Whereas I am of the opinion that I am better off just buying from iTunes (when I am not buying physical that is) because:
The big labels need to stfu and stop trying to enslave artists, companies and consumers.
Buy a CD: higher quality, no DRM.
Not that the music companies haven’t tried - several times. If they didn’t get so much bad press, I’m sure the DRM’ed CDs would still be on the market (and I am sure that they will try again if they think they can get away with it).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal
Jeff writes:
As a consumer, why would I care about anything other than competition
resulting in lower prices – and less DRM – for me? Why would I
care how “unfairly” a company with a 160 billion dollar market cap (as of this writing) is being treated?
One thing to care about is the buying experience. Personally i’d rather buy music through the iTunes store because it’s integrated with the most popular music player.
You are not being an advocate for the consumer, you’re being an advocate for the music labels.
I’ll buy music online once Amazon’s mp3 sales are available in New Zealand. Until then (and probably after), CDs will do fine.
“One thing to care about is the buying experience. Personally i’d rather buy music through the iTunes store because it’s integrated with the most popular music player.”
Okay, that’s fine…
“You are not being an advocate for the consumer, you’re being an advocate for the music labels.”
Wha? I mean, huh? Amazon’s interface is worse (in your opinion) than Apple’s, and to use the worse (in your opinion) interface… helps… the labe-
I’m sorry, I cannot make any logical connection between those two statements. Did you forget a paragraph?
Don’t forget DRM-free will help on your batteries too!
Taking this to the logical extreme, buying drm free music means you are saving the planet.
“I have no doubts that if Apple were allowed dump DRM, they would do so in a flash”
Funny. I remember some tracks on emusic that were available as unprotected MP3s at the same time that they were DRM’d on iTMS.
Incidentally, Jeff, it’s worth checking out emusic, and sometimes getting a subscription for a month or two. There’s not a huge range of mainstream music, but they’ve got people like the White Stripes and Belle and Sebastian, and its much cheaper.
I find itunes mostly great, but the main problem I have had is that I can’t easily share itunes library between different computers. That becomes a problem because I’m not going to buy 2 copies of each song (one for me and one for my wife).
What I have to do is strip the DRM from itunes songs, and convert to mp3s. It would be easier to just pirate the songs! stupid stupid stupid.
I agree, mostly, with the points you are making, but my usual solution is to buy CDs rather than MP3s. No compression, no DRM, open standard, permanent physical backup. If a particular song I want is on a CD that’s bizarrely overpriced, I’ll splurge the $.99 on iTMS.
Amazon mp3 store is very good and has a lot of titles, I use it often. Don’t forget places like eMusic either. They also have DRM free MP3s, but they offer a subsciption model. At the high levels you get songs for around 20 cents each. I subscribe at a 2 year subscription, 75 songs per month for 15$ a month. Some of the major artist are not there, but many are and it has really given me a change to find a lot of great music by lesser know artist. So now I use eMusic in conjunction with Amazon to get music I like.
“Do you honestly believe this is, in any possible universe, a realistic outcome? It’s absurd.” – Jeff Atwood, on the possibilities of the iTunes store disappearing, circa 2008.
I hope when someone find this quip when and if the iTunes store goes belly-up because of some colossal failure on Apple’s part, they’ll be as kind to you as you were to Rob Malda.
It’s easy to look back on history and throw barbs at someone for being “out-of-touch” with how things turned out, but it happens, and it happens to all of us. Based on technical features alone, the iPod wasn’t competitive with the Nomad. Creative had the superior product if you looked purely at a specification sheet. It was only because of iTunes and the iTunes Music Store that the iPod took off. iTunes made it easy to get music from the Internet onto your iPod; an idea at the time that was not only unheard of, but frowned upon by the music industry.
I think you owe Rob and Slashdot an apology.
Jeff,
Would Apple have reduced iTunes Plus fees from $1.29 to $0.99 if Amazon didn’t offer DRM free music for less? Out of the goodness of their heart? Because they love, in Reg’s words, “delighting customers”?
I covered this on my blog back in October 07:
http://www.innerexception.com/2007/10/most-likely-reason-apple-lowered-itunes.html
The even shorter version than my post, iTunes Plus tracks at $1.29 were an inducement to the record labels to move their catalog to DRM free. When the major studios didn’t take it and instead started supplying Amazon, Apple removed the promise of higher eventual revenue to the labels.
