Comments on: The music industry abuses us and we're to blame

Apple has sold 5 billions songs on iTunes, but Don Reisinger isn't celebrating. Unlike most others, he's saddened by the news.

[sjohnsto]

Okay, here's the thing: when you buy a song on a CD or tape, you're only buying a copy of it, and legally, you are only allowed to make a reasonable amount of copies (I think it's about five). You don't own the song. Period. You own a copy of it, not the master. That belongs to the publisher/record company/band--whoever made the song and paid for it before selling a COPY of it to you. There's very little difference between that and a copy off of iTunes. As to what you can do with the iTunes song--well, you can put it on a CD, put it on the iPod, leave it on the computer, and this serves the needs of most people rather well. Now, you may be thinking, "Yeah, but I don't want to pay X amount of dollars for an iPod. I want an iRiver or some other MP3 player." Well, I understand that can be frustrating, but look at it this way: this way, the quality is controlled and you know that whatever you buy for the iPod is going to work on the iPod. I look at it like this: many games will come out on the PC first. There's a lot of dreck in those games. The ones that are good and do well will come out later on the Mac. So even though there's less selection, there's a bit of assurance that what you are able to get will be good and not as likely to be thirty, fifty bucks down the hole.

I guess I fail to understand what exactly the problem is: is it iTunes or the copyright stuff? If it's the copyright stuff, look at what people did (and still do) before the record industry figured it'd better control this stuff a little better. If it's iTunes the store/program--what exactly is the problem with this? It's a simple model, you know what you're getting, you can get most, though not all, of the stuff you'd probably want (come on, with eight million songs, there's got to be SOMEthing you like), and it's proven. And, as opposed to a subscription service, once you own that copy, it's yours forever (assuming you don't destroy it somehow). I see very little to dislike about the iTunes model. I have more of a problem with the DRM thing, but I understand it.

[cheapsils]

On top of all these facts, Itunes is the WORST media player ever. EVER. Why waste 15 seconds waiting on Itunes to start up? Why enjoy the occaisional "lost tracks" on your ipod? Why open up quicktime and use 500 mbs of RAM just to watch a video..... WHY!?!?

[yprtb]

this is why i buy all my music on cd's. Yeah yeah i know, but still, i own them, there mine, and i never have to worry about losing the music off my computer, i can just always re-rip them.

[AlanHub]

Don stop your wining. Trust me: had itunes not been had this success the record companies would still deem that the only legal means of distributing artist endorsed music would be through conventional means: radio, record stores, loaning, promotion, etc. Itunes has revolutionized and pervaded legal downloads that curbed 5 billion illegal downloads.

[lachlant]

Hi.

First thing's first, I hate the iPod, and I hate iTunes, why should we be forced to buy songs from iTunes only if we have an iPod. You can't buy songs from iTunes and transfer them to a device that isn't an iPod, unless you burn them to CD. Likewise you can't buy songs from other online music stores that use copy protection and transfer them to an iPod, because the iPod uses Apple's FairPlay system, and other music stores use PlaysForSure. Of Course you can buy songs from copy protection free stores such as Amazon MP3, and they will play on any portable device whether the device supports copy protected music or not. I still buy my music on CD, and I still use a portable CD player, I do have an MP3 player but it doesn't support copy protection or playback of WMA files, I prefer to rip my CD's to my PC in WMA format. You might say "get an MP3 player that plays WMA files", but I'm blind, and so require an MP3 player that talks, I use a Victor Reader Stream. I also don't care much for compressed audio, this is why I still buy my music on CD's, I also like having my music on a hard copy medium that I can use in any way I want. Yes I understand that it may be more convenient to use online music stores, but I absolutely refuse to use an onlone music store that uses copy protection.
I am aware that some CD's also use copy protection, but there are ways around these protection schemes. Not all MP3 players and other portable music devices support copy protection, we need to see more cross compatibility here and no copy protection, Are you listening Apple?
It should be possible for me to transfer music to an iPod using Windows Media Player, it should also be possible to transfer music to an MPT compatible device such as my old Creative Zen Touch using iTunes, but everyone knows this is currently not possible.
Does this make sense to everyone?
Thanks.

Lachlan.

[capt-bob]

Here's an idea, do what I do.

Don't patronize iTunes and use they're absurdly ponderous and pretentious music program (let's face it, the iTunes program is one of the worst digital abortions of the MP3 age).

Instead, get yourself a recorder like realtunes, fire up Pandora and record as you listen. You can cut out the songs you don't like and save the good ones as MP3's. I've found artists and tracks I never would have heard anywhere else thanks to the adaptive music preference system on Pandora and to date have recorded about 1000 tracks.

Remember the good old days of recording on cassette off the radio? This is similar except, you can skip tracks, the program adapts to your music likes, you can have as many custom channels as you like and you don't have to rewind a tape to listen to one of the tracks you record.

Best thing I ever found on the internet after my favorites audiogalaxy and kazaa imploded.

