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

[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.