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News & ArtsTuesday, January 6, 2009
Tech iTuneful
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 12:05 PM
NYT:
Apple Inc. is cutting the price of some songs in its market-leading iTunes online music store to 69 cents and plans to begin selling all tracks without copy protection.
1
uh, yeah, they are also raising the price of some downloads to 1.29. also, you have to pay 30 cents a song for all the stuff you've already bought if you want to bring it up to the new 256k fidelity.
of course, i steal all my music, thank you very much. fuck itunes.
of course, i steal all my music, thank you very much. fuck itunes.
2
$15.00 / $0.69 = 21 songs
So for the cost of a Rhapsody subscription where I can listen to an unlimited number of CDs, you can listen to 2.
No thanks.
DRM wins and the people who oppose it want to sell overpriced mp3 files.
So for the cost of a Rhapsody subscription where I can listen to an unlimited number of CDs, you can listen to 2.
No thanks.
DRM wins and the people who oppose it want to sell overpriced mp3 files.
4
I think this is the only time I've seen apple create something so innovative only to turn around and thoroughly shoot themselves in the foot with their uber-restrictive policies.
5
So for the cost of a Rhapsody subscription...
Yeah, subscribing to my music collection sounds so appealing.
Yeah, subscribing to my music collection sounds so appealing.
7
I love Rhapsody. Like that day last month when I wanted to listen to the Blow Monkeys all day. Or the day after when I wanted to hear Aztec Camera. I'll probably not listen to either for another 10 years. Didn't have to buy anything, could listen as much as I want with no commitment. It's also great for listening to new music before deciding if you really want to buy. I can listen to all the new albums that come out for $15 a month. The vast majority of them I don't like enough to spend $8.99 for a download. It's also great for checking out new (to me) music and artists I haven't heard before. You can hear the full songs, full albums, no additional cost, blah blah blah. I love it.
8
Plus Rhapsody is jettisoning their special Rhapsody-only format in favor of MP3, making it accessible across players. And downloads are pretty reasonable - 89 cents a song and $8.99 for most albums. Very few albums (like the Eagles, for some reason) are buy or 30-second sample only.
11
Why all the whining about Apple's DRM? It is the least onerous of all copy-protection schemes I've ever experienced. I've never had problems playing or transferring my music.
12
Personally, I don't steal music and I won't buy anything that isn't fully in my possession, un-DRM'ed, and losslessly transferable to new formats. That pretty much restricts me to buying physical CDs. To each his own.
I do find it interested that the NYT and Dan entirely and unquestionly echo Apple's spin on this: mentioning the price cuts but not the price increases, and not mentioning that Jobs had previously taken a stance against tierd pricing. I doubt similiar moves by less hip companies would get similiarly favorable treatment.
I do find it interested that the NYT and Dan entirely and unquestionly echo Apple's spin on this: mentioning the price cuts but not the price increases, and not mentioning that Jobs had previously taken a stance against tierd pricing. I doubt similiar moves by less hip companies would get similiarly favorable treatment.
14
You can still pick up records at yardsales and flea markets for about a buck a piece (or less than a dime per track on average). Devices to transformat them into mp3s are less than $200.
No copy protection required, no Record Industry wonk will ever be able to know, and vinyl purists will tell you - the sound is much much better (if you treat the record well).
No copy protection required, no Record Industry wonk will ever be able to know, and vinyl purists will tell you - the sound is much much better (if you treat the record well).
16
@14: No, yeah, I TOTALLY buy the argument that recordings from the '60s and '70s are way better quality than today's.
19
I think folks here are misunderstanding. Apple had to agree to "flexible pricing" so that the record companies would remove DRM. They fought this for years, and then the companies held them hostage with Amazon's download service allowing them to go DRM free and not iTunes.
20
About fucking time.
I love iTunes (read: I'm lazy, plus I prefer not to steal). I hate DRM. This pleases me.
I love iTunes (read: I'm lazy, plus I prefer not to steal). I hate DRM. This pleases me.
21
Price increase? What are you people smoking? There were only price cuts... The 1.29 for 256k has been around for a while now...
22
@9 agreed!! The only thing I loathe more that Adobe Flash is any product from Real. Thank the gods that Apple has forced YouTube into supporting MP4 as an alternate codec.
@19&21 thanks for injecting tiny glimmers of reality into the wasteland. DRM wasn't Apple's idea, its forced on them. The next battleground is video. Note that one of the big reasons for the Blu-ray format push is that the studios fantasize about eventually obsoleting DVDs which are easy and inexpensive to copy.
Note that iTunes tracks are in the superior AAC audio codec, not MP3 (which is technically "MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3", part of a long-abandoned ancient and inferior codec developed in the late 1980s). If you really want to, you can use iTunes to convert your AAC tracks to MP3, like if you need to create an MP3 audio CD.
Creative sources of music CDs to borrow and rip might be your friends, etc (*cough* Seattle Public Library *cough*)
If you can stand streaming music, I love Pandora.com
@19&21 thanks for injecting tiny glimmers of reality into the wasteland. DRM wasn't Apple's idea, its forced on them. The next battleground is video. Note that one of the big reasons for the Blu-ray format push is that the studios fantasize about eventually obsoleting DVDs which are easy and inexpensive to copy.
Note that iTunes tracks are in the superior AAC audio codec, not MP3 (which is technically "MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3", part of a long-abandoned ancient and inferior codec developed in the late 1980s). If you really want to, you can use iTunes to convert your AAC tracks to MP3, like if you need to create an MP3 audio CD.
Creative sources of music CDs to borrow and rip might be your friends, etc (*cough* Seattle Public Library *cough*)
If you can stand streaming music, I love Pandora.com
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