Being the music purist that I am, I've never bought anything off of iTunes before. I like having the artwork, the disc, the whole thing in my possession. (Despite what you've heard, 80 percent of music sold is still on compact discs, so I know I'm not alone.) Nonetheless, I was aware of the litigation going on in Europe and elsewhere regarding songs purchased from Apple not being compatible on other players. I wasn't entirely sure how that manifested itself, but I figured there had to be a reason why people were calling it an antitrust violation, monopoly, etc.
Skip ahead to Christmas 2006. My brother Bill got me an iTunes gift card as one of my presents. After spending nine hours trying to figure out how to redeem it (that's another post, but let it suffice to say that these Apple shysters have deliberately printed instructions on the card that do not correctly tell you how to retrieve your prepaid songs, which I believe is an act of fraud in and of itself), I finally was able to figure out how to "purchase" something.
As regular readers know -- and people who have read this far now know -- I'm a PC person. I have an extensive collection of music in my Windows Media Player, so that is my preferred place to play my music. So just to test the whole thing, I burned a CD in iTunes of my newly purchased song (an obscure Tracey Thorn track from 1982 called "Goodbye Joe") and then ripped it into my Windows Media Player. Voila! Incompatibility solved. Admittedly this sounds cumbersome but it could be done in bulk and it's really no different from what I go through when I want to put my WMA songs on my iPod (I have to convert them to the AAC format).
Skip ahead to Christmas 2006. My brother Bill got me an iTunes gift card as one of my presents. After spending nine hours trying to figure out how to redeem it (that's another post, but let it suffice to say that these Apple shysters have deliberately printed instructions on the card that do not correctly tell you how to retrieve your prepaid songs, which I believe is an act of fraud in and of itself), I finally was able to figure out how to "purchase" something.
As regular readers know -- and people who have read this far now know -- I'm a PC person. I have an extensive collection of music in my Windows Media Player, so that is my preferred place to play my music. So just to test the whole thing, I burned a CD in iTunes of my newly purchased song (an obscure Tracey Thorn track from 1982 called "Goodbye Joe") and then ripped it into my Windows Media Player. Voila! Incompatibility solved. Admittedly this sounds cumbersome but it could be done in bulk and it's really no different from what I go through when I want to put my WMA songs on my iPod (I have to convert them to the AAC format).
So either I'm missing something or I'm back to not understanding what all the fuss is about with people saying songs bought in iTunes can only be played in iTunes. It's not true.
7 comments:
The only thing I can imagine is that the step of burning the song to a disc before you ripped it into Windows Media player should be unnecessary. Ideally you could just drag the file to Window Media player and play it, but you can't do that. But since, I have a Mac and an iPod, it's not a bother to me.
You aren't missing anything. Some people just need to complain.
I never understood this either. I download from iTunes and burn everything on CDs, which play fine everywhere I try them. Which is good enough for me.
Well, technically what you're doing is illegal, so no one talks too openly about that option. The RIAA required iTunes to put that in the terms and conditions.
I know it's what I've always done too.
If you have a ton of music tracks you bought off iTunes, there is a program called DRM Dumpster that will do what you just did automatically. All you need is a CD-RW.
It's illegal to listen to music this way that you PAID for?
Wow, maybe these Apple people DO deserve to be sued.
hummm... the main problem is that iTunes as for default the .aac and windows media the .wma format so they aren't exchangable.
dispite that if use the .mp3 format you'll never have to convert anything and it's compatible with both, iTunes, Windows Media, etc, etc.
i say, explore iTunes and give it a real try.
Anonymous-
It's not Apple that made it illegal. It's the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which makes it illegal to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself.
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA
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