Guest LilBambi Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 DRM's demise just the beginning (MacWorld) By Dan MorenTwo months ago, when I imagined a world without DRM, I had no reason to believe that such a world would be upon us quite so quickly. But today, with the announcement that EMI would be bringing its catalog to iTunes free of soul-sucking DRM, it seems that that future may be just around the corner. While this is great news for anybody who likes music, there’s still a ways to go before that DRM-free world is a reality.Don’t kid yourself: as exciting as it is that high-quality, DRM-free tracks will be available at the iTunes Store in May, all this really does is level the playing field between iTunes and brick-and-mortar retailers. As Steve Jobs himself pointed out, 90% of the music sold today (read: every piece of music sold on CD) is sold in high-quality audio with no digital rights management. The iTunes Store is, in essence, finally giving us what we’ve been always able to buy on CD, just easier and more quickly. In other words, the future is finally catching up with the past.Am I looking a gift horse in the mouth? Maybe, but I’m also not going to sink to my knees and thank the record companies for finally deigning not to treat digital music consumers like second-class citizens. This is what we should have had four years ago when the iTunes Store was launched.Much more in the article and all over the news (including my blog). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 I am really excited about this. iTunes Store may have gained another customer...me! :DTo be able to buy music in the same 90% of the music is purchased (CDs, etc. from brick and morter shops) but in a high quality (not 128K encoding!) convenient downloadable digital format. What do you all think? Think it will happen as Steve Jobs as stated? I sure hope so! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grasshopper Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 Yep. It'll save me a few steps. (burning and ripping with LAME to get rid of DRM)I only buy songs from Itunes of which I don't want to buy the whole CD. Otherwise, I'm buying the CD and ripping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjf123 Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 I know a lot of people will be happy with this, but for me it's a big non event. I realize that I'm in the minority, but the whole DRM thing didn't bother me in the least. I have two iPods and one Mac that has iTunes on it. The fact that I couldn't copy songs I purchased on iTunes to any computer or MP3 player, mine or otherwise, wasn't a concern. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 I tend to purchase about 1 CD a year from a brick and mortar store, provided it's on sale! I'll surely consider buying a song at a time from iTunes now that I know I don't have to figure out all the tricks to be able to burn a song that I paid for. I think the sales there will swell. Ordinary people who don't understand all the DRM protections get frustrated when they can't copy the music they own. Probably decided too that they'd not buy more CDs. (I still refuse to buy anything SONY - music or movies). I did not get burned by SONY but I did have to clean a rootkit off my cousin's computer. She knows less about burning songs then I do. I think one of her college-age kids either played music or downloaded something using her computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil P Posted April 4, 2007 Share Posted April 4, 2007 I know a lot of people will be happy with this, but for me it's a big non event. I realize that I'm in the minority, but the whole DRM thing didn't bother me in the least. I have two iPods and one Mac that has iTunes on it. The fact that I couldn't copy songs I purchased on iTunes to any computer or MP3 player, mine or otherwise, wasn't a concern. I've bought some stuff from iTunes, and haven't run into the DRM either. I use an iPod and otherwise listen on iTunes. For me, it's the principle. If I wanted to get a different mp3 player and use the music I bought, I couldn't. If I wanted to use something other than iTunes, I couldn't.It's great that this is happening (and I really like that albums are the same price for the better quality DRM-free stuff) but I wish it was everyone. EMI is the smallest of the 4 major labels, so I don't know how much of their music I'll be buying. Of course, I will when the opportunity arises. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike1 Posted April 8, 2007 Share Posted April 8, 2007 DRM's demise just the beginning (MacWorld)Much more in the article and all over the news (including my blog).I've never bought from the iTunes Store before, but I might now. I don't really listen to CDs these days, but I do still buy them, because even though I'm going to rip and listen on my iPod I like the CD as backup, and I like having the booklets that come with them.But, yeah, with no DRM it could be an attractive option. No problems with interoperability and an iTunes album would be cheaper than a CD in most cases.I think they'll sell well, and I think the other companies will come around.But I think the quality improvement is only going to be noticeable for certain types of recordings listened to in certain environments and only by some listeners.For listening on a mobile device, bearing in mind the usual listening environment (often with ambient noise), the earbuds, and the restricted hard drive space, the lower bitrate would have been fine. Higher bitrate files will run down your battery faster, too. To cover the possibility that there's a particularly demanding track in there, you might rip CDs yourself at 160 kbps and use VBR. But 225 kbps on a iPod? Not sure that makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted April 8, 2007 Share Posted April 8, 2007 Heard that Mike. I too think it will do well. And I agree about quality versus quantity and battery life on a portable device. But just like with CDs, I would burn the original files to CD (not as cda but in the format they came in so I have a hard copy and likely put a working copy on a removable hard drive and have whatever size works for me best in my iTunes on my hard drive so I can maximize the space on my Mac Mini (although I haven't had to worry about that as yet - still plenty of room on my 80Gig hard drive). But at 256kbps, I can see that 80Gig will go quickly! LOL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike1 Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 But just like with CDs, I would burn the original files to CD (not as cda but in the format they came in so I have a hard copy and likely put a working copy on a removable hard drive and have whatever size works for me best in my iTunes on my hard drive so I can maximize the space on my Mac Mini ...I'm crazy enough to back up my CDs, too. They say ~20 years is the life of a pressed CD, and there's always the possibility I might scratch one. So, as well as encoding to AAC for iTunes/my iPod, I encode to lossless FLAC and keep the lossless copy on a removable hard drive. With the size of external hard drives these days, it's no problem.I'm hoping Leopard has good support for ZFS. How about you? From what I understand, ZFS offers some kind of redundant storage, tries to guarantee end-to-end data integrity, and is capable of self-healing. That sounds like a real boon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 Lossless FLAC is a great format! :thumbsup:What are you using to do the encoding? iTunes or another program?ZFS sounds REALLY interesting. I too hope it gets in there. Although the current journalized format works great too.However, I would much rather have a solid HFS+ Journaled file system than a buggy ZFS personally. :wacko:There are some great articles about it around the web though and it sounds like it will be a great thing when it's done. :thumbsup:My Mac Mini which is a PPC G4 will run Leopard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike1 Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 Lossless FLAC is a great format! :thumbsup:What are you using to do the encoding? iTunes or another program?Currently, Max:http://www.sbooth.org/Max/There's a choice of three rippers in there. I've been using Cd Paranoia, which seems pretty fast and reliable. And what's nice is that you can set Max to encode into more than one format at once, so I do lossless for archiving and lossy for iTunes use.ZFS sounds REALLY interesting. I too hope it gets in there. Although the current journalized format works great too.However, I would much rather have a solid HFS+ Journaled file systemMaybe just for storage at first?My Mac Mini which is a PPC G4 will run Leopard. Same model here. I can't wait to get Leopard. Steve Jobs can see me coming a mile off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epp_b Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 Wow!iTunes, in and of itself as software, blows...but, great news! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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