DRM Free iTunes

Dr Mcr:

It appears that iTunes will shortly have all its songs without DRM.

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http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatsnew/?sr=hotnews

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Why you little...i was just about to post this. Grrr!

Give me my thunder back!

But I bet you still have to use itunes get the music onto your ipod.

Until ipods can be used without itunes or any other 3rd party workaround I won't buy one.

sorry fella. Great news though, isn't it

What's so bad about iTunes?

It's alright for cataloging music, you can import from CD at whatever bit-rate you want... you can buy DRM free MP3's from elsewhere and import them..

How come you are so against having to use software with an ipod? Do you not have a Mac/PC to use it on?

I like to manage my music myself.

There are plenty of websites where you can buy DRM free music

I wouldn't like having to install a 70meg application on every computer I might want to connect the ipod to

I love the design and sound quality of the ipods, but making itunes ESSENTIAL rather than optional is a huge stroke of stupidity when the ipod is so close to perfection.

iTunes has its uses, for one it updates your iPod firmware, and secondly it's just convenient for ripping to Apple Lossless if one needs to.

Unless you're using a Mac, I agree for playback it's just too heavy and clunky, but then I don't play AACs on my PC anyway.

Hi Jerry,

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I must say that for me the cost of 70Mb of disk space versus the cost of my time to manage all my music would not be a very difficult decision to make, but it is a trade off that you have decided to make (with your mp3) to deliver the exact setup you have.

I agree that the iPod/iTunes setup ain't perfect for my situation either, but the 95% of my needs it matches it delivers in spades! Very few things in life are perfect - I know I'm certainly not :)ÿKnowing everything works together, and works well has more value for me than delivering 100%

Apple deliberatley tied iTunes to iPod years ago to maximise the sales of its newly launched MP3 called "iPod". Whether this is stupidity or genius depends entirely on your viewpoint, but from a marketing perspective, it has helped them make more than a few quid!

Which player and software do you use, by the way? Lets us know if we are missing out. :)ÿ

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It's less the DRM issue which excites me, more the "better quality iTunes Plus"...

I agree from a marketing perspective it was an excellent decision for Apple, and no doubt they've made astronomic profit out of it. I don't think it's necessarily best for consumers though. 70Mb is large, but size is not the only problem. Having to go to the trouble of installing it is! You can't just plug into a new machine and go. Don't forget that when you agree to Apple's T&Cs you're agreeing to let them do as they wish with YOUR music. Every track in every itunes subscriber's collection is at the mercy of Apple. I don't want to entrust my music collection to Apple.

I prefer my mp3 device to be a mass storage device. My current player is a Cowon iAudio 7. The main factors in choosing it were sound quality, that it can play FLACs, and the 60 hour battery life. The interface is not as good as the ipod nano G2 I had before it.

On my PC I use Audiograbber, EAC, Foobar2000, Winamp, Audacity. I buy music from beatport, bleep, boomkat, and more recently from Amazon now that they sell DRM free music.

It's not a seemless automated process, but I perefer the control I have, and don't have to worry about my music collection being lost as I'm in control of my backups.

jerryyeatman:

Don't forget that when you agree to Apple's T&Cs you're agreeing to let them do as they wish with YOUR music. Every track in every itunes subscriber's collection is at the mercy of Apple.

huh?

Suppose you were angry with Apple, and wanted to take your custom elsewhere, and your music collection, maybe because the battery died on your ipod the day after the warranty expired, or some other reason.

Can you?

 

My music collection is almost entirely ripped from CDs - I think I have about 50 downloaded tracks - so yes. Do we need to differentiate between iTunes Store and iTunes The Application?

jerryyeatman:

Suppose you were angry with Apple, and wanted to take your custom elsewhere, and your music collection, maybe because the battery died on your ipod the day after the warranty expired, or some other reason.

Can you?

Yes. Music is all stored in one format in some folders, so just take this and reimport into another piece of software (obviously not DRM ones, but I only ever bought a few tunes from the store as the quality is not good enough).

Even if you bought it through itunes?

jerryyeatman:

Even if you bought it through itunes?

No, see my response above. Though you can burn them to CD and reimport...