No worries, mate. 
There will be a pc version of the iTunes music store by the end of the year. And it shall be made by Apple. And it shall rock.
IMO, Windows Media is a better choice than AAC, because there are hardware WMA players. After jumping through (or around) the proper DRM hoops, or if the copyright holder allows it, you might theoretically be able to listen to those WMA files on your car stereo or DVD player. Not so with AAC files - even though AAC is part of the DVD spec.
There’s a Windows version of iTunes?
Wait, wait… there’s an iTunes?
I guess that’s what I get for not giving a damn. Thank you, Amoeba!!
Mr2001, you can play AAC files on the iPod. Seeing as how it’s got something like 40 percent of the MP3 player market, it seems foolish that buy.com wouldn’t at least use a compatible format.
Also, iTunes allows you to “transfer” the use of your music files over to another Mac. Actually, I think you can play the music on three Macs at a time. If you want to remove one Mac from the list, you “deauthorize” (I think that’s the term) it and then “authorize” another Mac. So basically, you can keep moving the music around indefinitely, from Mac to Mac, as time goes on.
All tunes bought off of iTunes allow you to burn up to 10 CDs of the same playlist. All that means is that if you, for instance, bought an entire album and wanted to burn a CD of it, you could burn up to 10 of that album. But if you switched the playlist around a little–took something out, added something else, that’s a different playlist and you can burn 10 of that too. And on and on. At least this is the way it I believe it to be.
Also, “might theoretically be allowed if the copyright holders agree to it and some obstacles are overcome” may as well be “you can’t do it now and you won’t be able to do it for a while”.
Furthermore, it’s possible (and easy) to convert AAC files to mp3s so that they can be played elsewhere. I know because I’ve done it. And since I know someone’s going to pipe up and say it, all that yapping about loss of quality is just that-- yapping. The results sound just fine.
Well my first thought was how fantastic it was that there’s finally somewhere we can legally buy music files from! I had my credit card out, all ready to spend a mountain of money. Then www.buymusic.com rejected me because it’s detected that I don’t live in America, and now I’m angry.
Like most computer-using music lovers I am very bored with CDs, which get scratched, stolen, and lost, are a hassle to constantly insert and remove from players, and which have to be carried around if one wants to enjoy music on the move or at work. Like those people, I have long wanted the ability to purchase music in a computer file format to start with.
And after all these bloody years, some genius has finally provided the first legitimate form of the service the world’s been crying out for, and it’s American only?!
Correct, and the existing iTunes and BuyMusic services are very vulnerable too. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) that buymusic.com et al insist upon is trivially defeatable, as is any kind of software-based DRM.
For example, I very recently wrote a Windows tool that can hook into any application (Windows Media Player, Winamp, RealPlayer, anything at all) and capture the raw audio data as it is sent to the sound card. It writes the audio out to .wav files which can then be trivially converted to .mp3 or .ogg, neatly rendering all and any possible software-based DRM null and void.
It works because even the most cunningly-written anti-piracy playback software has to, at some point, present raw audio data to the sound card hardware, and this has to be done through certain Windows interfaces that don’t (yet) know or care about DRM. My program hooks in at that lower level, so no decryption or reverse-engineering was necessary, and there’s no quality loss from analog conversions either.
So real DRM will never be achievable until hardware supports it. And fat chance of that ever taking off - I’m not going to buy a crippled sound card, unless of course there’s no choice at all. Even when the OS is DRM-aware for user apps, it will still be easy enough to fool it (e.g. by writing a kernel-mode driver that pretends to be a legacy sound card). It’s got to be hardware or nothing.
The record companies are just going to have to learn to trust us a lot more. Their trouble is that they’ve judged us by their own appalling standards, concluding that we’re incorrigible thieves when in fact most of us are more than happy to pay a good price for music, and we don’t need to be harangued into coughing up.
Hell, my Audigy sound card came with a program that does that. Worked nice with the DRM “protected” version of Radiohead’s There There.
