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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

#21

Post by Kudos »

meaty wrote: post #11
rickmb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

The clips have been 90 seconds for a long time.

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

#23

Post by Ygg2 »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #16
gioele wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Just because they are running a legal business now, doesn't mean they will run a legal business in future. Either they can change, or more likely laws will change, rendering them a vulnerable target for suing.

Plus, I'm sure they are breaking some ridiculous patent somewhere anyway.

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

#24

Post by ubernostrum »

meaty wrote: post #5
Livven wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah theoretically you're safer but Apple announced that iTunes music would become completely DRM-free back in 2009. And they've kept their promise, up until now that is. I don't think anybody thought they'd sneak it back in. I was really surprised when I found out they did. Hope it's just a glitch they'll fix soon.

Yes I was there then - in fact I had a load of DRM'ed tracks from iTunes back when I owned an iPod. Why would you trust Apple not to do it though? They haven't exactly been trustworthy on any front over the years.

Two odd things:

1. The report is only that the files have the 'm4p' extension. There seems to be no-one confirming that the files actually have DRM, just that they have the extension the old DRM'd files used to have.

2. Reports of people being able to convert to m4a from within iTunes. A DRM system that has a "remove the DRM from this file" option... isn't DRM.

Which makes me wonder whether they're just the same normal non-DRM'd files, but being offered up with the wrong extension.

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

#25

Post by Livven »

abm82 wrote: post #22
[deleted] wrote: post #10

[deleted]

Except it doesn't work, at least not on my version of iTunes (11.0 163). I get "'___' could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats."

Is this with a new .m4p file downloaded recently (i.e. same situation as me) or an old pre-DRM-free-iTunes file?

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

#26

Post by aes256 »

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…

If I want a copy of an album, I can go to iTunes/Amazon/etc. and download the copy they offer, in a format I don't really want, encoded at 256kbps or similar. I have no idea what happened behind the scenes; which version of the album I'm downloading, what the source material was, how it was transferred from the source to their systems, so on and so forth.

Alternatively, I can go to a not-so-legitimate website, and be presented with 10+ different versions of the same album (originals, remastered editions, reissues, international releases, vinyl rips, etc.), each of which is typically available in all the popular formats (FLAC, MP3 320kbps, V0, V2, etc.)

I can plump for the FLAC, along with which I will often get high resolution scans of the source material, as well as a LOG file to verify the veracity of the copy. If I want to re-encode it, I'm free to do as I please.

Then to top it off, the legal services have the audacity to charge as much as a physical copy of the CD. I despair...

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

#27

Post by aes256 »

cageface wrote: post #18
gioele wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Notwithstanding something exceptionally rare, why the need to back up FLACs on S3?

I back up my music collection locally, and I have double-redundancy of sorts (it's backed up to a RAID 5 array on a file server, so in theory it could withstand the failure of the original drive and one of the back up drives), but if worst comes to worst I could just acquire everything again.

With a couple of exceptions they're just lossless copies of widely available music recordings...

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

#29

Post by justincormack »

aes256 wrote: post #27
cageface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Notwithstanding something exceptionally rare, why the need to back up FLACs on S3? I back up my music collection locally, and I have double-redundancy of sorts (it's backed up to a RAID 5 array on a file server, so in theory it could withstand the failure of the original drive and one of the back up drives), but if worst comes to worst I could just acquire everything again. With a couple of exceptions they're just lo…

Are you suggesting backing them up on pirate music sites?

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

#30

Post by demallien »

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.

Does Spotify have access to "entire album only" tracks?
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