i’d like to buy steve jobs and the folks at EMI a drink! why? Apple and EMI (the world’s third-biggest record label) have made a deal to sell the entire EMI music catalogue as non-DRM & unrestricted mp3s from the iTunes store! this is really great! no locks! thank you! also read EMI’s great press release with links to a podcast of the event. that means that the EMI track you pay for at the iTunes store will play in your ipod and also on any other mp3 player on the market. previously, a track downloaded from the itunes store would ONLY play on an ipod, (which is like buying a CD or a record that only plays on a particular brand of player - not on all players). that’s one of the things DRM does and that’s just silly! glad to see common sense prevailing. in remembering steve job’s letter about removing DRM from the all of the itunes music store library, i am hopeful that more deals like this will be reached. here’s the breakdown of the price structure with the Apple & EMI non-DRM mp3 deal (from the bbc website):
99¢ single = digital locks and at 128kbps quality (DRM! boo! hiss!)
$1.29 single = no digital locks and 256kbps high quality (non-DRM! yay! hi-five!)
Album prices unchanged with no locks and all at 256kbps (non-DRM! yay! hi-five!)
yes, the non-DRM costs more. but it is a much higher quality mp3. and, removing DRM is definitely a step in the right direction.
from boingboing: itunes store will sell entire EMI catalogue DRM-free!
from wired: thank you, uncle steve!
avoid it! avoid it like the plague! do NOT upgrade your mac or pc to iTunes 7. stay with iTunes 6. if you still don’t like itunes 6, at least it works and won’t delete your music files. itunes 7 (7.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2, etc.) is absolutely wretched. on my mac, it’s as slow as molasses, crashes and/or freezes, and if you hook an ipod or ishuffle up to it, set aside a lot of time if you want to edit your playlist - if it will connect at all. this has been happening since late september with my automatic update to 7.0 - and with all subsequent upgrades and ‘bug fixes’ up to 7.0.2, these problems remain. itunes 7 is just incredibly buggy and it’s a shame apple is using it’s customer base as beta testers. here’s a direct link to an old version of 6.0.5 for mac online (link is 19.8 megs). and here are some tips on uninstalling itunes 7 here and here.
UPDATE: followed the great instructions on the macfixitforums and the rollback to iTunes 6.0.5 worked great!
the mighty iTunes mp4 protection has been cracked! from seidai software comes FairGame, software that will convert the songs you purchased on an iTunes store to an unprotected format - keeping all original metadata, artwork, lyric, and album information intact. fairgame has several pre-requisites before it can be used, like having iMovie HD installed and enabling ‘access for assistive devices’ in the universal access control panel. only works on a mac with OSX. but nice to see this happening. buying music from the apple store is like buying a CD that will only play on one specific type of player. kind of nuts, and also kind of a recipe for a monopoly. doesn’t everyone know that the archos media players are worlds better than any ipod (thanks tony!)?. i’m serious. linky via boingboing via thornography.
Also, adrienne sent in this report the other day from BBC, titled itunes copy protection cracked. as music downloaded from an itunes store can ONLY be played on an ipod, the code that prevents music downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store being played on any portable player other than an iPod has been “cracked”. this reverse-engineering has been done by Jon Lech Johansen. his company DoubleTwist hopes to distribute the cracking code to other media player producers. that is great news.
all the hullabaloo about the new 