Venting about Downloading Music!!!!!

[shawnc]

I've never subscribed to a music service but I figured for .88 I'd give Wal-mart a try. After 3 attempts to get music to my SD card for playback in my Ipaq I gave up :evil: !

Then I figured I'd try itunes because there is one record that I would REALLY like. Again, no such luck!

I'm sure the answer is really simple to those who know, but why is this so difficult????? All I want to do is download a cut and copy to my SD card. You would think that would be one of the most common actions performed. But when I go into WM9 on my desktop and try to "Copy" the song downloaded from itunes I get the same error message as the music from Wal-mart.

I'm sure this has something to do with copy-protection BUT I PAID FOR THE MUSIC! All I want to do is make ONE copy to my SD card. This should not be difficult!!

Fortunately my short-lived foray into the download arena only cost me a couple of hours of my time and about $3. That's it for me. Neither itunes nor wal-mart will ever hear from me again :evil: :evil: :evil: !

[dh]

Well, if you paid for te music, you are allowed to have a copy uinder the "Fair Use" rules.
What I would do is just download a copy anyway you can and you're in business.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Shawn, iTunes music can only play on either iTunes or an iPod. The reason is because Apple hasn't licensed the Digital Rights Management it uses to other companies.

I personally haven't tried using WalMart, but you should be able to copy it over to your SD card. If you can't, try copying it over to memory. If the song plays from memory, then you'll need to purchase an MMC card to copy music.

[Jason Dunn]

Don't buy music from Walmart - it wont' work on your Pocket PC. I'll explain next week when I get back...

If the song plays from memory, then you'll need to purchase an MMC card to copy music.

Why would an MMC card play the music where an SD card would not? That makes no sense to me... 8O

[Oreocat]

I'm not sure if this will help, but I was told here by a couple of very helpful people that if I downloaded music and made a disc, I could then recopy it back onto to my pc without the DRM. Once I had the songs without the DRM coding, I could then move them to my ppc, and it would work fine.

I sort of tried this and it worked. We downloaded some music from iTunes, made a disc for my husband's work, but before I could reload it, my husband just brought up some file (really sorry though, I don't know *where* he found it) with the songs, and I was able to use dBpower Amp Music Converter to convert them to ogg files (smaller and same quality) and send them to my ppc. It did work, but obviously not the exact instructions I was given :roll:

Hopefully this might help you...

Good luck :)

[Zack Mahdavi]

Don't buy music from Walmart - it wont' work on your Pocket PC. I'll explain next week when I get back...

If the song plays from memory, then you'll need to purchase an MMC card to copy music.

Why would an MMC card play the music where an SD card would not? That makes no sense to me... 8O

Sorry... I read that on some posts a while back. Some people said some protected Napster WMAs won't play when copied to an SD card but will play when copied to an MMC card.

I've never tried it, but I was passing along information.. :)

[shawnc]

Thanx to all for the info. This is really bizarre that something so popular and heavily advertised as music downloads has been rolled out without such basic functionality.

[Kati Compton]

Burn a CD and re-rip to your favorite PPC-listening format, then transfer THAT to the PPC.

[Jon Westfall]

Its a good thing CD-R's are getting more inexpensive all the time, with all the burning & ripping that will be going on in the future.

[Kati Compton]

I'm more concerned with the 10-burn limit that I think the Walmart songs have.

[shawnc]

Burn a CD and re-rip to your favorite PPC-listening format, then transfer THAT to the PPC.

OK this works. Two points, one, I don't feel guilty for doing this since I paid for the music under the very reasonable pretext that I could listen to it on my portable device. I WOULDN'T HAVE PURCHASED IT OTHERWISE! Two, if it's that easy to bypass the copy-protection, then why bother.

Oh well, thanx Kati. I appreciate the advice.

[chunkymonkey75]

I still prefer to buy the music online then download it from Kazaa or something. I get exactly what I'm looking for and it's always a quality file.

It is unfortunate that they have to enforce DRM on the music. But I think if they just allow you to buy the music with no restrictions, people would just end up sharing those files as well. It is true that getting around it is rather simple (burning re-ripping and etc). But it makes it just inconvenient enough that some people will not bother.

