We got a new version of iTunes, version 4.5, last
week. With the new version comes a new limitation on burning songs
downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Instead of being able to
burn ten CDs of one playlist, now you can only burn seven.
There is a positive to the new version as well - now you can
have five computers authorized to play licensed songs, instead of
three as previously.
Thinking about it. If you need 8 or 9 copies of the same
playlist, you could just open up Toast and make a duplicate of the
CD you burned. That's easy enough.
It's the fact that Apple is limiting this at all that bothers
me. My LPs, CDs, and cassette tapes don't have any limits on the
amount of times I can copy them. I can make as many copies as I
want of the Iron
Maiden LP I'm currently listening to because there are no
restrictions in the recording itself that prevents me from doing
so.
And it's not just Apple doing it. Apple's limitations are
lenient compared to most other music downloading services! We all
know the recording industry is behind this, but why bother to
implement such restrictions when there are simple ways to
circumvent the "built in" protection?
We've got to keep the music industry happy, so it's got to be
there, even though it does practically nothing.
I'm not sure why anyone would want more than two or three copies
of one album anyway - perhaps one in the living room, one in the
bedroom, and one for the car. But it's the principle that something
would be embedded to prevent people from copying it "too many
times." (And you definitely want to burn at least one copy as a
backup in case your hard drive crashed.)
Then there's the whole authorization issue to deal with. Once
you've reached your limit, you've got to deauthorize one computer
before you can authorize another. Five computers is the limit. If
you should happen to be an extremely loyal Apple customer and buy a
new machine every time Apple releases something new, you might pass
your five machine limit pretty quickly. And after that? Your files
are useless if you don't remember to deauthorize your old
computers.
The fact is that iTunes is still quite clumsy when compared with
what could be out there. How about something that just works with
no authorization issues to deal with or useless restrictions on how
many CDs you can burn?
Not that the music industry would go for it at all, especially
because iTunes is quite successful as it is. But why? It's simple.
iTunes is currently the least complicated and least restrictive of
the major music download sites.
But what if you want your music restriction-free? What can you
do then?
Well, there's still the good old-fashioned record store, and
typically vinyl LPs are a few dollars cheaper than their CD
counterparts (yes, they still make LPs out of the albums by just
about any recent band you can think of, from The Darkness to [I
hate to say it] Britney
Spears).
If you want to save a bit of money on music and have no
forcefully imposed restrictions on how often you copy your tunes,
an LP might be for you.
You've also got to face the fact that while the iTunes Music
Store has a good selection of music, but they don't have
everything. It's amazing what interesting albums you can find at
used record stores, thrift shops, and garage sales. Many of these
older albums, whether LP or cassette, aren't available from the
iTunes Music Store - and sometimes they're not even available on
CD.
If you want your music on the computer, just record the songs
from the LP or tape and save them as MP3 files and use iTunes to
rip songs from CDs you own. Since they'll be unrestricted files,
you can then do what you like with them while resting assured that
you've still paid for your music.
