Those of you who know me, will likely also know that I am NOT a fan of Apple's iTunes/iPod empire.
I will shock some people here and admit that the iPod is a cool gadget. I'll even grant that the mp3 revolution was fueled in fairly large parts, by the iPod.
But....
From the very beginning, Apple's plan was to sell you music from its iTunes music store. And that music was laced with DRM, or "Digital Rights Management", a sugar coated way of saying "We will control what you can do with music you buy." And to top it off, no other digital music player is compatible with Apple's DRM. Not because other player manufacturers don't want to be, but because Apple wants it all for themselves. So you buy your player from Apple, you buy your music from Apple, and you can't play that music on other players, so when your iPod breaks, or you run out of room and need another one, your choices are to either jump to another brand of player and re-purchase all your digital music (or burn it all to CDs and re-rip in an open format, which is enough of a pain that 90% of the public doesn't know you can do it, or wouldn't bother to do it), or just shell out the cash for a new iPod, which allows you to easily move your iTunes music library over. People have hassled me for many years for my anti-iPod views, and I don't think I've ever actually spelled out my argument so clearly. In any other medium, that kind of closed-marketplace wouldn't fly. But thanks to the fact that they were the first mainline digital music player, Apple has been given a free pass by the public to fleece them at will.
Okay, now that I've established my gripe with the iJuggernaut, let's take a quick look at the LEGAL music download landscape.
- iTunes, with lots of selection, but also restrictions.
- WalMart, Buy.com, Many other stores offering music with the Windows Media DRM - which is supported by a huge variety of players, but is still DRM, and has earned my wrath through its ridiculous limitations.
- eMusic, which sells all their music as mp3 files, which have NO DRM. Oops, but there's really not much on there that you've ever heard of. The mafia that is the recording industry likes to sell you the same music as many times as possible, so they hate un-restricted music sales. eMusic has lots of independent groups, which is cool in its own way, but largely useless to me...
- (well, really 3 and a half) EMI, one of the big four mafia -oops- music companies, announced that they would offer their music in open, DRM-free form earlier this year. Apple made EMI and a few other product lines available DRM-free, but still used their .aac format that isn't supported by many players outside of the apple universe. Walmart and the other Windows-based stores also started selling un-DRM'd files, even going a step further and offering them as universally playable mp3s. But shopping for them was confusing, since they had the crippled tracks available alongside them, and I just KNOW that there have already been people thinking they were getting one, and winding up with the other. If only a major player would step up and do it right, offering mp3 files from the big guys in an easy to navigate way.
- (really IV) Amazon unleashed their long-talked-about download store today, offering everything in mp3. And they're even using high quality mp3s, the kind that I'd be happy to welcome to my media server. I've browsed around a little this morning, and their selection is better than I've found on the hybrid DRM/mp3 sites, and their prices are great - 89 cents a song for most songs, and albums averaging $8.99.
Amazon is big enough that hopefully this will be a success, and more record companies will agree to sell their catalog through their site. Until then, I've actually found music I've been looking for on there, and I intend to support this venture! Viva la Revolution!
Thanks for sharing Mike. I'll have to check out the offerings over at Amazon. I must say, I'm still more of a give-me-the-CD kinda guy, but there are a few things I've bought off of iTunes (I know, I know...) - mostly of the DRM-free variety.
ReplyDeleteA big push for me is that our car still only plays CDs (and not of the mp3 caliber), making it rather annoying to have a song on my computer that I can't listen to in my car (and having no iPod or such equivalent, for now it's all CDs).
As long as I can move away from the MS empire, I feel pretty good about myself (although I seem to have no problem accepting free software in exchange for testing out a product here and there...).
Enjoy your new-found tunes!
No problem! Music has always been my passion, and the whole downloading issue has been problematic for far too long. So I'm really excited about this neutral, non-MS, non-Apple, non-DRM music store!
ReplyDeleteI think I disagree regarding the blame you put on Apple. (surprise, surprise).
ReplyDeleteApple has said they'd rather sell DRM-free music. It's the music companies that require it from Apple.
Fun reading for you: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
By the way, other music players can easily support the AAC format and a lot of them do now so I'm not sure the argument you were trying to make in the formats. mp3 or aac - the average user doesn't care - just wants it to work.
