Interesting read... Sounds like he's hoping to drum up pressure on the record companies.

http://www.apple.com/hotn...tsonmusic/

As they age, Jobs just gets more hot, and Gates gets less nerdy but not anywhere near hot.

Imago said:

makes sense, since Apple's way sexier. I don't think Apple's better, but it's definitely packaged better.

NDRU said:

Way way way sexier.

I do agree that DRM doesn't really work. THere are too many ways around it.


But I think DRM works in Apple's favor and I disagree with jobs that 3% DRM files vs 97% DRM-free files is not enough to stick to Apple. I wouldn't for the love of god swap over just becuase of the fact that I have dozens of albums on Fairplay. But I may be in the minority


The record companies need to do a few things here:

1) Offer way way way more music online. (too much of what I like is not on any online store)

2) Drop the Price to make it easier for me to spend my money. It's already very convienient to use iTunes--make it very cheap too.



Apple needs to:

1) support .wma files (sorry, but they just do)

2) open up an independent section in the ITunes music store, where ANY musician can post his music, set his price, and ITunes gets a cut of the sale. I think that model would be uber cool for iTunes. (please don't yell at me if they are already doing this and I just don't know)

Imago said:

Jobs has been hot all along, imo... Gates, otoh, I'm sure is on the list of things one should think about to delay orgasm... (you know, your mother, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Gates)

Imago said:

Well, as far as I know, no one has yet cracked the DRM used on the TV shows and movies available from iTunes.




I suppose it wouldn't hurt Apple much due to that fact they are mainly out to make money off of iPods, and the average user doesn't know they can use other apps besides iTunes to transfer music to them, and the store's built-in, sooo...




Why?



Independent musicians can already submit their work, as far as I know. However, they have to agree to the same contract and prices used by everyone else.

with regards to .wma support, it's not that I think .wma files are the best thing since sliced bread.

It's just that I adopted Napster's online service 2 years before I bought an iPod. I have 2 years worth of music on that, and still haven't burned all those albums to CD.

Also, I know alot of people who have most of their music in .wma, and they didn't get iPods basically because of that. I was told that Apple argues that there are sound quality issues with .wma files, and I'm not going to argue against that, but it's a common enough file format that it just makes sense for them to support it.

SureThing said:

Some of Travis Barker's music uses DRM.

Imago said:

What is DRM?

DRM sounded like a good idea on paper, but after several years of using it, it's too much of a nuisance and too restrictive. The NPGMC shutting down is a prime example of what really sucks about DRM... you can only hope the place that you bought it from will remain online forever, because if it needs to re-verify your license at any time, you're screwed. Moving the files to an external hard drive, for example, can trigger this.

Also, DRM protected files can't be edited. So if you were making a little home video on your computer for example, and you wanted to put a song in the background, if it's DRM protected, it won't work - it will block you from importing the file.

Having separate companies all come out with their own version of content protection would be a nightmare. They ought to just sell stuff without any content protection and leave it be.

WMA files sound practically the same as MP3 files of the same bitrate IMO.

On a related topic, is there any difference sound-wise between MP3 and Apple's iTunes coding (ACC, I think it's called)?

Imago said:

I think it probably comes down to license fees for wma. However, iTunes will convert wma files to a supported format so I don't see a big deal here. If we're talking about Protected "PlaysForSure" wma files then I really don't think Apple should have to pay a fee for every iPod sold to M$.

NDRU said:

I think it sounds better at the same bitrates but these days I do just about everything in 320 AAC or ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec).

jtfolden said:

jtfolden said:

sorry, which sounds better at the same bitrate? MP3?

I'm on the verge of going back to stealing music rather than buying it through iTunes. I iTunes, but I'm so sick of wanting to share music with music-lovin' friends and having DRM problems. And I don't want to have to strip all of that music one way or another. It's possible, but it's a pain.

And I'm sure as hell not willing to wait a week for a CD to arrive, or go find a store that has what I'm looking for, when I could get it one way or another online, or when I only want a single song.

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Burning a CD is a pain?

jtfolden said:

If they don't live next door to me, yes, it is!

HereToRockYourWorld said:

No, I mean, by the act of burning a CD all protection is removed. You can do whatever you want with it after that and it's quicker than waiting around on a torrent.

jtfolden said:

It never occured to me to burn and re-import.

That works, eh?

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Yup, once they are on the CD, it's just a normal sound file like anything else.

Just set the encoding bitrate to be slightly higher than whatever it was on the original file to, hopefully, avoid noticeable degradation of the audio. (I think all iTunes store files are 128 AAC, so choose something like 192, 256, 320 AAC in the Import Preferences.


---

In related news, it has come to light that EMI is in talks with online music stores to release a bulk of it's library without DRM. It will be interesting to see if this works out.

jtfolden said:

Do you understand on a more technical level why that works? I mean, all you do when you burn a cd is copy a file onto different type of media, right, so. . . why should the DRM be stripped? Is that always true, or is that just how iTunes is designed?

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Becuase the CD format is a legacy format that never accounted for DRM when it was developed back in the 80s.

It's also not lossless so what you're hearing is full spectrum sound where as .mp3 and aac can be encoded to give only the sound that the human ear can here (I forget the decible range), and this in turn can take up less data.

So if you burn anything to CD, DRM is sortof stripped from it.

At least that's my understanding

I admit I could be way way wrong.
[Edited 2/9/07 14:04pm]

HereToRockYourWorld said:

When I said burn a CD, I meant using iTunes to make a normal audio CD in case that wasn't clear (That's why you have to re-encode - rip - the tracks back in). I didn't mean just copying the bare .m4p tracks to a data CD.

When making an audio CD, the file format must be of a particular type. This particular spec doesn't support encryption and, therefore, all DRM must be stripped to create it.

jtfolden said:

Huh. Interesting. Thanks.