[sting7k]

I never bought very much from iTunes for this reason. Although you can remove the DRM, burn the tracks to a CD and now you can do what you want with. I have started buying tracks from amazonMP3 recently. No DRM, added to iTunes for me, normally cheaper for full albums, and they have the full albums (iTunes has a lot of incomplete ones missing tracks).

If you don't want to support iTunes go to AmazonMP3 and get your DRM free tracks.

[norbert6464]

Don't forget that iTunes supported selling non DRM mp3 as soon as the record companies budged way back when.

[Frankus12]

AMAZON.COM MUSIC PEOPLE!! drm free

[TaygoVP]

I hate DRM as much as anyone. The problem comes in a viable alternative. I an old skool music downloader but when the lawsuits started...I stopped. Now, I relegated to DRM music that ultimately costs more than I would pay to buy the CD and rip it into mp3's. Either way, I'm gettin ripped off. Okay, so the current system sucks...now what?

[Pickle Bob]

Yes coop777, you can download a song and burn it to a CD to remove the DRM. The downside to this is if you want to rip that song to another computer, the quality of the track gets worse. Compressed audio is missing a large portion of the song to begin with, so to take a compressed song, burn it to a CD and then rip the song would be the equivalent of compressing a song twice. Yuck.

[gandor62]

I recently had My computer stolen and had not recently done my backups. I had most of my purchased Itunes music, but not the last couple months. I wrote to apple to ask if they could resend me the last few albums. A resounding no was all I go and a policy statement. I assume this is all from the record companys. Anyway, I paid for the music and no longer had it, so I saw a thing called share*za, I now have it all again, and now im thinking do I really ever need to buy from Apple again, this program was awesome, and free and I replaced all my music, no DMRs, just plain pirated. Wont be paying for music again....

[gandor62]

Re the above comment from me.

Ummm I dont condone piracy, just meant that I would not pay online. Buy your music on CD, then convert or download to electronic format.

Support artists.

[itymon]

It's all true, but we can't do too much to stop it. There's always ignorant people who have no idea exactly what they're doing when they "buy" a song on itunes.

[sportster883]

I couldn't agree more. I have not purchased any music for over five years and I still refuse to. And I'll be damned if I'll pay for a song I can't even hold in my hand as a CD or other media. I merely replay old favorites I have had since before the piracy began. Corporate greed was ignited by the private greed of 2000 song playlists on everyone's downloaded (pirated) hard drives. You reap what you sow.

[BlueLightCurtain]

What happened to buying CDs people? I can rip the songs to my computer, make them any quality I want, and assuming that the worst happens and my hard drive gets wiped, I haven't lost a thing. I care enough to support the artist, (no matter how small a percentage of profit they get, it's still better than nothing) but I refuse to give iTunes a cent of my money.

[gracelet]

What a lame and whiney rant from Mr. Reisinger. I have a lot of fun in the iTunes Store. I buy stuff in there all the time, love shopping there because it's so attractively designed and so easy to navigate. And I am no victim of anything. I am a proactive consumer of digital music. I buy it at iTunes Store, at Amazon and at eMusic. I also buy CDs, usually online but not always, and rip them to my machines. I have to say I have the most fun shopping for music in the iTunes Store.

Who knows why Mr. Reisinger wrote up his whine. Who cares if the music industry laughs all the way to the bank every time they sell a track (with or without DRM on it). I am not babysitting the music industry this week. I am... let's see, it's midsummer so I'm... shopping for more hazy dance remixes to play in the car...

In any case, the iTunes Store has done nothing but demonstrate a very cool and convenient way to sell music in the 21st century, and shown the planet how to make a go of it. They still sell some stuff in there with DRM and they also now sell some stuff without it as well. That BOTH TYPES CONTINUE TO SELL in the iTunes store speaks plainly for the weakness of Mr. Reisinger's whine. How do I know both types still sell? I still buy both types, doh.

Personally I loathe stealers of music and I have ZERO problems with the iTunes style of DRM. Zero. The iTunes terms are very generous, and it's grade-school simple to burn selected tracks to CDs and re-import them as aac or mp3 and stick them on a cellphone or whatever. I do that a few times a year when I tire of what's on my cellphones and an old PDA that I still like to keep some music on.

And since it's not a life-on-earth requirement to be a gold plated audiophile, I happen not to care what the bit rate of my hazy dance remix tracks started out as or whether they end up prancing out of my ancient car's radio at 128aac over an iPod's FM transmission. Hazy dance remix is hazy dance remix, baby. It's summertime... I'm putting on the red shoes and dancing to the end of the last beach.

As far as dealing with the iTunes authorizations, an allowance for five machines and unlimited iPods is pretty generous, and I think their offer to reset your auths once a year is generous too. Whoever complains about that not being generous enough is not being honest about what they do with all their auths, or else does not understand how to remove and then reinstate authorizations before and after doing maintenance on their machines. So grow up and learn how to manage your auths or else go buy your stuff someplace where you're more comfortable shopping. The rest of us customers probably will not miss hearing your complaints...

[joblolboj]

I avoid I-tunes altogether and buy non DRM encumbered music from Amazon. How hard is that?