Record companies letting Amazon sell DRM-free music at the same time as requiring that Apple keep DRM on the music that they sell, as anything /but/ unfair on Apple
I covered that on my blog in Jan 08:
http://www.innerexception.com/2008/01/bought-my-first-mp3-album-from-amazon.html
Doesn’t matter if the dominant current music store, or really digital media store, is by Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon. Being unhappy about the current situation is not Apple advocacy run amok, its a desire for a truly competitive market for all forms of digital media. The current situation is not “pure competition” as you say, it’s obvious the major labels are giving Amazon much better terms than Apple. I don’t want, nor do I think anyone who’s sane, wants iTunes as the only place to buy legal digital downloads from. I want Amazon, Zune Marketplace, anyone else that wants to have a go. As I say in my post, I may sacrifice buying DRM-free from Amazon, not because I need to prop up Apple the company, but because what I really want is DRM-free for all tracks on both iTunes, Amazon, and anyone else that comes along. Once that happens, and I am still hopeful, I would then most likely buy from iTunes for music exclusively because I think DRM-free AAC (MP4) is a better product (smaller sizes, better device battery life) than MP3s at the same bit rate. You may disagree with me on that, since MP3 is portable to every device, and MP4 is portable to most devices, you may think that is more important than what I think important. That is a truly competitive market.
But I think it is crazy to suggest that Amazon’s MP3 store is pro-consumer in the long run. The music and movie studios have always tried to add more DRM, even after its out of the bottle. DVD DRM was broken years ago, you can strip the DRM and reencode pretty freely now with Handbrake, but they went at it again with even more DRM for HD DVD and Blu-ray. Didn’t stop them then, won’t stop them with digital downloads if the labels (colluded before to price fix CDs, doing it now for DRM-free MP3s from Amazon) believe it’s in the best interest.
So did the whole issue where Apple refused to budge an inch on variable pricing suddenly go away? Not so long ago all of the hubbub was about Jobs battling with the records execs because he wanted every track on the store to stay the same price. Clearly that issue doesn’t bother Amazon, so that could definitely be a factor in why Amazon is getting a better deal.
Other sources of DRM-free music:
All sorts of independent music, including jazz and classical:
And for classical music lovers, a fantastic resource, all MP3, no DRM:
my experience with amazon is that their download software(needed to buy complete cd’s) supports multiple platforms windows, linux and mac. I do not need any software if I am purchasing just one song. Corporate sympathy or loyalty never, only concern I have is how much money does it save me and is it drm free.
+1 about buying mp3 outside US, but also I’ don’t envy that too much, I prefer buying the CD and burn it to FLAC
Curious what other people have done about this as I wrestled with the idea for a while:
Have you taken up Apple’s offer to upgrade your old FairPlayed downloads to “iTunes Plus” files?
On the plus side you get higher quality files without DRM, on the minus side you have to hand over even more cash.
It was Microsoft’s closure of their MSN Music Store that made me upgrade all my tracks. That action made it abundantly clear that a big name doesn’t guarantee longevity.
Finally, price and encoding bit-rate are not the only areas that can be fought over. I recently bought an album on iTunes rather than Play.com (we don’t get Amazon MP3 in the UK) even though it had DRM because they were offering extra tracks that I couldn’t get elsewhere. Apple’s size allows them to negotiate these types of exclusive deal.
It’s one thing to claim Apple has an addiction to hardware. People have been saying that for years as a way to apologize for the fact that Apple doesn’t license the OS to other manufacturers. I don’t think it’s a particularly compelling argument, but it is one which can at least be discussed.
However, when you say Macintosh computers are DRM for Mac OS, that flies in the face of decades, at this point, of history. Apple has been shipping mostly off-the-shelf hardware now for a few years, but for decades that was not the case. They tried to claim it was superior hardware, and in some ways and for some short periods of time, that was actually true, so you have to give them credit for honestly trying to be better than the herd, even if with the next breath you point out they failed.
You can reasonably claim the Apple of today is merely addicted to hardware, but when you talk about their hardware as DRM, you just sound like a conspiracy theorist who isn’t old enough to remember 1984.
For Germans: http://www.musicload.de/
For most places: http//www.magnatune.com/ (was mentioned already)
For most places: http://www.audiolunchbox.com/
For UK at least: http://play.com (also mentioned)
It’s simply not true that there’s no competition - most people are just too caught up with being sheep that they don’t look for alternatives.
Regards
Fake
I’ve never had a problem with iTunes DRM, only with the availability of music from the store. I think it’s a lot worse that you can only buy music that is available in your region. Don’t tell me what I can listen to, thank you.
You can always burn and re-rip music if you want to remove the DRM. I don’t know why everyone complains about DRM when you can always do this! If you wanted perfect, buy the CD.