original and not repackaged retro-games I've played to death.
It probably has to do with the fact that Xbox Live Arcade games are only available through a restricted medium, where I can bypass iTunes and buy a non-DRMed CD and Vorbis it.
If you would like to buy music from an online store, but you don't want DRM and you want top quality, check out magnatune.com. They let you download CD-quality (either as uncompressed wave files, or as FLAC), MP3, or Ogg Vorbis. And you can listen to everything before you buy. (128 kbps MP3, lower quality than you get when you pay.)
Not only do they not have DRM, but they encourage you to give away up to three copies of the music you buy, as a form of advertising.
They have a sliding scale on prices: you can choose what you want to pay, within a reasonable range. (I just checked, and at least for the album I checked, the range was from $5 to $18.) If you only like one song on an album, pay less for the album. If you really want to encourage an artist to make more albums, pay more. That's cool.
When you buy an album, the artist gets 50% of whatever you pay. Not 50% of the profits, and then they cook the books so they "don't have any profits"... 50% of the gross income. That's outstanding. I love their slogan: "We are not evil."
I have no connection to them, other than being a satisfied customer.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely