Dealing with Digital Music and Vendor Lock-In? 612
rahuja asks: "Buying and using digital music is a far from easy decision today - there are various competing and incompatible formats, stores and players out there in the market, primarily Apple (AAC + iTunes + iPod), Windows (WMA + various stores + WMA-compatible players), and Sony (Atrac3 + Connect.com + Walkman). How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?"
"Burning to audio CD and ripping back is always possible, but it is a painfully slow process and all tag information (song, album, artiste) is lost in the process.
In the past, I've used Sony Connect [Ed: IE 5.5+ only] (thanks to a $10 card I got with a Sony CD Walkman), which locks you in to Sony-only devices, and later, WMA with MSN Music and a Creative Muvo Micro N200. My player just died, and I'm too scared to lock myself into a new player/format/store now. iPod doesn't have an FM tuner yet, and my WMA tracks will be useless if next year I switch to Mac once the new x86 Powerbooks come out. I'm not sure how real Real's Harmony is, and JHymn doesn't support iTunes 6 yet.
In an ideal world we'd all have OGG-based players with FM tuner, and access to DRM-less music, or at least a universal, compatible format.
How are you dealing with this issue? Or is it just me?"
Duh... like... (Score:5, Insightful)
No worry there.
Re:Duh... like... (Score:2, Funny)
Non-obvious-troll post
Seemingly on-topic post
Pithy and correct post
Proper use of accented vowel
Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Slashdot?
Re:Duh... like... (Score:2)
Re:Duh... like... (Score:5, Informative)
1.Buy & Download from Napster|iTunes|whatever.
2.Use their software to burn a CD of what you just bought, put the tracks in the same order that they are on the real CD. Napster likes to reverse the order, so you have to manually adjust that before you burn the CD. iTunes usually keeps them in the correct order.
3. Rip all of the music back off the CD using your favorite CD-ripper & encoder.
4.If you bought all of the tracks from a specific CD, and if you set up tracks in the right order, most of the time your ripping software will pick up all of the Artist & Track information automatically from CDDB or Gracenote, so you don't have to manually tag everything. Otherwise, you now have to re-tag/re-name files.
5.Erase CDRW.
6.Enjoy your DRM-free audio files.
Re:Duh... like... (Score:5, Informative)
even more easierer (Score:4, Interesting)
i'm 3/4 of the way through a total re-encode of all my (70 gigs or so worth) napster
it basically plays the file using wmp or itunes or whatever and records the audio off your sound card. the best part about it is if you have a card that supports it, you can dub at 4x speed so that 70 gigs or so has taken me about two weeks instead of two months
Re:even more easierer (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF?
Our business model... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Duh... like... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Duh... like... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the types of music I listen to (Classical, "Western Art Music", Jazz, Opera) aren't served well by iTMS anyway.
Re:Duh... like... (Score:5, Informative)
I think he was referring to the iTunes Music Store. And to the best of my knowledge the iTMS only offers 128Kbps AAC files.
Re:poor support for classical (Score:3, Informative)
A classical work, such as a symphony or a concerto is composed of several individual pieces of music called movements-- each of which can stand alone.
You're going to hate me ;)
A lot of rock music, like Pink Floyd and Queensryche have the very same property, and I want it for my stuff.
Re:Duh... like... (Score:5, Interesting)
Digital Audio Player
I researched around for an non-cripled (no DRM) player that would mount as a hard drive, allowing access to the music files without the use of any software.
Result:iRiver iHP-120 (which has better audio fidelity, plays more formats, and has many more options than the iPod [digital optical out/input, FM radio, etc.]) Not to mention I'm running rockbox [rockbox.org] on it so it's a wonderful experience
Music purchases
I buy CDs! I can rip everything in the FORMAT & BITRATE that I choose, and if, God forbid, I lose or destroy my DAP (& the duplicates on my computer) I can re-rip something. Also, if you search around, you can get CD's online for cheap & without tax.
Re:Duh... like... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Duh... like... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, if you want to ensure compatibility in the future, you need to purchase songs that don't rely on proprietary restrictions management or encoding formats. the question of "which DRM" is a silly one to ask -- if you're purchasing cryptographically restricted music, then you should not have any expectation of being able to use it freely, either today or in the future.
Drink the Apple Kool-aid... (Score:3, Interesting)
The player is both Windows and Mac compatible. It allows you access to largest and well known music stores in existence. It allows you to access music, video and TV episodes. It allows you to use MP3 from CDs you own or from other sources - wink..wink..
My wife has her iPod with all of our music and she loves it. We have the airport express with air tunes and play all our music to our stereo system, very cool!
I have my iPod, my wifes old iPod and I use it for the office and the car. I have a 1gb iPod Shuttle that I use when walking around, snow boarding and any other time I want to be portable.
Re:Drink the Apple Kool-aid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Drink the Apple Kool-aid... (Score:2, Informative)
60 gig iPod [amazon.com] - $400
60 gig Creative Nomad zen [amazon.com] - $300.
Re:Drink the Apple Kool-aid... (Score:2, Informative)
The Mac is not transformative (Re:Drink the Ap...) (Score:3, Funny)
* * * gallery updated Nov. 5, 2005 * * *
Re:The Mac is not transformative (Re:Drink the Ap. (Score:3, Funny)
compact discs (Score:5, Insightful)
solution provided.
Re:compact discs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:compact discs (Score:2)
Good luck to any CD technology that tries to install anything on my GNU/Linux box if I don't even mount any filesystem that may or may not exist on the disk. They'd pretty much have to find an exploit somewhere in a CD-playing library.
And if anyone did something that drastic, they'd be like the newest Windows DRM music files: "Sued for sure!"
Re:compact discs (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but if you like listening to CDs on your computer, you're going to be butting heads with DMA before long.
Not a problem (Score:2)
I have no problem. DRM only works for Microsoft Windows, and sometimes Apple Mac. So far nothing targets linux, so I think as a FreeBSD user I won't have a problem for years.
Though I keep writing my congressmen about each attempt to make DRM law.
Re:compact discs (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I use PIO. : p
Re:compact discs (Score:3, Interesting)
But seriously... DRM on CDs? Not effective DRM. Not unless the content manufacturers manage to convince everyone to throw away their existing CD players.
Re:compact discs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:compact discs (Score:4, Informative)
You say that as though:
A) Circumventing DRM actually took some effort, and/or
B) I cared about obeying laws bought-and-paid-for by corporate interests.
As neither of those holds true, I'll second the GP's response. I deal with attempts to lock me into vendor-specific formats by buying uncompressed media either with no DRM or with losslessly removeable DRM (which currently means CDs), and ripping it losslesssly (to FLAC).
I can then transcode to whatever format my current player prefers without incuring serially degraded quality from using lossy compression (as much as I don't care for MP3, everything currently supports it so it makes a good choice). When my current player dies, I can get another and at worst (if it doesn't support old-player's-preferred-format), I'll need to let my PC run overnight transcoding from the original FLACs to the new-player's-preferred-format.
Re:compact discs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:compact discs (Score:3, Interesting)
(Just to list a few)
Re:compact discs (Score:4, Insightful)
Always look for the CD logo before you buy a useless plastic coaster.
Magnatune (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should I buy things from people who don't have respect for me and my wishes as a customer?
No major label will ever again get a single penny from me until they say "screw DRM" and mean it too. If they don't, that's just fine with me. They can just wither and die for all I care.
Solution provided.
Re:compact discs (Score:5, Interesting)
What a coincidence (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly enough you could make the same argument for new CD's, because 90% of the record companies are doing something wrong (i.e. screwing the public and the artist, payola, buying lawmakers, refusing to pay artists royalties due to them, etc), and so by that argument you can never buy a CD because hardly any of them don't come with some sort of legal or moral baggage.
WMA won't be useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WMA won't be useless. (Score:2)
Re:WMA won't be useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WMA won't be useless. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WMA won't be useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree. There is something with the player that most movies don't like. The files are choppy and for some reason don't play as well as they do on a comparable PC. However Quicktime files and other files that I run through the VLC player work fine.
Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to expand on that, it is just as trivially easy to buy a CD online, pop it into your CD-ROM when it arrives & rip it to the format you prefer.
End result:
Although I can see some of the appe
How is this different? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How is this different? (Score:2)
Like any other "format war" you just have to do your best to guess who the winner will be... or suffer through manual transfers later. It isn't really a big deal, and certainly not unique to digital audio.
Re:How is this different? (Score:2)
Or, if you really need to be listening to "Drop It Like It's Hot" in 2058, keep your old playback device around! People who still want to listen to their so-called "records" have a turntable in their house. They're not trying to shove vinyl into an iPod.
Re:How is this different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Buy /Borrow CD, rip CD (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you keep everything as a mp3 or some other format without DRM, you are doomed.
You want it easy(iTunes, DRM whatever) you get locked in. Eventually, things will go south and you will lose that investment.
I have hundreds of CDs that I should be able to rip again and again. Maybe someday I will upgrade to 256k rips, or maybe I lose my HDs and have to re-rip... Either way, I own the CD and it is mine to do with as I please.
Five copies and you can't move it again? WTF? Crazy that you even bought into that stuff.
Re:Buy /Borrow CD, rip CD (Score:2)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Just remember to keep backups of those m4p's folks!
I don't buy music (Score:5, Insightful)
It's my way of sticking it to the RIAA.
Re:I don't buy music (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using the site for a year, and not only finding great new music, finding it on smaller labels (such as Projekt), and even independent artists (Hungry Lucy, Collide). In fact, I'm finding a lot of these artists that I like better than just about any RIAA crap, because the ones recommended to me are very tailores to my tastes by the site.
All of.... (Score:5, Informative)
I choose mp3 because it works everywhere.
Re:All of.... (Score:2)
Re:All of.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All of.... (Score:5, Informative)
1) I stopped buying new music discs from stores.
2) I increased my used CD purchases.
3) I increased my concert attendance to give my money directly to artists.
4) I started downloading music.
What does all of this have to do with allofmp3.com? In the last 3 months, I've spent over $250 of my money with them. They provide exactly the kind of service that I would expect from an online music retailer: large selection, choice of format, reasonable pricing. It has totally eliminated numbers 1, 2, and 4 from the above list. It's the perfect solution (although I still buy used CD's when I can't find them on allofmp3).
People are bitching that allofmp3 is:
A) Unethical because the artists don't get paid: Well, they don't get paid when I go down to mall to buy a CD, and they don't get paid when I buy a used CD. Speaking as someone who at one time was under a major-label contract, artists don't get paid from record sales, unless they're already huge.
B) Run by the russian Mafia: the record industry here is run by the mafia, or at least run LIKE the mafia. No sympathy here; at least if allofmp3 is run by the mafia, they don't pretend otherwise. Here, our record labels act like they exist to serve the artist...what a load!
Look, the bottom line is that allofmp3 has it right. LARGE SELECTION, FAIR PRICES, CHOICE OF FORMAT, and EASE OF USE. I know they're doing it right, because I'm finally buying huge amounts of music again. It's everything a music store should be. And its far out of the reach of US law, thank God!
Not technically legal, TOTALLY legal (Score:5, Insightful)
Globalisation doesn't just work for corporations importing cheap shoes, it works for you too.
Re:All of.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All of.... (Score:3, Informative)
I use... (Score:2)
DRM is pathetic, mo
I don't deal with it (Score:2)
It's just too confusing for me to waste time on learning.
shift key? just disable autoplay (Score:2)
with the group policy editor:
start
run
gpedit.msc
local computer policy
computer configuration
administrative templates
system
turn off autoplay
enable
or with tweakui:
fire up tweakui
my computer
autoplay
types
remove checkmark from 'enable autoplay for cd and dvd drives'
Easy... (Score:3, Interesting)
This would pretty much restrict people to smaller online stores, P2P downloads and CD-ripping but at least these formats are freely transcodable and transportable.
you don't go with any proprietary format (Score:5, Insightful)
companies exist to serve the consumer, not visa versa
until companies figure that out, you don't use them
you pirate until the companies figure out that trying to own you is a turn off
and if they never figure that out, then fine, they die
the point is: you are the consumer, you are king
don't agree to any arrangement that makes you subject to something proprietary
Re:you don't go with any proprietary format (Score:2)
pirating & civil disobedience (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to "pirate" to "make a point" the only caveat is this: any time you commit civil disobedience (breaking the law to embarrass the legislature into changing it) you have to be willing to face the consequences of breaking that law (fines and jail) in order to make your point. Remember, Gandhi insisted on being jailed (I think it was for making his own salt) in order to embarrass the government. In Canada, Mortgentaler went to jail repeatedly to uphold the right of women to abortion. In your own country, Doctor Death did the same.
Otherwise you're not a crusader, you're just another whiny punk who wants everything for free immediately. Considering you could do what I do, there's an obvious alternative to pirating to avoid DRM.
Re:you don't go with any proprietary format (Score:4, Insightful)
The real way to "stick it to them" is not to buy stuff *and* not to pirate it.
Its bad enough that record companies seem to treat dropping sales as entirely due to piracy, rather than the fact that in realty they are not providing a valuable product. If you go ahead and pirate anyway, you're just proving them right, and the legislation and criminalisation of fair use will come about because of it.
Err...don't buy into it (Score:3, Insightful)
OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does Vorbis still have a place in the world, or would I be better off re-ripping my music to MP3 - even if I still think Vorbis is technically superior?
I know this isn't completely on-topic, but since we're discussing vendor lock-in, it feels like I've managed to lock myself into a Unix-only format.
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:2, Insightful)
Vorbis is not dead, just not well supported. I've seen generic music players that support it, but if you insisted that it was essential you'd be restricting yourself quite a bit.
In the future, I think we might see players being more customisable (i.e. open source firmware). For now, you'd have to install Linux on your iPod.
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:3, Informative)
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=ogg&btnG=Sear
Winamp 2.7 plays ogg just fine - why go for the itunes bloat?
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've done the same thing. Started when I got my Neuros (an ogg-compatible player). I still think that Vorbis support is something that'll eventually be standard in devices. Because it takes more CPU to play an ogg (very hard without a floating-point CPU, I understand), vendors still have to go through hoops to support it.
As various devices become more powerful, I think we'll see vorbis support become more prevalent, even if it's so the vendors can tout that their product supports another format. Once you
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not true and hasn't been true since the Tremor codec was released (and it was created exactly to make it easier to do Vorbis in hardware). FYI: Tremor [xiph.org] is an integer-only Vorbis codec.
I think the issue is much rather that vendors won't support the format, because it costs them extra effort and hardly anybody is demanding Vorbis support. Even on Slash
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:2)
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:4, Informative)
- Any
- Only ogg files of 96kbps average and above are supported. If you want to save storage space by playing low-bitrate ogg files, this is not your player. And if you save a lot of stuff below vorbis quality 3, you'll have to reconvert them.
- Older models may skip, play noise or crash the player if the ogg file drops below 96kbps at any point. This is not the case for my player.
I know there are some iRiver models that play oggs without any of these restrictions (especially the HD models), I'd avise a thorough check on the Internet before buying one. I didn't, and ended up with an ogg player that is so minimally useful for my purposes that I just use it for MP3s.
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OT: Is Vorbis dead? (Score:3, Interesting)
Stick to MP3s or OGGs (Score:2)
Anything else is begging for trouble.
If you had MP3s, all of the players mentioned could play them.
Just say no (Score:4, Insightful)
The easy way. (Score:2)
Three Easy Steps (Score:2)
Rip MP3s (maybe ogg if your adventurous)
Uninstall illegal rootkit included with CD
Rinse and repeat.
Ahem (Score:2)
It's fast, I find the songs I want, the formats are unencumbered with DRM, and I pay a good price. ($0.15 per song is typical)
What's not to like?
Easy (Score:5, Informative)
Easy, only buy music from people willing to let you listen to it. Places like emusic [emusic.com] and magnatune [magnatune.com] sell completely unrestricted music files. And shit, archive.org [archive.org] gives away thousands of hours of music for free.
Vote with your wallet. If DRM is unacceptable, don't buy from people who would push it on you. There's plenty of music out there that's not DRM'd, and it's mostly better than the RIAA crap. Good musicians can afford to give music away, there's plenty more where that came from.
If you were treated the same way in a physical store that Apple or Napster treats you online, you'd storm out angrily and never shop there again. Why should online stores be any different?
Simple (Score:2)
1. Buy a device that playes mp3s. Any device.
2. Buy all your music from http://www.allofthemp3.com [allofthemp3.com], in mp3, FLAC, OGG, or whatever, for pennies.
3. With all the money you save, buy a giant foam middle finger to wave at the RIAA, Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else pushing their proprietary, imcompatable, DRM encumbered formats.
MP3 files, duh (Score:2)
I only use plain-vanilla audio files (.mp3,
I haven't experienced any difficulties in playing my music on commonly available hardware on in transfering it between various devices
Buy CDs (Score:2)
Copy protected CDs? Pah. ABCDE and Foobar2000 both saw through that (CD writers can see both the audio and the data, allowing for easy ripping) and the proof is in my music collection.
Not to mention, there's the whole feeling of going into a record store and buying the CD, actually having it in your hands and getting all the artwork and other paraphenalia that comes with the music...and a whole stack of
What more do you want? (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess y
Only Buy Compact Disc (Score:4, Interesting)
And not the copy-protected variety. When new albums come out they are typically priced at $29.99 or $34.99. If you wait 6 months they're $25. Wait another 6 months and they're $20. Eventually they're $10, sometimes even $5. There's still plenty of good music to choose from and there's no rationale to owning the disc when the music is less than a year old; the radio will be playing it to death anyway.
The benefit of disc is you can create mp3, ogg, atrac, whatever you damn well like, If you rip it first to ALAC or FLAC then you don't ever have to touch the disc again but you've got a reliable archive just in case you lose the digital rips.
The online purchasing of music doesn't appeal to me until it's FLAC, it's cheaper ($1.69 a song is pure robbery), and it has no DRM. For $8.99 I can get a 20-song disc delivered to my workplace within 24 hours, so paying $33.80 to get a crappier version with no cover art or disc really isn't attractive. Your priorities might vary but hey, this is Ask Slasdot, I'm telling you what I'd do. Stick with disc and don't give legitimacy to second-class crippled music formats.
Re:Only Buy Compact Disc (Score:3, Insightful)
The only time I ever payed close to that was for a special 4-disc set of a Classic recording.
Buy CD's better quality no worries (Score:2)
Re-encode and unlock (Score:2)
The old fashioned way (Score:2)
Fully working since the good ol' times.
A couple of players (Score:4, Informative)
Neuros Audio [neurosaudio.com] is very community oriented and has been mentioned [slashdot.org] quite [slashdot.org] a bit [slashdot.org] on Slashdot recently, and are known as being very friendly to open source.
IAudio [iaudio.com] isn't quite as friendly to open source as Neuros, but having a player that had USB Host functionality and would play OGG, FM stereo, Video, and (if I feel the urge) WMA 10 based files from Rhapsody or Napster was too good to pass up.
Bottom line, if there is any music I hear and want to keep, I go to the used CD store, buy it, rip it, and move it to my player. No DRM, no loss of audio quality as part of a conversion, and, since both players report as mass storage devices, OS compatibility is not a problem.
Two major choices (Score:3, Insightful)
With Microsoft, you have the whole enforced compatibility thing with their "Plays For Sure" initiative.
-Pros: Yes, this stuff does actually work, and fairly well at that. There's a few minor functional problems, but they're really minor. The integration with Media Center PC's is nice, as is the complete XBox integration if you have one of those. As long as you stick to Microsoft products, and Plays For Sure compatible player devices, you won't have any problems.
-Cons: You cannot use anything that isn't Plays For Sure compatible, not with the online stores or subscription services. Want to play those Napster downloaded songs on an iPod? No dice. Microsoft is very vocal about blaming Apple, but the fault is not Apple's, it's Microsoft's *incredibly* restrictive Janus DRM licensing. Not only would Apple have to implement WMA, but they'd have to implement a secure methodology such that the files cannot be copied back off the the player *at all*, and an expiration methodology such that if you failed to sync the player to the computer for a time period, the files would expire and/or delete themselves. Apple's not willing to go there, and frankly the hardware design of the iPod precludes some of that capability anyway. Oh, and Microsoft's DRM has yet to be cracked in a good way/
Or you can bite into the Apple for your music. They have the iTunes Music Store and the most popular music player devices.
-Pros: High quality AAC music support (AAC is much better than WMA, anyway). A pretty lightweight DRM that's easy to work with and somewhat easy to work around if needed. MPEG 4 support becoming very standardized. Apple is (mostly) sticking to open standards, basically, which is always nice.
-Cons: Drink the Apple cool-aid only. iTunes works with iPod's, but not with anything else. iPod's do have lots of other support though, from Real and many free and/or pay programs. Even the XBox 360 will support them, in a sense. You also pay the Apple tax, as everything Apple is a bit pricier than the competition. But this stuff is popular for a reason, you know.
In the long run, it seems more likely to me that Apple will win this war. They've been awfully stingy with licensing their FairPlay DRM, making it difficult for vendors to add support for iTunes Purchased Music, but that hasn't stopped them from being the only music store to show a profit. The subscription model (ala Napster) doesn't seem to be picking up a lot of adherents in the long term. People bought CD's at stores and didn't much like CD clubs either. Same principle, really. Not to mention that the evilness of the Microsoft Janus DRM is readily appearant if you make the mistake of buying into it and using it for a while. And vendors seem to be falling all over themselves to add iPod and iTunes support to their gear, even if they can't play iTMS purchased music. MPEG 4 is also the wave of the future, as the standard becomes better defined. Divx and Xvid and other variants will eventually fall off the map, as Apple has a fairly solid base system going there, and everybody is going to be rushing to be compatible with it. I expect a device more dedicated to video than the iPod Video is to be introduced by Apple within a year. Maybe they'll partner with Sony for video support on the PSP. Dunno.
But WMA is dying a slow death, and with the death of Microsoft and Blu-Ray, they're being left behind, really. WMA might be the format used on the next new disc format somehow, or Microsoft might have a hand in it, but Apple is getting into the digital distribution business over the internet in a big way and ignoring the business of data on physical medium. Apple's moves seem smarter to me.
Oh yeah, there's also the Sony option, where you buy nothing but Sony equipment because all Sony's stuff *only* works with other Sony equipment, but frankly that option has no pros to speak of, so it's just best avoided.
AllOfMp3.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not to mention car stereos (Score:2)
You lazy bugger.
Re:Private copying (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:legal question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Decompression is lossless (Score:3, Informative)
2. Decompress and burn
3. Rip and undecompress to reproduce the original MP3
As you can see, there is no lossy compression step in this sequence -- no information is discarded."
There exists no way to "undecompress" an MP3 or other lossy file in the way you describe. If you disagree you are invited to link to software that actually exists that can do it, or even a paper decribing how to do it.
Re:MS has an answer... (Score:3, Informative)
I realize you're being facetious here, but for the benefit of the uninformed: "Plays for Sure" would be better entitled "Plays for Now", since you'll lose your music when you upgrade your computer or reinstall the operating system [microsoft.com] more than twice: