Comments on: New IMN Podcast Up and iTunes Fallout

By: themcp

themcp — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:15:21 +0000

well, neither and both. the fact is that their player (and therefore their store) is unavailable to me on my home computers. which is fine, they don’t owe me access to their store, but i wish they wanted my money more. if there was a way to get to the store on Linux (say, over the web), I’d certainly use it.

eMusic, btw, does have a download manager — but it’s community developed, open source and actually optional (you can download individual songs without the manager now). more importantly, it is lightweight and doesn’t phone home.

Amazon’s download manager is closed, and sucks, but at least they offer a Linux version, so they are more successful at getting my money.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:29:50 +0000

Is it the media player aspect in specific or the software install in general? If you’re just referring to iTunes the player, I can understand where you’re coming from and agree. The only argument I would see coming from Apple would be the streamlined experience of the music coming from one program, being stored in one program, and going to their preferred device. It works for me, but everybody’s mileage may vary. And the others stores require some form of download to use their services (eMusic, Amazon).

By: themcp

themcp — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:22:06 +0000

It’s great that they’ve made this step, but as long as they require me to install their crappy media player (which doesn’t work on my computer anyway) to buy music from them then I’ll pass. What’s the argument for locking down the iTunes store now that the music isn’t DRM’d? Why not put it on the web, or at least remove their encryption hashes so that projects like SharpMusique can work again. Without the DRM lockdown, it doesn’t seem like they are gaining anything from not allowing the most possible users… I can personally vouch for the fact that there a tons and tons (at least a dozen!) Linux users out there who would love to buy music from them now.

On the format side — AAC is great. I use both Amorak and Rythmbox at home – “sudo apt-get install libxine-extracodecs” and i was in business.