“Like millions around the world, you have an iPod, the market-leading digital music player made by Apple Computer Inc. and have spent perhaps a few hundred dollars buying songs from the company’s iTunes music store. But do you really own the tunes? Whether you do, however, depends on how you define ownership,” Duncan Martell reports for Reuters. “Those songs you bought online from Apple play just fine, of course, so long you do so on the company’s iTunes digital jukebox software, on an iPod, burn a CD (you can only burn the same ‘playlist,’ or collection of songs, seven times), or stream them wirelessly to your stereo using another Apple gizmo. But Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management, or DRM, software prevents you from listening to those purchased songs on a music player from Dell Inc., Creative, Sony, or others. The same thing goes for songs you’ve imported to your computer from CDs you already own.”
MacDailyNews Take: Misleading and incorrect. You can burn any song purchased from the iTunes Music Store to music CD an unlimited number of times. A specific iTunes playlist containing a protected track can be copied to a CD up to seven times before the playlist must be changed. Songs that you’ve imported into iTunes from CDs that you already own are not encoded with Apple’s FairPlay DRM. As songs can be imported into iTunes using AAC, AIFF, MP3, WAV, and Apple Lossless, any player or application that supports any of those formats will play such tracks without a problem.
Martell continues, “To be sure, Apple rivals have their own DRM technology to protect against piracy, such as Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp., but none have been as successful so far as Apple. The Cupertino, California-based company has a 70-percent market share in the United States for digital music players, and higher than that for music purchased online. Beyond just having songs you bought from iTunes ‘trapped’ on the iPod and in iTunes, it’s also not a snap to move songs from an iPod – whether you bought them or initially pulled them off a CD – back up to a computer. While it’s possible to do so, Apple doesn’t make it easy, right off the bat, because it’s trying to discourage piracy.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “schreiber” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Only Apple’s iTunes works for both Mac and Windows PC users. The also-rans music services offer only Windows-only DRM from Microsoft. Again, the song purchased from iTunes Music Store is not “trapped” on the iPod and iTunes; it plays on Motorola phones and can also be burned to music CD and used anywhere. If you wish to go from iPod to computer, first blame the music labels for not allowing Apple to offer that feature, and then go download something like iPodRip (one among many) to accomplish the task.
We can play iTunes Music Store-purchased songs on Macs, Windows PCs, iPod models for every budget, Motorola phones, and burn them to CDs to play in CD players or import into other computers and/or music players. If we join a subscription service or use another à la carte service (Windows-only) with some “soon-to-be-discontinued, won’t-intgrate-with-my-vehicle, has-no-accessories, parent-company-is-hemorrhaging-cash or reorganizing” digital media player, do we get less lock-in or more?
This article is backwards, misleading, and outright incorrect in places. Martell should do better (or some) research next time. If he had, he’d realize that Apple’s iPod+iTunes is the least “limiting” legal solution available. All of the other online music services are Windows-only, offer smaller libraries, fewer exclusives, no video, etc., and work only with inferior also-ran devices. Why does the fact that Apple’s competitors have failed miserably make them magically immune from Martell’s criticism? If Martell’s so hell-bent on writing about not “owning” songs, he really needs to check out any of the subscription plans offered by the likes of Napster, Real, etc.
Readers should ask themselves what’s the point of this article? Who is it really intended to serve? Certainly not consumers of digital media players and/or online media. So who really benefits from an article that’s laden with mistakes and misleading statements about Apple’s FairPlay DRM? Answer that one honestly and perhaps we’ll be closer to understanding the point of writing and publishing it.
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Related articles:
SmartMoney publishes compendium of iPod FUD – May 11, 2006
MDN: “Readers should ask themselves what’s the point of this article?”
To troll for hits, possibly. But probably more so to inculcate the drone masses against Apple’s solutions.
MDN: “Who is it really intended to serve?”
The author, his employer, and the Microsoft hegemony. In that order.
But it’s not working. Thankfully.
With all of these blatantly false Apple articles coming out recently, it’s difficult not to be conspiracy minded (i.e. Microsoft). However, I keep reminding myself of the saying, “Never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by stupidity.”
MDN, do you email the writers of the articles you comment on? if not, you sooo should lol.
What do you expect when his quotable source is Rob Enderle?
At the end of the article he does indicate that the limitations are the fault of the rights holders and labels. You do have to wade through a lot of FUD first.
The article quotes everyone’s favorite village idiot, Rob Enderle.
Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Don’t blame the author, just his sources.
You people are idiots. The article is a commentary on the reality of DRM and its restrictions. Pick your flavor…they all limit choice and thats the reality. Apple just happens to not taste as bad.
thanks for the continuing great news article links, MDN.
“But Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management, or DRM, software prevents you from listening to those purchased songs on a music player from Dell Inc., Creative, Sony, or others. The same thing goes for songs you’ve imported to your computer from CDs you already own.”
Actually the first part is true – unless you rip the purchased songs to a CD and then import them as mp3 (degrading sound quality), iTunes purchases won’t play on non-Apple music players.
The second statement is obviously an error – this article writer simply didn’t get the facts straight.
Again, this article only serves to get people arguing; it provides no information or news about Macs, and hardly belongs in a “daily news” page.
“You people are idiots. The article….”
Nice way to start off your comment.
No the article is critical of Apple and their DRM scheme, and he uses false information to support his argument. Never has iTunes put DRM on a song that’s been ripped from a CD. Thats a pretty glaring error.
Ok, now apparently, I can go back to being an idiot now according to you.
“Again, this article only serves to get people arguing; it provides no information or news about Macs, and hardly belongs in a “daily news” page”
I’d like to see MDN post only articles when Apple releases a product. It would be fun to see then how many people would bitch about how MDN never updates their site with new content.
Bottom line, if you don’t like the site, why come here? If you don’t like an article, why read it. Just move on.
Hey, the guy from Reuters who wrote this article is my friend.
If you send him a polite email explaining why you might disagree with his point of view — he’ll reply politely to you too.
Duncan.Martell@reuters.com
See for yourself, and remember — you be polite so he’ll be polite too.
Duncan’s friend,
Bill
Hell, I was wondering why the FUDsters were ignoring the Mac’s awesome little buddy of late, was feeling a little left out I was. Anyway… it’s a beautiful day around here dudes, so don’t hate me for logging off to go for an afternoon skate. Needless to say my iPod’s charged and loaded, and ready to rock my butt on down the trail, with visions of new iBooks and red iPods dancing in my head! So suck it!:
Vista
Microsoft
Dell
T’rott
Donut Boy
Monkey Boy
Who flung Woo?
and the rest of you Chumps (yeah, you know who you are).
In about that order too…
Peacehat!
Yeah right.
Duncan Martell’s friend: The Billage Idiot?
Actually, eMusic has the most liberal DRM of any of the other online music stores. As the #2 store, they get little press on macdailynews, but they have a great selection and interesting business model.
Of course, the bozo writing this article wouldn’t know this from a complete absence of simple research. Can these guys even do a simple google search before writing an article? Damn.
It’s great to read the rebuttals on MacDailyNews for the blatant lies about Apple’s products.
The problem is that most of the people that read those articles will never get to see the real story. MacDailyNews and the other Apple information sites need to find a way to get their rebuttals and the truth on the mainstream information outlets. Otherwise these myths and lies will only continue to grow.
I’ve bought a few things from iTMS (because I was given a £15 iTMS Voucher), and while the purchasing is blissfully, almost dangerously, simple, actually using the music outside iTunes and iPod is a pain. Has anyone tried using non AIFF in Final Cut ? It sounds terrible. Can’t convert protected AAC to AIFF without wasting money on a CD blank, reimporting, and having to type/C&P the damn name of the song in again.
Also, I bought a radio show recently, and there’s nothing on iTMS to warn about the seriously low quality. The normal rate is fine, but this was 32kbits mono. That might even be OK for speech, but this show has a lot of music throughout. While it was quite a lot cheaper than the CDs, honestly, I feel ripped off by the quality. It’s also 6 episodes over 3 hours in 2 files, the first being 1:50, which most certainly doesn’t fit on one CD when burned from iTMS. So it just splits at an inconvenient point in the middle of an episode. In short, it sucks.
So really, while some people might be happy with iTMS, I will continue to advise against it and suggest buying real CDs instead, which will be owned rather than rented long term. iTMS is not buying a tangible product, it’s buying non-transferable license. You can’t sell it if you want to, or worse, if you find you need to.
OK. There are mistakes in the article which is suggesting that iTMS/Fairplay is worse that the competition, and that’s just plain wrong. iTMS is better than the competition (unless you include CDs), but Fairplay is just as bad.
Buy from iTMS and you’ve been conned by The Man.
Why all the Apple hate and FUD? Year after year, the same crap. I just don’t understand why it persists. Hard to believe in conspiracies, but some things do make you wonder!
Hey flappo!
Great response on Mothers Day!
Been watching Deadwood??!!
Macaholic, FUD is real. It is fabricated by those with their own agenda.
Reuters have written a number of false or misinformed stories about Apple products and those stories then get reprinted all over the world as fact.
Reuters were the people who claimed as a fact that Apple had announced a $100 iPod when what they were actually announced a couple of days later was the iPod mini. As a result, people were very disappointed that Apple failed to produce the $100 iPod that they had been led to expect. Reuters’ fictitious story was copied extensively printed as though it were true.
Reuters is a company that was once reputable, but clearly isn’t any more. There are other stories unrelated to Apple where Reuters appear to have invented things to make a story more interesting.
RELEASE THE ZEALOTS!!!
PLUS, THE RAII ARE GREEDY!
WE WILL OVERCOME…
After so many of these carbon copies of literal dysentery, shouldn’t each <i>writer<> be accused of plagiarism? And the monotonous repeat offenders are serial plagiarists. “Hey, look at that. My vomit looks exactly like yours. We must’ve swallowed the same garbage.”
MW: research – dig the irony
Just let Duncan know what you think of his article
Duncan.Martell@reuters.com
Duncan’s former friend,
Bill
You’re in a prison cell cheering on the guard; forever betting there will never ever be a better place to live.
I agree with the above poster, you people ARE idiots.
MDN is wrong to say that iTunes has the least restrictive DRM of any legal online musioc source. Emusic is 100% and completely free of DRM. Import, copy, burn, export, edit, share do whatever you want with it, or at least every thats legal to do with a CD. And it’s cheaper than iTunes, especially if you buy a lot of music. As in most places buying in bulk saves. check it out. I love apple and itunes but I just want to be trusted to decide what’s right and wrong to do with my music.