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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

#31

Post by aes256 »

justincormack wrote: post #29
aes256 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not advocating copyright infringement, nor was I suggesting that in particular.

That would be a viable back up strategy, though. Have a rare copy of a recording? Make it widely available, then if your copy is destroyed, the odds of you being able to acquire an identical copy again are much improved.

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

#32

Post by entropy_ »

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…

I honestly like the album format. But then, that's because most artists I really like tend to have coherent albums that are best listened to as a whole(eg, Pink Floyd or Dream Theater). I agree that for most music the album format doesn't make sense. But for some, a set of 5 minute singles just doesn't do it for me, I like longer pieces that all tie in together.

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

#34

Post by brador »

aes256 wrote: post #26
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…

Illegal activity is okay if it's convenient? come on.

In the end, they created the product. Under US law, they have the right to sell it any way they like. They could charge $10000 per digital download and load it with DRM. If you don't like the rules, don't buy the product, that's the choice. But please don't play the victim and justify what you're doing with a "it's their fault for dressing too damn sexy".

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

#35

Post by Livven »

Can some mod change the title? There's no DRM, only the file extension is different (.m4p instead of .m4a). While .m4p is usually used for DRM'ed files there appears to be no DRM in this case, you can simply rename the extension to .m4a and it'll play fine.

I have updated the post accordingly.

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

#36

Post by lleims »

grogs wrote: post #14
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.

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

They have a complete enough library for 90% of the Internet population.

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

#37

Post by aes256 »

brador wrote: post #34
aes256 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Illegal activity is okay if it's convenient? come on. In the end, they created the product. Under US law, they have the right to sell it any way they like. They could charge $10000 per digital download and load it with DRM. If you don't like the rules, don't buy the product, that's the choice. But please don't play the victim and justify what you're doing with a "it's their fault for dressing too damn sexy".

This is a discussion about service issues in the legal music download sector.

I'm only referring to 'alternative' means of acquiring music as a benchmark to elucidate these service issues. I'm not interested in justifying copyright infringement, and I have better things to do than get dragged into that tired old debate.

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

#38

Post by pretoriusB »

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…

>And this once again is why I still prefer to "pirate" music.

Even read TFA? It has no DRM at all, this is a BS misunderstanding by the blogger.

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

#39

Post by pretoriusB »

aes256 wrote: post #26
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…

>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...

Yeah man. That's the spirit. I propose everybody does that to the digital things you sell too, if they don't find the format, the price or any service detail conventient.

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

#40

Post by jbk »

Livven wrote: post #9
beamso wrote: post #4

Wow. I didn't notice this. It's affecting anything that I've bought since the 14th of December. I did open one of the .m4p tracks in VLC.app and it played back fine.

Yes VLC supports (some?) .m4p files, but most other apps and devices don't.

Then, there is no DRM.
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