Sounds interesting appletreats. I haven’t heard of that program, despite my working (indirectly) for the company that makes the Audigy, but it could well be that such programs are a lot more common than I thought. If that’s true then software DRM is even more pointless than I had previously supposed.
Anyway, I suspect it only works with the Audigy card, whereas my little private hack works with any soundcard (and any media playing application) you might happen to have…
Gee Mockingbird, BuyMusic isn’t your baby, is it?
I think Mockingbird’s objecting to the term ‘retard’ being used as a slur. Twas a typical offenderati drive-by.
Those rotten bastards actually have a search listing for Ben Folds’ new EP, which isn’t in stores, isn’t significantly shared, costs $8 after shipping to buy online, but it says “songs not available for purchase/download”.
Yep. And if you really wanted to, after burning your playlist ten times, you could delete the last song, re-insert the last song, and burn the same playlist another ten times.
Apple’s philosophy is that copy-protection schemes will never “win”, because a determined thief will get around them anyway. The best a company can do is put up mildly annoying obstacles to prevent regular users from abusing the system. Can’t say I object to this idea, actually.
It is if you go to Applemusic.com… 
Yeah, Elwood, I noticed that, too. I bout the Ben Folds EP off of the Apple iTunes store a few days ago, and was wondering if it were available at BuyMusic. They had a listing, but not the songs for sale. I think that’s just awful. People will search for stuff, but its never there, yet it is listed. That’s frustrating.
In fact, none of the last 15 or so songs I’ve purchased from the Apple store were available at BuyMusic. I think its selection is really very weak.
It’s not just BuyMusic. It’s iTunes, too. In fact, if you should happen to move from the U.S. to Canada, your iTunes will stop functioning.
So the record companies sell music files with ridiculous limitations, without full CD-quality audio, without packaging, without anything but a lousy 3 or 4MB download, and they still charge roughly as much as the albums cost in stores? Somehow this wasn’t what I had hoped for in a legal music download service…
Interesting. Let me know when there’s a car or home stereo component version of the iPod.
If I buy digital music, I expect it to be in a useful format. I own 4 devices besides my computer that can play MP3s - one (Rio Volt) also plays WMA, one (Palm Zire 71) also plays RealAudio and Ogg, but none play AAC. If I have to go through a bunch of trouble to convert the files I “buy” into a useful format, I’m going to start wondering why I “bought” them at all.
That’s not all… just think of the spin we can expect in a few months.
RIAA: “Dear Congress, although we went to extreme lengths to provide music online, the operation was a failure. Those scoundrels on the internet have rejected our offer of DRM-protected WMA and AAC files in favor of the pirate-friendly MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats, and they refuse to pay reasonable prices to compensate us for our valuable marketing and payola efforts. This is one more piece of evidence that the demand for digital music is only about STEALING our content, RAPING our talented artists, and JAYWALKING right across our artistic rights. The only way to stop this spree of theft, rape, and jaywalking is to outlaw MP3 players, make copyright violation a capital crime, and impose a 100% tax on all blank CDs and cassettes.”
The latest iPod has a dock with stereo line-out; that should let you hook it up to your home stereo.
As for the car, if your car radio doesn’t already have an aux-in, how about an iTrip?
Then count me in as well. I was also offended. We would never put up with vile insults against an entire group of blameless people like “nigger” or “fag.” “Retards,” though, they’re really asking for it, huh?
Tell you what. When you have close relatives who have to eat shit from insensitive clods on an ongoing basis, who have to endure assaults on their dignity from people who believe they are beneath respect, who have been physically attacked for kicks because people perceive them as defenseless–all because of something completely beyond their control–well, then you can make blithe dismissals of others taking offense at assholish insults like this. :rolleyes: :mad:
Well, the difference is that niggers and fags aren’t generally speaking more likely to do “dumb” things than the general population. Retards do have mental deficiencies; that’s kinda the definition. But if anyone was offended, I am sorry.