[shawnc]

I still prefer to buy the music online then download it from Kazaa or something. I get exactly what I'm looking for and it's always a quality file.

It is unfortunate that they have to enforce DRM on the music. But I think if they just allow you to buy the music with no restrictions, people would just end up sharing those files as well. It is true that getting around it is rather simple (burning re-ripping and etc). But it makes it just inconvenient enough that some people will not bother.

I hear ya mj, but why not simply enforce the DRM AND allow me to play on my Ipaq :idea: :?: All I want to do is listen to legally purchased music on my portable device? I have yet to understand why this is not doable.

[Kati Compton]

Burn a CD and re-rip to your favorite PPC-listening format, then transfer THAT to the PPC.

OK this works. Two points, one, I don't feel guilty for doing this since I paid for the music under the very reasonable pretext that I could listen to it on my portable device. I WOULDN'T HAVE PURCHASED IT OTHERWISE! Two, if it's that easy to bypass the copy-protection, then why bother.

Well, it does and it doesn't. You *could* distribute your re-ripped file. But that, of course, is not recommended.

And only the "owner" of the original music file can burn a CD. So a distributed original music file wouldn't be of any benefit.

The downside of this technique is that you're uncompressing and recompressing using lossy compression algorithms. But that's another discussion. As long as the files are of high enough quality, it shouldn't matter.

Disclaimer: Note that my suggestion is only intended as a possibility for providing users access to their own purchased music files.

[chunkymonkey75]

I still prefer to buy the music online then download it from Kazaa or something. I get exactly what I'm looking for and it's always a quality file.

It is unfortunate that they have to enforce DRM on the music. But I think if they just allow you to buy the music with no restrictions, people would just end up sharing those files as well. It is true that getting around it is rather simple (burning re-ripping and etc). But it makes it just inconvenient enough that some people will not bother.

I hear ya mj, but why not simply enforce the DRM AND allow me to play on my Ipaq :idea: :?: All I want to do is listen to legally purchased music on my portable device? I have yet to understand why this is not doable.

I agree....it would definitly be ideal. An application that would allow that would certainly be worth buying. If they don't come up with something, they will only encourage people to look for the "free stuff" even more..

[Janak Parekh]

Burn a CD and re-rip to your favorite PPC-listening format, then transfer THAT to the PPC.
OK this works. Two points, one, I don't feel guilty for doing this since I paid for the music under the very reasonable pretext that I could listen to it on my portable device. I WOULDN'T HAVE PURCHASED IT OTHERWISE! Two, if it's that easy to bypass the copy-protection, then why bother.
I think the better point to make is "you shouldn't have to". Unfortunately, there are complications. I hope it smoothes out soon -- but I'm not holding my breath for a true cross-platform solution...

Anyway, Jason has been talking to his contacts about your problem (you're not the first to report it), and he'll hopefully have some data once he gets back.

--janak

[ale_ers]

I've had this conversation before, and I don't know what I am doing differently, but I can copy Napster tracks just fine.

I buy the tracks, open WMP then select copy to device, select my SD card and hit copy. It works great, I don't have to re-rip...I just have to deal with the slow coping of WMP (as opposed to dragging and dropping to a card reader).

If I can check any settings or answer any questions for someone, I would be happy to.

[JustinGTP]

Download it from some P2P program, if you are in Canada of course, its deemed legal up here.

-Justin.

[Falstaff]

Download it from some P2P program, if you are in Canada of course, its deemed legal up here.

-Justin.

Time for me to move to Canada! I used iTunes once, I basically just downloaded it to test out, see what it was like to get music legally online, I didn't like it. The fact that I had to burn to a CD was really annoying, I still have iTunes installed though, with its large selection and accurate catalog, I can find songs and preview them and then find them elsewhere... the local CD store I mean.... The only other app I ever tried was eMusic, but I couldn't find any music I liked and I deleted it after about 20 minutes. I hate these proprietary DRM restrictions. In order to listen to wma files that have been purchased you have to use WMP and export the files, that makes it a hell of a lot less convenient than an mp3. With iTunes, they force you to use their player, which I hate, it was designed to be simplistic and artistic like all other Mac garbage (aka iMacs, G3s, iPods, MacOS). If I could buy mp3s, I'd be buying dozens and dozens of songs online, but I'm not going to pay for these worthless restrictions and time wasting compatibility and transfer problems. A music store that sold high quality, 5.1 surround mp3s with good transfer speeds would dominate the market, but the RIAA will never allow it, so eMule all the way!

