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ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

livven.me

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Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#11

Post by meaty »

rickmb wrote: post #8
meaty wrote: post #2

This is the sort of reason I buy my stuff from Amazon / 7digital. The mp3 container format has no provision for DRM so it cannot be abused.

Just to be sure I checked Amazon before writing my "pro piracy" rant elsewhere. It's a) not available in my country, and b) between any specific mp3 offering and telling me the usual "fuck of, you're from the wrong country", and no point does Amazon inform me about the nature and quality of the download, other than the mp3 format. Yeah, I can infer the fact that it is non-DRM from the mp3 format, but other than that…

Just pirate it then.

To be honest, I download the track elsewhere always and pay for it if I think it's worth it and delete it if it's not.

You can't tell much from a 30 second clip most of the time, especially when the motivation is still to produce albums filled with padding (shit).

They need to just release singles and do away with the whole album principle.

As for quality - if you want that, you need to buy the damn CD and rip it how you want. Most of the decent quality mp3 rips are rubbish enough to notice if you have a high end setup but for casual/normal users and ears, it's fine.

Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#12

Post by thejosh »

rickmb wrote: post #7

And this once again is why I still prefer to "pirate" music. Most "legal" services are either very vague about format, quality and DRM, not available in my country and/or have a limited collection. The effort involved in buying something legally and DRM-free is just ridiculous, and the notion that I can trust pirates more to be honest, transparent and upfront about their offering really takes the cake. Only in the co…

This is why I'm a huge fan of Spotify. I'm not going to buy music (in either CD/MP3 format) so I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices.

They also have a Linux client that works perfectly for me which is also a huge bonus.

Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#14

Post by grogs »

thejosh wrote: post #12
rickmb wrote: post #7

And this once again is why I still prefer to "pirate" music. Most "legal" services are either very vague about format, quality and DRM, not available in my country and/or have a limited collection. The effort involved in buying something legally and DRM-free is just ridiculous, and the notion that I can trust pirates more to be honest, transparent and upfront about their offering really takes the cake. Only in the co…

This is why I'm a huge fan of Spotify. I'm not going to buy music (in either CD/MP3 format) so I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices. They also have a Linux client that works perfectly for me which is also a huge bonus.

It was only announced this month that spotify would add Metallica's back catalogue. They hardly have a complete library of music.

Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#15

Post by gioele »

thejosh wrote: post #12
rickmb wrote: post #7

And this once again is why I still prefer to "pirate" music. Most "legal" services are either very vague about format, quality and DRM, not available in my country and/or have a limited collection. The effort involved in buying something legally and DRM-free is just ridiculous, and the notion that I can trust pirates more to be honest, transparent and upfront about their offering really takes the cake. Only in the co…

This is why I'm a huge fan of Spotify. I'm not going to buy music (in either CD/MP3 format) so I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices. They also have a Linux client that works perfectly for me which is also a huge bonus.

> I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices.

As long as it lasts.

I want my music collection to be accessible also when Spotify will go out of business, sued into oblivion or acquired and shut down.

Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#16

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

gioele wrote: post #15
thejosh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm a huge fan of Spotify. I'm not going to buy music (in either CD/MP3 format) so I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices. They also have a Linux client that works perfectly for me which is also a huge bonus.

> I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices. As long as it lasts. I want my music collection to be accessible also when Spotify will go out of business, sued into oblivion or acquired and shut down.

Why would they be sued? Last I heard Spotify was very much running a legal business.

Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#18

Post by cageface »

gioele wrote: post #15
thejosh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm a huge fan of Spotify. I'm not going to buy music (in either CD/MP3 format) so I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices. They also have a Linux client that works perfectly for me which is also a huge bonus.

> I'm happy enough to pay the small fee to have access to a huge music library across all devices. As long as it lasts. I want my music collection to be accessible also when Spotify will go out of business, sued into oblivion or acquired and shut down.

Doesn't have to be one or the other. Pay Spotify $10/month to discover new music and then go buy lossless copies of the albums you really care about. Most records I could live without but those few special ones I have backed up in S3 in FLAC.

Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#19

Post by Livven »

arrrg wrote: post #13
[deleted] wrote: post #10

[deleted]

That's not a fix. It re-encodes the file.

There's some quality loss but the DRM seems to be gone. Guess it's an acceptable workaround for now. Though I'm confused, since iTunes shouldn't be able to just strip DRM. Maybe not all .m4p files actually have DRM?

Re: ITunes “album only” tracks are now DRM-protected

#20

Post by nvr219 »

quarterto wrote: post #17
arrrg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a fix. It re-encodes the file.

You could always convert them to ALAC?

Transcoding from one lossy format to another decreases the file quality. Converting to ALAC would not decrease the quality -- quality would remain lossy -- but would drastically increase the file SIZE.

DJ online music stores such as beatport and stompy sell WAV or FLAC files. I really don't understand why iTunes and Amazon don't sell lossless. The bandwidth is there, the demand is there, I guess FLAC isn't supported by major players but at the very least have iTunes sell ALAC... Please.

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