adamyntium

Buying legal online music may be cheap, but it’s still a pain in the ass

I think this IM exchange pretty much says it all.

Friend: hey can you download a coldplay song for me?
Friend: i don’t want to install napster

Me: heh heh, such a lazy bastard.

Friend: http://www.napster.com/bestbuy_coldplay.html [promo entitling him to a “free” and legal download]
Friend: i bought the CD
Friend: and it’s a stupid gimmick for me to download it

Me: I thought it was a pretty smart gimmick 😛

Friend: not smart enough

Me: Unfortunately, I won’t be able to directly download ‘n’ transfer to track to you…

Friend: oh no?

Me: ’cause it still will have DRM on it tied to my Napster installation.

Friend: why?
Friend: if it’s a free song
Friend: wouldn’t it be ownable?
Friend: otherwise, it’s not free

Me: so what I’d have to do is download it, then play it, record the stream, save the new file, and send you the new file.

Friend: then forget it

Me: Dude, free is not free in today’s music world. It’s sad.

Friend: this is stupid

Me: Of course it’s stupid.

Me: but it’s the same with iTunes.
Me: you “buy” a song… you don’t own it, no matter what the iPod fanboys gush.

Friend: i’ll get it from the p2p nets

* * *

Adding insulting to injury, my friend just informed me that he can’t even play the CD he just purchased in his computer’s CD-ROM drive, likely due to some (@*#&! copy-protection. Unsurprisingly, he’s returning the CD to the store where he bought it.

May the recording industry not only die a painful death, but may it do so at an enhanced pace.

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Adam Lasnik

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2 responses to “Buying legal online music may be cheap, but it’s still a pain in the ass”

  1. Bee Avatar
    Bee

    My CD player can’t play some of the copy-protected CDs… but I’m lucky that I can still play it on my computer’s CD-ROM drive.

    I also do not like the fact that I can’t rip those copy-protected CDs without all the noise…I just want to listen to them from my mp3 player!

    Ah… i just googled and got to know there’s a way! Read this http://www.suslik.org/Writings/musicrip.html

    Reply
  2. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    If you listened to Ween or the Dead (or Swervedriver, which is what I’m listening to now), you wouldn’t have this challenge. (You’d get some unique bootlegs too). Not all artists are in league with some money-grubbing distribution/production racket, and sometimes people make music because it’s what they like to do, not because they want to make money off the broadest possible demographics. Not exactly targeted traffic…

    Okay, enough out of me. Nice blog!

    Reply

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