well nobody buys drm here ... how come ipods are so successful ?
For one, I don't think the average consumer is on these boards. This is more for prosumers? That's why'll you see more creative etc. owners here.
I avoid DRM, but at least Apple drm is fairly consistent. By not making Zune compatible with its own partner's drm, MS is shooting itself in the foot big time. Instead of improving those stores, it's threatening them, and is anyone going to trust MS DRM now with all the zig zags they take.
It's too bad the European decision to make drm cross compatible didn't quite go through.
I do buy drm from Mobipocket. They're easy to activate and cross platform. But still if they go out of business, what happens? But they're still the best out there for books.
Microsoft Reader drm though is a total disaster.
Whatever the support, the content has to be freely and easily transferable to any current and future support one uses or will use.
DRMatic is the technology enemy to it.
I agree. I donīt buy copy protected cdīs, even if i like them. And i always tell the sales guy that i would love to buy that cd but iīm not since i wonīt be able to rip to mp3 and listen to it in my DAP... wich does not support DRM at all, and i couldnīt care less.
Iīm not surprised about iPODīs success. They are great DAPīs. Itīs iTunes the thing that sucks.... but hey, here in Chile you canīt buy iTunes anyway...
Iīve bought a few tracks from emusic ... not a really great selection of music but they are just plain, not copy protected mp3īs, good for every DAP.
SO COMMON PEOPLE, SHOW YOU ARE ANGRY, DO NOT BUY DRM PROTECTED CONTENT AGAIN!! Remember that all your iTunes songs wonīt play in your Zune or whatever other DAP, so go and buy a regular cd, rip it to mp3 (and you can do it at a higher bitrate for better results than iTunes) and then listen to it in your iPOD, without having to worry about the fact that you will not be able to listen to your music on another DAP.
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This site should go the way of msmobiles.com. Forget WM and start talking android. Androidthoughts.com
The reason most people don't care about DRM restrictions, I think, is that most people are buying their players to play their own music from their own collections, rather than buying players to start loading them up with DRMed music purchases. What I worry about, for those people, is what happens when, after playing their own collections to death, they start looking for music to purchase online without knowing and understanding how DRM will screw them in the future (when they get a new PC and/or new player).
I understand the providers wanting DRM to make piracy more difficult; what I am furious about is their willingness to screw with their legitimate customers to do so. That's why I've never purchased any DRMed music (and very few DRMed e-books).
It's hard for me to believe that people still purchase music. Yeah, I think my wife's done it once or twice from the iTunes store, but if companies get to mess around in all their standardization de-standardization show, don't I the consumer get to play around, too? I think it's fair. I download music from BitTorrent websites. I don't even download by the song anymore, I download by the album. From my experience, this has been quick, reliable, cheap and very convenient.
My experience with DRM has exclusively been with Audible.com. I give them 15USD per month and they give me a book which I can play on my iPod or Pocket PC. I sometimes convert those to clean MP3s, too, and share them with my friends, who enjoy them and decide to sign up with Audible to purchase more books.
I rip my own CD's so I don't have to deal with DRM and never will. I feel sorry when I hear the DRM nightmares people go through.
Also, slightly off-topic, but I always thought Apple kept track of the songs you buy through the ITMS, but I guess that's not true. So every time you buy a song you're supposed to do a manual backup, how ridiculous is that. How difficult would it be for them to have a little database of all the music you've purchased in case your HD dies?
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My girl listens to tunes on a CD player or on her PPC so far. But she's almost 13, and is feeling the pressure or whatever it is for iPod usership... and so by brother caved in and has one of the latest 4GB models on order for her. I didn't argue, though tempted, but no, she's known for over a year about DRM and how insanely restrictive it can be, so she'll not be purchasing any iTunes nor any other DRM'd content for the iPod.
In the old days folks used to buy printed music books when they wanted music in their homes. These music book collections, and quite a few of them were very large, would last so long as there wasn't a house fire or a flood, or until someone spilled coffee all over part of it. Well, in the latter case one could probably still use the music... Then along came wax rolls, then bakelite discs, then vinyl, then tapes, and now we have CDs. All these media, before DRM that is, shared the same basic tenet as the original printed music books which folks used to use to play back on a piano; they lasted so long as one took good care of them.