I think you've targeted the wrong suspect.
also, you don't have to buy your music from apple. Just keep buying CD's. As far as I know most people are still downloading their bought/stolen/borrowed music onto their iPods. You don't have to buy anything from the iTunes store at all.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm not sure what the argument is against the hardware. I can totally see your argument against the DRM infested store but the iPod can play most any format that most regular people listen to.
I'm sure there are plenty of people enjoying their beautiful iPod with no intentions of ever buying from the iTunes store.
a humorous perspective:
http://tinyurl.com/3x94ka
one last thing: i think it's good that amazon opened their store. i will probably use it. i think it's a little stupid for music companies to give this kind of "freedom" to amazon but not apple but the music companies aren't exactly consumer activists.
ReplyDeleteRob, Amazon isn't getting any "freedom" from the labels that Apple isn't. Apple is also free to sell the EMI group's catalog in DRM free format, and they have been doing so for several months. Of course, they've positioned it as a "value added" product on iTunes, charging $1.29 per DRM-Free song, as opposed to $.99 for the restricted versions. The fact that Amazon is only charging $.89 for DRM-Free music downloads is another huge plus in my book. That those files are in the mp3 format is even more appealing. Outside of the EMI catalog, anything that Amazon is selling that Apple doesn't offer in DRM free format, is simply due to negotiations that Amazon has made with the smaller labels.
ReplyDeleteAnd my issue isn't specifically with the aac format, it's Apple's "FairPlay" DRM scheme. If you want to download from iTunes, which I'm not arguing has the largest selection of music, you MUST play your downloaded music (excusing the above-mentioned non-DRM files) on your iPod. My haterade isn't spewing at the iPod because of the hardware, it's because of the music store it's tied to.
I would absolutely NOT argue that there are many, many iPod owners who have not, and have no plans to use the iTunes Music Store. But in a world where the public is very uninformed about the way things work (or don't) together, and the word "iPod" has become almost like "kleenex" as a generic term, I'd be willing to bet that there have been people who got a non-apple mp3 player, got excited and went to iTunes, bought some music, and then found that - oh crap! - they can't put their music on their player...
This original post wasn't about bashing Apple as much as it was praising Amazon's new store, as a new hope for a world where things just work. And you said yourself, that's what people want.
I didn't realize it was only EMI on Amazon. I was assuming Universal had gone over as well. My mistake.
ReplyDeleteYou said, "but because Apple wants it all for themselves"as well as referring to Apple as, "iJuggernaut."
When you say things like this how can someone not perceive your beef is with Apple?
Did you read what Steve Jobs wrote about DRM? He isn't a fan either. If iTunes stripped all the DRM it would only become even more popular - you know why? Because it all just works.
I really don't think you have much of an argument because your basically arguing for something that already exists - freedom to do with your music whatever you'd like - which is found in the iPod.
For those that aren't educated about buying music with DRM from the iTunes store - you're blaming Apple for this?
Plus, no one is really locked in to the iTunes store right? Because people that can use google can find a very simple (although laborious) way of stripping the DRM by simply burning a CD of the songs and reimporting back to your music library. Is that kind of lame? Definitely. But no one is truly "locked in" as you argue.
I still think you are barking up the wrong tree.
In the end it is definitely good to have multiple sources to get your content especially if they all work on the same devices. Honestly, I think Apple wants the same thing because they would be way more richer because of it.
Universal has a partial catalog on Amazon as well. They haven't gone DRM-Free on ITMS yet? I thought they were... But I didn't specifically mention them because it's not their full catalog.
ReplyDeleteI still stand by Apple "wanting it all for themselves" because if they didn't, they would license their "FairPlay" DRM to other music retailers, or other player manufacturers. Say what you want about Microsoft, but the Windows Media DRM was made available to any music retailer who wanted to sign on, and there are countless players supporting it. If "FairPlay" were opened like this, I would have no complaints against it, other than it still being DRM. But it's closed, and while not technically a lockdown, in many ways it is.
Thanks for this back-n-forth! It's helped me nail down the aspect of all this that I really have problems with, it's FairPlay!