“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
Actually, if you have an iPod, whatever music you have stored on that iPod is a backup… You just have to do a quick and easy search on how to get those hidden tracks that are on the iPod copied back to your computer… or get one of the myriad of Freeware/Shareware products that will put those songs back on your computer for you.
http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?mode=basic&action=search&str=ipod&plt;%5B%5D=macosx&x=15&y=9
i love itms. i’m buying more music, all be it on a track by track basis. downloadable music is going to move the industry back to singles based system; which is good for the buyer not for the labels as they would prefer you purchase an entire album. what i would like to see is the music store recognise that i already own a song and not charge me for it if i decide to download the entire album later. you know like pay $9 for an album instead of $9.99 if i already own a track off the album. this happened to me with john legend. i bought “lifted” love it so much bought the album, still got charged for “lifted” even thought itms told me i was about to download a track i already owned.
Pre-owned CDs are a good alternative. So far, in my experience,
the quality of the CD is pristine at half the original cost. And you can rip them at whatever bit rate you prefer, backup, and resell.
Yes, It is always a good idea to back up important files, songs.
To save all track info on purchased itunes use data option on burn preference pane. Also, choose higher bit rate to import own CDs. Trouble is, the higher the quality the more space taken up on hard drive. That is where converting or importing with “Apple Lossless” encoder comes in handy. A relative minor tradeoff that is usually acceptable to my ears and itunes jukebox.
MW: think
I’m with the re-download crowd. I backup my music, and even have two iPods, but I still have fear, that one iPod will die, and have 10 or 50 songs that never made it to the other iPod, or would have been backed up the next time I plug in my LaCie, but alas, I hadn’t done so in a week or so. Also, just fear of things like fire, theft, etc.
Sure, I don’t think its Apple’s responsibility to save my ass; I just believe they have the ability to, and it would be great if they offered. My music collection is massive; so it would be great to have a safety net for anything I purchased digitally. Plus a number of software vendors are doing this already. My email and password will allow me access to a download area, where I can grab anything I’ve priorly purchased.
H*ll, tie it in to .Mac, it would make keeping the account worthwhile. Now I only use it for synchronizing bookmarks and address. I use to use it for pictures and videos, but now that I use Expression Engine (EE) to manage my sites, .Mac lost one more reason for spending $99 a year on it. But if .Mac included “music insurance” the ability to download whatever music you bought, whenever you need. I’d have not a single question about retaining my account for next year.
Johnny Boy,
If you knew how CD’s worked, you would realize that the problem you have has NOTHING to do with iTunes.
NO CD’s have the track info on them. Stick any CD into any player (not connected to the internet) and it will say Track 01, Track 02. etc. Tack name, album info, etc. is not included on commercial CD’s
It is only the online CD DB’S that have the track info in them.
Another thing – I totally agree with MDN’s anaolgy of: “Keep in mind that if you go buy a CD at a music shop today and you lose it (or scratch it, or break it), the music shop isn’t going to replace that CD for you”
THAT is the defintive summation to this discussion. Apple should NOT have to replace a single bit of your music. You lose it – too frigging bad . It is your OWN fault, not theirs.
Ransath,
Apple doesn’t have to do ANYTHING for us. But that’s not the point. Do they have to give us a free 30 seconds sample? Of course not, but they do because it will ultimately result in more profit for them. They want us to spend our money on their products and not the competition. To do so, they need to provide something that we want/need and which the competition does not offer. And that’s the reason why I’m back to buying CDs. iTMS just doesn’t offer me enough to of a reason to download their songs.
King,
“iTMS just doesn’t offer me enough of a reason to download their songs.”
You got THAT right. I am with you
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