[Zack Mahdavi]

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this here, but you may want to look into "FairPlay". It takes an iTunes protected AAC file, and decrypts the song using the hardware identification code of your iTunes. So then you can play the aac file on whatever, like your Pocket PC.

[Mark_Venture]

Burn a CD and re-rip to your favorite PPC-listening format, then transfer THAT to the PPC. Question... How is the audio quality of the re-ripped file?

i.e. If I buy/download a song, and want to listen to it on my PPC, or MP3 player, I want good quality... buring and re-ripping makes me think about the recompressing

[emmfan]

Has anybody checked out allofmp3 (http://www.allofmp3.com) or mp3search.ru (http://club.mp3search.ru)? I just learned about them a couple of days ago, but haven't actually tried them out. It looks like they have purchased legitimate distribution licenses from music distributors in Russia, but I'm kind of suspicious how they would be given the rights to distribute outside of Russia via the internet. Here are some reviews on both of these from museekster (http://www.museekster.com) (haven't heard of this site before either, just found it on google):

http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3info.htm
http://www.museekster.com/clubmp3searchinfo.htm

If these sites are legitimate, they are providing a great alternative to the mainstream sites that everyone's been complaining about.

[Falstaff]

Well, just to stop any chance they had of selling music legally online, the RIAA decided to raise prices, sometimes more than the CD itself would cost. They are some singles that will cost as much as $2.50!!!! What is the RIAA thinking, do they want to kill the most successful and profitable thing that has happened to the music industry lately! AHHHHHH!!!

Here (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=55895) is a link to the story.

[KenClunk]

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this here, but you may want to look into "FairPlay". It takes an iTunes protected AAC file, and decrypts the song using the hardware identification code of your iTunes. So then you can play the aac file on whatever, like your Pocket PC.

I don't use itune or any of that but here Playfair's offshore site:

*Sorry! URL removed by mod SJC - you will have to do a search*

[KenClunk]

Has anyone used playfair?

[Zack Mahdavi]

Has anyone used playfair?

I have... it works really well. However, it's not that useful until some Pocket PC application is able to play AACs well. I'm waiting for Pocket Player to come with AAC support.

[KenClunk]

Can't you convert the AAC. I believer you can though I have never used this format.

[Janak Parekh]

Can't you convert the AAC. I believer you can though I have never used this format.
Yes, but there's some hassle -- you need to burn it to CD and then rerip it as a different format. Additionally, recompression induces a slight (but occasionally noticeable) loss in quality.

--janak

[JustinGTP]

The only problem with P2P programs is the fact that some really popular songs, the people who are uploading them screw up more than half the song with garbage just because. Its that annoying whining sound and that's it. Ticks me off :roll: But, it is free.

[rocky_raher]

The only problem with P2P programs is the fact that some really popular songs, the people who are uploading them screw up more than half the song with garbage just because. Its that annoying whining sound and that's it. Ticks me off :roll: But, it is free.

Part of the problem may be inexperience on the part of the uploaders. However, I suspect that a lot of the faulty uploads are friends/cohorts/employees of the artists/record companies/etc. The intent is to discredit the P2P file-trading.

Remember a while ago, when some people downloaded a putative Madonna song, and got a recording of Madonna cussing them out for trying to pirate her work?

Flame me as you will, but I don't blame them. If I had a financial interest in a song and wanted to discourage P2P distribution, I'd spend Saturday afternoons uploading mp3's of the first 60 seconds, followed by static. It would maintain interest in the song, but (in theory) encourage the listener to stop downloading and buy the CD.

[Wiggster]

Being a Pepsi fanatic, I got lots of free music downloads from their bottlecaps last year. But now that my girlfriend lives with me, I just pull my music from her 200+ CD collection. I haven't checked out the online music community much, except for buying some TMBG songs direct off their website. That's a good way to buy music, straight from the artist. :)

[billbuckner]

I used the legal version of napster. It was a nightmare. I couldn't transfer anything to any device due to the paranoid copy protection. For me, it's BACK TO WinMX :!: