arstechnica.com— One of Europe's largest online music stores says that DRM is bad business all around, and the company has revealed impressive successes selling non-DRM'd music since some artists made the switch.
Mar 18, 2007View in Crawl 4
The average iTunes user does not give a damn-at first. Then, they try to play their iTunes music on some non-Apple device and they are mighty pissed because they didn't realize that they got locked in to using only Apple devices when they bought their music. I've seen this happen with three different friends.One partial solution to this whole DRM mess is to modify the DMCA to make it legal to create and sell tools designed to remove DRM for purposes of fair use. Does Europe even have a DMCA equivalent?
Don't let yourself get guilt-tripped into buying music just because they aren't utterly screwing you with DRM. The music industry needs to accept the fact that they're in competition with freely shared music, and if they want to keep making money they need to provide a better product.It wouldn't be hard for an online music store to provide a better music download service than P2P file trading does. They could charge $0.50 to $1 depending on song popularity, and then they could allow unlimited downloads of that track in a number of different DRM-free formats (MP3, OOG, WMA, AAC, FLAC).Actually, now that I think about it, there's an online music store that does that today: AllOfMp3.com
I purchased a song from the itunes site once. I was never able to play the song on my computer through the itunes software. After a week or so of madening technical issues with the itunes store, I decided to just download the lossless FLAC version for free. I've since converted that song into other formats for all my musical needs. I've since sold my iPod, converted to linux (from windows), and found a much easier way to get digital music without the DRM... at the library.I'd pay premium for lossless digital downloads without DRM. Alas, it's a pirates life for me.
Yes, joegibes is correct. I used that same trick on a few songs I downloaded from Napster that were protected with DRM. It really made me mad when I wanted to convert the format of the songs and the DRM wouldn't let me even though I had paid for them. I found that by burning them to a CD-R and ripping them back to my PC the DRM would be gone and I could do whatever I wanted with them including convert them to any format I wished. When you burn the songs to CD all the DRM metadata is discarded and it remains gone forever.
Yeah I had the same problem with Napster, and when I sent a complaint to customer support (a respectful, this happened can you fix it) they wouldn't respond, yet whenever anyone would complain about it on their forums they gave the form, if you have a problem contact customer support, post.I have since switched to an iPod with iTunes (napster's music manager sucked IMO) and just buy CD's
dt40Mar 19, 2007
The average iTunes user does not give a damn-at first. Then, they try to play their iTunes music on some non-Apple device and they are mighty pissed because they didn't realize that they got locked in to using only Apple devices when they bought their music. I've seen this happen with three different friends.One partial solution to this whole DRM mess is to modify the DMCA to make it legal to create and sell tools designed to remove DRM for purposes of fair use. Does Europe even have a DMCA equivalent?
lucid270Mar 19, 2007
Paris Hilton unavailable for comment.
chandonMar 19, 2007
Don't let yourself get guilt-tripped into buying music just because they aren't utterly screwing you with DRM. The music industry needs to accept the fact that they're in competition with freely shared music, and if they want to keep making money they need to provide a better product.It wouldn't be hard for an online music store to provide a better music download service than P2P file trading does. They could charge $0.50 to $1 depending on song popularity, and then they could allow unlimited downloads of that track in a number of different DRM-free formats (MP3, OOG, WMA, AAC, FLAC).Actually, now that I think about it, there's an online music store that does that today: AllOfMp3.com
spr0k3tMar 19, 2007
I purchased a song from the itunes site once. I was never able to play the song on my computer through the itunes software. After a week or so of madening technical issues with the itunes store, I decided to just download the lossless FLAC version for free. I've since converted that song into other formats for all my musical needs. I've since sold my iPod, converted to linux (from windows), and found a much easier way to get digital music without the DRM... at the library.I'd pay premium for lossless digital downloads without DRM. Alas, it's a pirates life for me.
numptydumptyMar 19, 2007
shut up
drgamezMar 19, 2007
shut up
joegibesMar 19, 2007
Not many people realize that you can burn purchased iTunes music to a CD and rip them with winamp or WMP or whatever into UNPROTECTED mp3 format.
slamscaper945Mar 19, 2007
Yes, joegibes is correct. I used that same trick on a few songs I downloaded from Napster that were protected with DRM. It really made me mad when I wanted to convert the format of the songs and the DRM wouldn't let me even though I had paid for them. I found that by burning them to a CD-R and ripping them back to my PC the DRM would be gone and I could do whatever I wanted with them including convert them to any format I wished. When you burn the songs to CD all the DRM metadata is discarded and it remains gone forever.
zuggyMar 19, 2007
Yeah I had the same problem with Napster, and when I sent a complaint to customer support (a respectful, this happened can you fix it) they wouldn't respond, yet whenever anyone would complain about it on their forums they gave the form, if you have a problem contact customer support, post.I have since switched to an iPod with iTunes (napster's music manager sucked IMO) and just buy CD's
demizuMay 21, 2007
Sounds interesting... Even if it's not true it is quite a nice idea.