“UK music lovers are getting frustrated with restrictions placed on digital music tracks once they buy them from online stores, says PC Pro magazine. The magazine reported that people are also being turned off net music stores because of pricing and disappointing sound quality compared to CDs,” BBC News reports. “The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said legal music downloads rose by 900% in 2004.”
“Last week, the UK’s official singles chart included sales of legal tracks. Yet legal downloads are still fledglings in the music industry, accounting for two percent of the market, according to PC Pro’s Nick Ross. ‘What people don’t understand is that when they buy an iPod or other digital music player, they’re being tied into a system,’ said Mr Ross, deputy labs editor at PC Pro. ‘Many of our readers have already been caught out, buying tracks but being unable to play them on their player,'” BBC News reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Read the readers’ responses to the BBC article and you’ll see that the ones who are most frustrated seem to be those customers not using Apple’s iTunes Music Store (iTMS). iTMS users don’t see at all frustrated to us, except for the one who writes, “I had been using iTunes music store since it opened in the UK and bought plenty of music on there. However, recently one of my hard disks failed and I lost all my music. No matter, I thought, I will re-rip the CDs I have and re-download the music I bought on iTunes, after all, they have a record of every track I have paid for. Alas, the music I paid for has gone forever. I find it staggering that such an obvious benefit of online music distribution has been overlooked.”
Back up? Of course, everyone should back up their music (and other files) for safety. Your hard drive WILL fail at some time. Now, should Apple figure out a way to let you re-download your lost songs? If it’s technically possible, perhaps Apple should – even if for a fee. Keep in mind that if you go buy a CD at a music shop today and you lose it, the music shop isn’t going to replace that CD for you. This is another advantage of digital online music downloads that Apple should exploit, so that iTMS customers can never “lose” their music in the future.
Back to the subject at hand. If you want to avoid frustration, just go get an iPod and use iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. It’s simply the best, most-seamless solution available.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Study shows Apple iTunes Music Store pay-per-download model preferred over subscription service – April 11, 2005
Apple’s iPod and iTunes show big leads in teen marketshare – April 06, 2005
Mossberg: Apple’s iTunes Music Store vs. Napster To Go – March 18, 2005
Analyst: Apple’s Steve Jobs winning ‘game of chess’ against Microsoft, other iPod+iTunes competitors – February 24, 2005
Piper Jaffray: Apple iTunes downloads could reach one billion in calendar 2006 – February 22, 2005