iTunes Plus DRM-free music now official(er)

We knew it was imminent after this morning's iTunes software update. Now, after all our collective bitching and moaning, they're here: DRM-free tracks on Apple's iTunes Plus store. Sure, there are plenty of other on-line music stores offering similar 256kbps AAC quality music, DRM-free for less than a $1.29 iTunes Plus cost per track ($0.30 upgrade for each song already downloaded or about $3.00 for "most albums"). Ok, still no Beatles tracks and we're only talking about EMI music for now, but this is iTunes kids -- the big download daddy of on-line music. Now put down that BitTorrent client and get out there and support Fair Use kids, the future is yours.

[(Unverified) Posted May 30th 2007 12:08PM]

"You rent your music and the instant you stop paying the monthly fee it all goes away."

I'm more likely to stop paying my gas bill and do without that than stop paying Urge and do without unlimited downloads. For $12.50 a month I can listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. Complete music freedom is worth much more than that.

"Owning" music is an antiquated idea that will one day no longer exist. You'll see.

[cheadrou Posted May 30th 2007 12:24PM]

Just seconding John's statement. Currently, I buy CDs, rip to FLAC, convert to MP3, burn the FLACs to DVD, then file everything away. I don't think I've actually listened to a "lossless" audio file (CD or FLAC) in months.

It's nice to have CD (or lossless file) in case formats change, but honestly, for how I listen music, having a high quality "open" file is more than enough.

[(Unverified) Posted May 30th 2007 2:04PM]

aestheticist: When you buy a full album at a time, the price is the same for the non-DRMed version as for the DRMed version: $9.99 in most cases.

I just (today) bought a 28-track album from iTunes for $11.99, which included (as a PDF) the artwork/booklet from the physical CD. When I buy CDs nowadays, I just end up encoding them (usually @ 192kbps) and almost never actually play the physical disc anyway. I hardly see how downloading the disc I just got was more "time, money, and effort" when the disc was $11.99 at Amazon (+shipping) as of the time of this posting, which I then would have had to wait 2+ days to be delivered. Alternately, I could have driven to a brick-and-mortar shop on my lunch hour, doubtlessly paid more (+ sales tax, gas), and taken more time (driving, finding the disc in store [assuming it's in stock], and ripping/encoding.)

I can't personally distinguish between 256k AAC and red-book audio in a true double-blind test, some folks may be able to, so YMMV.

[cheadrou Posted May 30th 2007 12:37PM]

Actually, sorry... not John's. I was trying to reply to ffg's. See, this is why you don't reply.

[Wesscoast Posted May 30th 2007 12:54PM]

Just seconding John's statement. Currently, I buy CDs, rip to FLAC, convert to MP3, burn the FLACs to DVD, then file everything away. I don't think I've actually listened to a "lossless" audio file (CD or FLAC) in months.

--

Wow. Great time management there. Your stupidity makes about 20 years of technological progress redundant by all the time you're wasting.

*shakes head

[cheadrou Posted May 30th 2007 1:09PM]

It's called archiving, twit. I've had too many CDs scratched, stolen, borrowed and never returned, etc. to trust hundred of individual discs. The whole process takes, what, 5 minutes (2 minutes for the FLAC rip, 3 minutes for the Mp3 conversion), then you burn an archived backup of the album if you need it again.

PLUS, it's called preplanning. When I need to rerip an album, or burn a copy of friend, I'm not flipping through hundreds of CDs in a binder or on a shelf... I'm flipping through 10-20 DVDs that are clearly labeled with what's there.

[cheadrou Posted May 30th 2007 1:26PM]

Crap... I keep coming back. Also Mike, let's explore the following situation:

Oh no! My hard drive crashed!

a) Find and re-rip all of my CDs

b) Convert a DVD's worth of files into the format that I need. Repeat

I could probably invest in a backup drive, but 2 minutes of additional time per disc is worth the savings of a couple of hundred of dollars.

[(Unverified) Posted May 30th 2007 4:23PM]

Lol, the top two albums being sold un-drm'd are Dark Side of The Moon ( Best album ever IMHO) and The Wall, both by Pink Floyd, and the album in fifth is Animals. Think itunes users like Pink Floyd?

[msalivar Posted May 30th 2007 8:38PM]

How the hell do subscription services make ownership a thing of the past? All the music is owned by the company running the subscription services, in addition to the label (or in the very rare case like Jack Johnson or w/ some smaller labels: the artist). Using a subscription service simply means that YOU own less. The ownership is still there, you're just getting hosed.

[(Unverified) Posted May 31st 2007 9:07AM]

I am having significant problems getting iTunes plus to work correctly. Please see my post in iPod lounge under "ambipod"


http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?p=1107912&posted=1#post1107912

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 2nd 2007 11:36PM]

ummm... it is funny to me that many people bitch and moan about apple only allowing 5 authorizations for machines... but... ummm... do people not look at the "manage your account" link, because once a year... you can deauthorize all machines for future music, and it gives you 5 NEW authorizations. So... say you share your music with your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend... they can keep it and listen to it, and you can just deauthorize with apple computer, and they give you 5 more... you get to do it once every 365 days... and it is actually nice. So... in 3 years, 15 computers can be authorized, maybe not for your most recent purchases, but 15 computers have access to certain parts of your historical music library.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 4th 2007 11:18AM]

Does anyone know why smashing pumpkins are taken off the iTunes plus?