CDs have now been proven to have rather limited lifespans, quite contrary to the early sales pitches (which had many collectors turfing out vinyl in favour of the 'better' optical discs) which said a CD could last hundreds of years, they tend to start showing signs of 'CD rot' in from 10 to 15 years. That's rather sad, considering that I have vinyl from the late 1950's which still sounds warm and nice.
So it seems to me reasonable, and understandably popular, that people want to backup and otherwise make more permanent their music purchased in CD format. It's just an extension of the expectation brought about by previous technologies. Why should we pay premium prices for music, only to have it die and become unusable after a too-short period? And since MP3 and other formats are easily used for this purpose (albeit with mixed results, depending on how it's done) it's not surprising to have the MP3 be the single most recognised digital file format today. Every elementary school kid knows what an MP3 is. How many know DOC or JPEG?
With DRM'd CDs, the music industry (even some of the small independent labels, shockingly) has sought to label their customers as potential thieves. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars (a conservative estimate) developing technologies specifically to interfere with the rights of legitimate purchasers of audio (and now video and text) content to preserve and use that content freely, for a reasonably long part of their lives. If I buy a recording, I rather expect to be able to grow old and still listen to it once in a while, right up until I die. Why shouldn't I expect that?
DRM flies in the face of basic expectations. Reasonably expecations. Fair expectations. These companies should be ashamed. Instead, they fight tooth and nail to increase their profit margins. And instead, of course, and obviously to almost everyone but themselves, they are in a losing battle. Their actions are triggering a wave of new anti-corporate awareness and opinion among consumers worldwide, and sites which allow sharing of non-DRM'd content are booming as proof this is happening. Call someone a thief long enough and sooner or later they just might become one, if only for the sake of flipping the bird in response.
I have no sympathy for the DRM merchants. They'll thrive or die out, depending on how well they fool the 'average consumer,' but they'll not fool everyone, and their constant moaning about losses to piracy online will be a self-fulfilling prophecy though there's little truth to it yet - they haven't really begun to see just how much music can be easily swapped online.
Personally, I've purchased less than $50 of DRM'd content. One CD, from a local band (friends of mine, strangely enough) when there was no choice (they've since dumped their label for related reasons and are self-distributing and enormously successful), and a few ebooks back in 2000 from Fictionwise. I've long since ripped that CD to 320kbps MP3 files, and given the CD to someone else, and also ripped te LIT ebooks to plain vanilla HTML so it'll always be readable content on any PDA. I prefer ubook to Microsoft Reader, of course, so why should I be forced to use Reader? If the Zune is offering more of the same with all this DRM mumbo jumbo, it can go jump. Not interesting. As for my kid's new iPod... it'll get homemade MP3s and nothing else. It'll be a pretty frosty day in heck before I install iTunes software on any of our computers.
Do you not purchase DRM- or otherwise- protected files because the protection systems keep you from using the files yourself the way you want to, or are you basically opposed to protection because you feel you should be allowed to share files in any way you see fit?
I really have zero issues purchasing DRM-protected music. It needs to satisfy two criteria, though - (a) it's not completely restrictive (Apple has a reasonable system going), and (b) it works (Janus doesn't; both Janak and I have experienced the frustration that comes with it).
In my opinion, the best DRM is no DRM. Buying a CD offers the most amount of freedom. But where CDs are hard to acquire (no stock, hard to import, etc.), I think the DRM options out there are a reasonable alternative.
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Also, slightly off-topic, but I always thought Apple kept track of the songs you buy through the ITMS, but I guess that's not true. So every time you buy a song you're supposed to do a manual backup, how ridiculous is that. How difficult would it be for them to have a little database of all the music you've purchased in case your HD dies?
Actually, they do have a database, and apparently there's an unwritten policy that if you beg, they will likely allow you to download all the tracks again - once. (Fortunately, iTunes 7 does have an integrated backup tool to minimize the chance of loss.)
2 years ago I decided that my tastes change by the second so I stopped buying music and started renting. I was spending over $20 a month purchasing several albums just to hear a few songs.
Without DRM, renting music would not be allowed. If I did purchase a new CD, I would probably avoid DRM protection.
Now, if they can create a client to stream or download music from the subscription service directly to your mobile...
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