I would just like to say . . .

[kindkit]

. . . on discovering that a good deal of music I legally downloaded and paid for several years ago is now completely unplayable:

FUCK DRM

FUCK YAHOO AND ESPECIALLY THE SCAM FORMERLY KNOWN AS MUSICMATCH

FUCK DRM

FUCK DRM

FUCK DRM

FUCK DRM


And while we're at it: FUCK WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER FOR BEING USELESS. Why can't I make it list all the songs I own in alphabetical order?

(Yes, I have and generally use VLC Player. While it's perfectly good for playing music and great for video, it's no good at all for other functions one might occasionally want, such as playlists, or even just looking through one's music library. Also, it failed to overcome the fucking fucking EVIL DRM on the files I can no longer play.)

You know, amazon.com has its less than wonderful aspects, but at least when I buy music from them, it's mine. I can burn it, transfer it to my mp3 player, and keep on playing it for however long I want, regardless of what Amazon does or even whether I keep being an Amazon customer. You know why? Because it's DRM-FREE.

*fumes*

Oh, and on the subject of media players and libraries, I would like your opinions about iTunes as currently incarnated. Is it actually easy to use, unlike WMP which went from semi-dysfunctional to completely buggered over the last few years? Will it attempt to install DRM on files I already own, or try to convert them to an iTunes-only format? (I don't plan on buying anything from iTunes. See above re: DRM. I just want a music library I can use.) I had iTunes some years back but it annoyed me and I never used it. But that was when WMP was only semi-dysfunctional.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Fuck DRM forever. This is why I still don't buy many books online - unless it's small press, the books available in Australia are mostly DRMed.

I use iTunes with the extra bits switched off. It doesn't add DRM, but it does convert files into an mp4 format. That's not iTunes exclusive. (Australian iTunes no longer has any DRM which is great, but some of my older tracks still have it!) It is easy to use, but it is a memory hog, updates annoyingly frequently and tries to get you to add on other (free) Apple products.

[kindkit]

*sigh* I know some of my purchased ebooks have DRM, which is likely to bite me in the ass someday.

The iTunes file converstion thing could be annoying; I don't want to have multiple copies of the same music file in different formats.

[dancesontrains]

Don't touch iTunes, it's a bloated mess. Maybe http://www.winamp.com/ will be better?

[dancesontrains]

Or http://www.mediamonkey.com/

[kindkit]

MediaMonkey seems like it might be interesting; winamp immediately rubs me the wrong way by looking a lot like Windows Media Player. I really just want a simple program that will give me control, unlike WMP which assumes I'm an idiot who needs to be protected from myself (e.g. it wouldn't let me change information on an album that it misidentified) and who wants to use two different programs just to manage a library.

[st_aurafina]

Is there anything we can replace? I've been slowly rebuilding our music library without DRM, so I'm happy to upload. (I'm not sure how much our music overlaps, though, apart from some better known TISM tracks.)

[kindkit]

I may post about this later--thanks.

[ten]

If you want an alternative to iTunes that still has all the same functions, http://getsongbird.com/ is another option.

[kindkit]

I already have Songbird; I'd forgotten I had it because I found it pretty frustrating to use. Although what most frustrated me was trying to use it with my mp3 player; I could never figure out how to upload, say, a single track or album without synching the whole player to my music library, which I didn't want to do. Plus I kept ending up with multiple copies of everything on my player. Used just as a library manager it might work better.

[starlady]

I like iTunes just fine. It doesn't enforce DRM (WTF, seriously), and it doesn't actually convert anything unless you tell it to convert files on import. I do use the iTunes format (AAC, which is a hybrid mp4 format iirc) because I have a Mac and and iPod and AAC takes less space than MP3, but that's my choice and not the program.

[kindkit]

Thanks for the info. I'm still undecided about iTunes, but if I can't find another alternative to the hideous Windows Media Player I may ending up trying it again.