El Tunes gives Linux users iTMS playback capabilities

It has been a solid tick since we've seen a good FairPlay hack, so it's with great pleasure that we pass along El Tunes for Ubuntu 8.04 users everywhere. Tested to work on Hardy Heron using RhythmBox (but assumed to work on any modern Linux Distro with GStreamer and a media player that utilizes GStreamer), said plug-in enables open-source aficionados to play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. As for limitations, the current version has no Pause / Seek support and cannot de-authorize a machine for playback, but a future version should hopefully cure those two quirks and add support for purchased video content and audio streaming to an AirTunes device. Give it a shot and let us know how it treats ya.

[Pumping_Iron @ Jul 26th 2008 12:06PM]

wow.....no comments, might as well say FIRST and Low Rank myself.
:)

[High Ranks make you sterile @ Jul 26th 2008 1:39PM]

Meh.... I still need iPhone support for Linux...

Until then, I'll sit there with my starving babies, iPod Touch and openSUSE, waiting for the deadbeat father, Steve Jobs, to get off his balls and give me an iTunes for Linux.

But that won't happen because they're afraid Mac OS X users will realize "there's a Unix-based OS we don't have to pay for?" and jump ship. That's not likely... you're just likely to get a new market for your Touch lineup.

[Pumping_Iron @ Jul 26th 2008 12:06PM]

wow.....no comments, might as well say FIRST and Low Rank myself.
:)

[deyanimay @ Jul 26th 2008 3:31PM]

Ouch double fail.

[Evangelion @ Jul 26th 2008 12:21PM]

Olé!

[Eric @ Jul 26th 2008 12:36PM]

Or, you could use Amazon's mp3 downloader for Linux and have no problems with playback

http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/help/amd.html?ie=UTF8&forceos=LINUX

The only hack you may need to do is trick the 64bit distro to accept the 32bit build. Other than that, no problems, and 256Kbps, no DRM, and cheap!

[Jamar @ Jul 26th 2008 4:27PM]

Can't find any songs that I actually want, though.

[Paul @ Aug 2nd 2008 12:55AM]

Absolutely. I use Amazon MP3 and I love it. However, this is very useful to those of us who amassed a large collection of iTunes music a few years ago, before there was an Amazon MP3 store. And video support? That's just fucking great. Amazon's video store, in addition to having a terrible selection, is DRM'd :(

[Brad @ Jul 28th 2008 3:58AM]

Really? With more labels than iTunes and support from all four major labels (iTunes is down to one if I recall), what are you looking for that you can't find? I've yet to go hunting for music I actually wanted to pay for and not been able to find it at Amazon.

[Xew @ Jul 26th 2008 12:51PM]

Thank you so much for this! It's amazing no one made an intelligent comment on something massive like this.

[peekinde @ Jul 26th 2008 1:09PM]

because hteres like, 5 linux users

[andres @ Jul 26th 2008 2:24PM]

@peekinde
actually, were just hard to find due to poor social skills

[Xew @ Jul 26th 2008 4:56PM]

Amarok can't play encrypted apple music, square

[Brad @ Jul 28th 2008 4:01AM]

@Square

Amorak still barfs at any samba-mounted drives during indexing, too. Amorak is popular because it comes pre-installed in many distros. It isn't the best though, not by a long shot.

This is a pretty cool bit of hacking. Sadly, Apple will pull down their code and see how they hacked iTMS and just release an "update" that will "update" all your old tracks and probably install more crap on whatever you're using to get iTunes music in the first place.

[JQuilty @ Jul 26th 2008 1:26PM]

Or, be smart and refuse to buy any music with Digital Restrictions Malware...of which Amazon has none.

[gf @ Jul 26th 2008 4:47PM]

Anyone who uses RhythmBox instead of Amarok...well they just aren't cool at all.

[RedBull Runner @ Jul 26th 2008 11:25PM]

Anyone who uses Amarok (KDE... just... blech.) instead of MPD... well they just aren't cool at all

[gf @ Jul 27th 2008 10:28AM]

Amarok runs on gnome; I would never use KDE desktop.

[Silivrenion @ Jul 26th 2008 5:43PM]

Ahem, excuse me while I express my excitement...

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Allow me to regain my composure.

[siddharth s @ Jul 26th 2008 6:14PM]

Or because people using the open source Linux OSes don't generally buy propriety, locked down DRM music?

[jorvay @ Jul 27th 2008 8:11AM]

here here!
We're seeing for a third time with the Yahoo music store how dangerous DRM can be. I'm happy to support artists who release their music in a drm-free format so that I can enjoy it freely on any personal device. I pay for the right to enjoy the music, without limitations on how to enjoy it.

[fritz70 @ Jul 26th 2008 8:29PM]

or, you could just use itunes under wine/crossover

[Xew @ Jul 27th 2008 11:21AM]

that is a utter crap idea. have you even TRIED doing that?

[El Taco @ Jul 26th 2008 11:24PM]

they stole the first 4 digits of my name! (El T)

[andy_js @ Jul 27th 2008 8:19AM]

El-tunes does not work.

I can tell something has changed because Rhythmbox no longer says "This file is encrypted and cannot be played", it just says "There was an error in Gstreamer or Rhymthmbox".

So yeah...

[Xew @ Jul 27th 2008 11:56AM]

sadly, didn't work for me either. banshee just crashes.

[Brian Thomason @ Jul 27th 2008 4:50PM]

Did you run eltunes-auth first? You should have ~/.eltunes with two files in it or music playback won't work.

[Xew @ Jul 28th 2008 1:39PM]

thanks for the reply, I'll test it out later. But, wow, that isn't on the website anywhere...

[Brian Thomason @ Jul 27th 2008 4:56PM]

We are working on the banshee issue and should have it fixed for our preview 2 release on Tuesday.

[Student Driver @ Jul 27th 2008 10:42PM]

First, this is very cool. Second, Amazon/eMusic FTW. Since most of the stuff I get is indie, I had to use iTunes a while ago in order to find it. Now, I just use extra downloads available to me on my eMusic "subscription" (not the typical subscription model) and pick up VBR MP3s of the same tracks. I didn't buy many tracks from iTunes over the 3 years owning iPods to begin with (hate DRM), so it wasn't that hard to backfill them.

[ShadowKain @ Jul 28th 2008 8:45AM]

Apple is gonna be so pissed...XD

[Vadim P. @ Jul 31st 2008 10:50PM]

They got a 0.2 version now.

And yeah, Apple did get pissy, so it's on the torrents now.