Back in the days of Windows 95 and “MMX” technology, you could purchase music from your favorite store that came on a disc (or tape). These mediums allowed you to play them in just about any device. From Sony to RCA, you could enjoy your music anywhere. It was, after all, your music. Play it anywhere!
Forward 13 years and enter a different kind of store: The iTunes Store. Now you can purchase music from your computer and play it on, well… that’s the thing. You can’t play your music anywhere you want. You might have purchased it, but that doesn’t mean you “own” it. It’s encrypted and only works on select devices.
While iTunes offers the ability to buy every song as a “single” for a discounted rate, and also has some rather low prices on full albums, you just don’t get the kind of control you do with buying a CD or DVD from the real “Store.” Me? I’ll never buy a song from iTunes. I still support the artists, not the recording industry.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:45 PM
If you want to still buy songs from iTunes, but don’t want the DRM, head over to a certain bay of thieves and look for Requiem. This program reverse engineers iTunes 7.7’s Fairplay DRM so that your songs play anywhere, and there is no loss to quality. Trust me, I decrypted my entire library with it.
It’s written in Java, so it will work on any platform you throw at it, so long as you have the rights to play the DRMed song so that it can do the decryption.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:13 PM
The DRM situation hasn’t bothered me until recently.
After a simple install of Ubuntu Linux i realized i was trapped. There is no easy way to move your iTunes DRM’ed files and make them playable in Ubuntu. Plus i realized that any MP3 player i had was doomed by the name itself…MP3 Player. Not DRMSTRIPPINGSMARTMP3PLAYER. It had finally hit me and i realized how much i hated iTunes. I figured there was some DRM stripping program however nothing really seems viable.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:55 PM
Buy a new computer and sing “Good-Bye” to all your iTunes. And Linux is becoming more common with kids in school, housewives, etc. They’re major buyers of all things music and iTunes is something they don’t much about until they try playing their music on that new non-Windows EeePC.