Lately, I’ve been thinking I should move away from free music downloading. There’s the fear of unsafe files, sure, as well as thinking I don’t need to be doing it. But I’m sick of buying CD’s. I hate buying a whole damn CD for only a couple of songs, and the other songs all suck, and seeing as whenever I get a CD I just load up all the songs from it onto my computer, and I just put the actual CD someplace on my shelf. And I’m running out of room!
\n
\nSo I figured these online music stores might be the answer. iTunes is obviously the most popular, but Yahoo has one too, as well as Amazon, and a few other places. At just a dollar a song, and considering I don’t usually get so many at a time, seemed worthwhile.<\/p>\n
I searched through iTunes and Yahoo and Amazon to see what they had. iTunes has like three times as many songs as the other two. Weird. I checked Amazon for the songs I was looking for, and for the ones it didn’t have, I found the rest on iTunes. So I went ahead and bought those songs from iTunes. And then I had a suspicion I had about it confirmed.<\/p>\n
The download is not an mp3 file. It’s m4p. It’s a proprietary Apple file that is made to work ONLY in iTunes or iPod.<\/p>\n
So here’s what I did! Went ahead and got the five or so songs that were on iTunes but nowhere else. Then got my camcorder and switched it to sound recorder mode, played the songs really loud, and held it up to the speakers. Uploaded the wave file, converted it to mp3 with software that came with my Zen, opened it in Windows Media Player to edit the tag info, and I had myself an mp3 of the song! Me > iTunes<\/p>\n
Except, as my sister pointed out to me later, why the hell did I have to do this for a song I PAID FOR?! I could have just downloaded it for free off Limewire without the hassle.<\/p>\n
Which, finally, brings me to the main point of this.<\/p>\n
These record companies and all want people to stop with the illegal downloads, right? Want to protect their intellectual property? Well, instead of making ridiculous rules saying you can’t even upload songs off your own CD onto your own computer, maybe they should work on making it easier to get music legitimately. And the best way to do that is by having these online music stores. Put in credit or debit card info, and when you see a song you like, clicky, and it’s yours. No risk of a virus or spyware. You know what it is. You’re not breaking the law. Ninety-nine cent download. Why not?<\/p>\n
If only it were that simple. The record companies won’t see the ease here, see that this is THE way to decrease all the illegal sharing of copyrighted songs. If they did, they’d jump right in, and make them mp3 files to sell for just under a buck a piece. But they don’t all do it. Even iTunes won’t have everything you’re looking for. And the ones that are on iTunes only have the stupid Apple file that works only on Apple software, as well as other built in restrictions on how many times it can be copied or whatever. Apparently the owners of the song believe this will allow the “ease” of downloading while still firmly protecting what exactly happens to that song file.<\/p>\n
You idiots don’t get it!<\/p>\n
Why would someone want to jump through all these hoops, for a song they paid for, when they could just bypass all of this and go to Kazaa or Limewire? No, you HAVE to make it just as easy or easier than downloading the mp3 illegally. The file HAS to work in Apple and Microsoft and all other software and devices. When you place any more demands or restrictions on it (other than the price, of course), you’ve made your way much harder than just going to peer-to-peer and getting it for free.<\/p>\n
At least Amazon’s are mp3 files. They have the right idea! Not to mention some songs are only 89 cents, hehe. Doing it that way is exactly the same as getting it off Limewire, just costs a teensy amount of money, but it’s legal and safe. Hell, and they even encourage making copies of the file so you have a backup in case of computer issues!<\/p>\n
THIS is the way to go! Will this stop illegal free music sharing? Of course not. But it at least gives those who do it significantly less reason. You only encourage the illegal sharing when you make legal music purchases so complicated and restricted. And don’t act like stricter enforcement somehow will do anything. Again, just making doing it illegally more appealing. You’re turning off even the people who would be willing to pay the 99 cents for the song download if you’d make it as easy as or easier than illegal downloading.<\/p>\n
And Apple and Microsoft with your little proprietary file formats? Yeah, you can see where you’re getting screwed there. Funny how you think being such huge corporations means the consumer has to serve you, rather than vice versa. Quit the pissing contest over who runs each other’s files, have sex already, and yield a lot of little files that work both. For they are the most valuable and all that is appealing. And they are a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lately, I’ve been thinking I should move away from free music downloading. There’s the fear of unsafe files, sure, as well as thinking I don’t need to be doing it. But I’m sick of buying CD’s. I hate buying a whole damn CD for only a couple of songs, and the other songs all suck, … Continue reading “Proprietary Fail”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,25],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musical-musing","category-teh-interwebs","tag-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1471,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/1471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}