I love iTunes.
But I hate DRM.
For those who don't know, Apple encrypts all your purchased music using a DRM scheme known as "fairplay." It's totally incompatible with anything other than iTunes and it locks you down with ridiculous restrictions.
Now, I use MythTV, and it plays AAC files. That's good. I also use mt-daapd, so I can connect to my home network and stream to any iTunes client. That, also, is good.
But I can't play fairplay music. That is not good.
So, for the past year or so that I've been using ITMS, I've been using a utility called jhymn to fix my broken purchases as soon as I made them. It let me turn DRM'd files into standard AACs that would work with all my devices. Rock.
Then came iTunes 6, and it stopped working.
So here's something Apple needs to understand - there are exactly two reasons that I used ITMS instead of just downloading whatever the hell I want from a peer to peer network. Reason 1: it's easier to find and download a usable copy of the stuff I want. Reason 2: I, you know, actually WANT to support my favorite artists.
In no way is the convenience of iTunes worth the price you pay. NEVER. It's in my best interest in every way to use a peer to peer network, even when the DRM is breakable - if I didn't have some nagging notion in the back of my skull that I should be paying for the stuff I use, I WOULD NEVER USE ITUNES.
So get this - when I get *defective* files from ITMS that don't even play on most of my devices, what exactly do you think I'm going to do? PAY you guys for an inferior version of something I can get for FREE? Not likely. I use ITMS to donate to Apple/the RIAA/the artists because I'm a fucking nice guy - and you're trying to stick it to me by selling me defective merchandise?
You're fucking yourself over - enjoy. Needless to say, I'm not buying anything from ITMS again until this is fixed.
Comments
Kurrelgyre @ Fri Jan 13 02:42:53 -0500 2006
Those restrictions may be ridiculous, but they're the price you pay for listening to RIAA music.
Oh, and you can (for the most part) still buy CDs.
Jeremy @ Fri Jan 13 09:59:39 -0500 2006
Yeah, CDs are definitely the way to go right now if you want to truly "have" your own music library. For the most part my music was ripped from CD, but I'd come to really like the "lazy factor" of just clicking and downloading stuff.
I'm going to continue buying CDs until a reasonable alternative comes along. When I could strip the DRM from ITMS purchases, it was pretty reasonable - now, it's just not.