to be fair, I use iTunes music store when I want *a* song not an entire album. Because that is cheaper. I may not want an entire soundtrack for X or Y film, but I may want 1 or 2 songs. Also I know yes, you get a hard copy with CD's, and good and groovy and very well done. But I have a whole bunch of CD's I've either had to rebuy or pirate copies of, because they have died. And not through misuse, just through CD Cancer. Admittedly most of these are older CD's, circa mid 90s, but it's still annoying.
Also iTunes lets you redownload your music (albeit only once) in the case of HDD death. Which I believe is more than most DRM services allow you to do.
I personally believe DRM is a case of chicken/egg. Online music stores exist, record labels would have (more likely than not) said 'F Off' if Apple (or anyone else) approached them and said 'yeah, we want to sell your music with no strings attached and people can do whatever they want with it and share it however they want...'. But lets face it, since broadband became de-facto, piracy of music via MP3 has gone through the roof. And what's that sourced from more often than not? CD.
Record labels have only de-DRM'd CD's due to public protest and the fact it inhibits the CD's from being played in some devices. DRM will always be about, it will always be bypassed via one means or the other, and people will always crusade for/against it. It's been that way since Macrovision was introduced (although I don't personally remember quite so many people going 'Hey I can't make copies of my purchased copy of Jurassic Park' at the time...). Whilst DRM CD's are gone for now, they'll be back.
I wish more media players would support MP4 of any type. I much prefer it as a file format for sound quality, especially at lower bitrates. Since the station I DJ for introduced AAC/MP4 streaming (which amusingly you can listen to with most players except iTunes, and I have had a message along the lines of 'wtf?' passed on to a few people who work on it...), it has become the more dominant stream listened to, as people can listen to it with winamp/vlc/etc out the box, and WMP with a free plugin. And the 32kbps stream is better in quality than the 64kbps mp3 stream. Yet the only players i've seen apart from Apples which used it (and used it well) were panasonics range of Music players from X years back.
Please don't consider me to be in favour of the record industries practise in general, but DRM does exist for a reason, and sadly the honest people amongst the population suffer for the actions of the dishonest. I won't claim to be whiter than white, i've pirated stuff in the past and I'll live with those consequences. The only rule I live by is I only play on air what I legally own. Because we pay licensing fees and that is one of the terms we have to obey by and if we get audited and i'd played bootleg/downloaded mp3s then the entire station would go down the crapper and a X thousand dollar fine is ours for the keeping.
I may have had a point here, I forget what it was... I'm tired and rambling.
no subject
Also iTunes lets you redownload your music (albeit only once) in the case of HDD death. Which I believe is more than most DRM services allow you to do.
I personally believe DRM is a case of chicken/egg. Online music stores exist, record labels would have (more likely than not) said 'F Off' if Apple (or anyone else) approached them and said 'yeah, we want to sell your music with no strings attached and people can do whatever they want with it and share it however they want...'. But lets face it, since broadband became de-facto, piracy of music via MP3 has gone through the roof. And what's that sourced from more often than not? CD.
Record labels have only de-DRM'd CD's due to public protest and the fact it inhibits the CD's from being played in some devices. DRM will always be about, it will always be bypassed via one means or the other, and people will always crusade for/against it. It's been that way since Macrovision was introduced (although I don't personally remember quite so many people going 'Hey I can't make copies of my purchased copy of Jurassic Park' at the time...). Whilst DRM CD's are gone for now, they'll be back.
I wish more media players would support MP4 of any type. I much prefer it as a file format for sound quality, especially at lower bitrates. Since the station I DJ for introduced AAC/MP4 streaming (which amusingly you can listen to with most players except iTunes, and I have had a message along the lines of 'wtf?' passed on to a few people who work on it...), it has become the more dominant stream listened to, as people can listen to it with winamp/vlc/etc out the box, and WMP with a free plugin. And the 32kbps stream is better in quality than the 64kbps mp3 stream. Yet the only players i've seen apart from Apples which used it (and used it well) were panasonics range of Music players from X years back.
Please don't consider me to be in favour of the record industries practise in general, but DRM does exist for a reason, and sadly the honest people amongst the population suffer for the actions of the dishonest. I won't claim to be whiter than white, i've pirated stuff in the past and I'll live with those consequences. The only rule I live by is I only play on air what I legally own. Because we pay licensing fees and that is one of the terms we have to obey by and if we get audited and i'd played bootleg/downloaded mp3s then the entire station would go down the crapper and a X thousand dollar fine is ours for the keeping.
I may have had a point here, I forget what it was... I'm tired and rambling.