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Apple to cut copy protection and costs on iTunes.


Ollie

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If I can buy 320k mp3s for a reasonable price, I will become a customer.

192k will tempt me with some of the itunes exclusive material. But I refuse to pay for locked formats that are player restricted, and which editors won't open.

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Yea! This is a good step in the right direction, but honestly even 69 cents is still way too much to pay for a 128kbps AAC file. 2 cents would be too much for that.

Start selling apple lossless for 69 cents and they could have my business...

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Yep, I agree with that.

Thing is, I consider 99p a good price for one track (192k mp3 minimum that is), given how many times I will listen to it. However, I think that the price per track should then come down very quickly as, say, you buy more from the same artist, to the point where an album should be maybe £4-5, but certainly less than you would expect to pay for a CD.

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I'm sure Marian will be "thrilled" about this. Maybe now he can finally stop being afraid of Apple and get an iPod.

Why, do they now come with OGG/FLAC support, an open API and without those annoying wheels? :angry:

It's a step in the right direction though. Perhaps in a couple of decades, we may watch movies at home without DRM, too.

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Some article picked up a quote that annoyed me, something along the lines of "the more locks, the cheaper the music" - the locks shouldn't be there to begin with. If you bought a CD (for the same amount probably) you'd have 100% freedom.

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How do you discern the DRM files from the higher bitrate & DRM-free files anyway? The info doesn't give away the bitrate. Only by that small '+' sign?

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Only use for iTunes is the exclusive digital downloads.

Yeah I've only bought stuff from iTunes that isn't available to buy on CDs.

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How do you discern the DRM files from the higher bitrate & DRM-free files anyway? The info doesn't give away the bitrate. Only by that small '+' sign?

The little "+" indicates the DRM-free 256k files.

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I prefer the labels issue expanded scores on CD. I don't really like the idea of download only.

If they were released as lossless files I'd be thrilled. What do I do with CDs now? I buy them and then put them on the computer and never play the CD again. It's such a waste. I don't need a physical disc. I find myself much more interested in the booklets now though.

Neil

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My computer is digitally hooked up to my stereo. There's no loss in quality and I can play any album at anytime. My iPod can control iTunes. It's so nice.

Neil

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My computer is digitally hooked up to my stereo. There's no loss in quality and I can play any album at anytime. My iPod can control iTunes. It's so nice.

Neil

How did you hook it up, by that I mean what type of connection did you use?

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Yay! The Casino Royale complete score is now on iTunes Plus, as is the Williams/Yo-Yo Ma Memoirs of a Geisha album.

Do you guys know that to remove the locks on files all you have to do is burn it to a CDR and then reimport it?

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I prefer the labels issue expanded scores on CD. I don't really like the idea of download only.

If they were released as lossless files I'd be thrilled. What do I do with CDs now? I buy them and then put them on the computer and never play the CD again. It's such a waste. I don't need a physical disc. I find myself much more interested in the booklets now though.

Some smaller online music stores offer digital booklet downloads. iTunes could (and should) do this. Album information is a major weakness at the moment.

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I prefer the labels issue expanded scores on CD. I don't really like the idea of download only.

If they were released as lossless files I'd be thrilled. What do I do with CDs now? I buy them and then put them on the computer and never play the CD again. It's such a waste. I don't need a physical disc. I find myself much more interested in the booklets now though.

Some smaller online music stores offer digital booklet downloads. iTunes could (and should) do this. Album information is a major weakness at the moment.

iTunes has digital booklets.

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Yay! The Casino Royale complete score is now on iTunes Plus, as is the Williams/Yo-Yo Ma Memoirs of a Geisha album.

Do you guys know that to remove the locks on files all you have to do is burn it to a CDR and then reimport it?

iTunes Plus doubles the bit rate of the AAC files. It's kind of a rip off that you have to pay to upgrade, but at the moment they're slashing the usual price, so I got 44 upgraded songs for about six dollars. Not too bad.

I prefer the labels issue expanded scores on CD. I don't really like the idea of download only.

If they were released as lossless files I'd be thrilled. What do I do with CDs now? I buy them and then put them on the computer and never play the CD again. It's such a waste. I don't need a physical disc. I find myself much more interested in the booklets now though.

Some smaller online music stores offer digital booklet downloads. iTunes could (and should) do this. Album information is a major weakness at the moment.

iTunes has digital booklets.

Really? I've never seen one. Sounds like they need to put more up.

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I just checked the companies website and they don't make it anymore. It's a device that hooks up to my USB port on my computer and then outputs digitally via a fiber optic or coaxial connector. It came with 30 foot runs of both wires, so I just run a coaxial line to my stereo. I'm happy with the results.

Neil

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Yay! The Casino Royale complete score is now on iTunes Plus, as is the Williams/Yo-Yo Ma Memoirs of a Geisha album.

Do you guys know that to remove the locks on files all you have to do is burn it to a CDR and then reimport it?

And lose further sound quality in the process.

Re. Mark O preferring CDs - I will restate a point I've made many times before. Scores must be cheaper and therefore more viable to release digitally than have to press a CD. Would you prefer an hour long CD, or a complete score on itunes? Pretend there's no third choice (or lossless for the second choice at best).

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Yay! The Casino Royale complete score is now on iTunes Plus, as is the Williams/Yo-Yo Ma Memoirs of a Geisha album.

Do you guys know that to remove the locks on files all you have to do is burn it to a CDR and then reimport it?

Ya but if you do that you loose quality when ripping it back to your hard drive. Like Neil I would have preferred it if they released them as lossless.

Edit: Rich beat me to it.

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There was a program I found and don't remember the name of that would copy your iTunes library straight into a non-protected format. However, you did need to be properly logged into your iTunes account, and it recorded the files in realtime, or at best double-time, so it is not at all a way to pirate an iTunes collection. It's just a timesaver to circumvent the burn/rip process.

Perhaps this is just a sign of the times that iTunes is evolving as technology, internet bandwidth, and consumer demand have changed.

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I've discovered something over the years: I am not average.

Neil

You got it wrong, dude... but my fingers are now too lazy to type the explanation... so maybe later. Stay tuned!

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I assume you lose metadata, too.

It's a device that hooks up to my USB port on my computer and then outputs digitally via a fiber optic or coaxial connector. It came with 30 foot runs of both wires, so I just run a coaxial line to my stereo. I'm happy with the results.

I've hooked up my soundblaster's SPDIF output to my living room amp's digital in and the two normal analogue outputs to the old stereo in my work room and the box for the wireless speakers I have in my kitchen. ROTFLMAO

I still prefer CDs myself, but the more I think about it, the more I don't like it. I never play the CDs, they take up space (it's nice to look at the shelf, but I'm running out of shelf space, too), and more importantly, they're an ultimately needless burden on the environment.

Also, I'm fairly positive that with the popularity of iTunes, portable music players and gaming consoles as media centres, it's only a matter of time until many people have *some* kind of PC hooked up to their stereos for playing their music. It might not be a regular PC and designed so as to not be recogniseable as one by the general public (in which case it'd probably run Linux, like most of these devices), but essentially it'll be the same.

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Not to sound like a noob, but where could I go to learn more about this SPDIF technology and its benefits? I just received the guts to the new gaming rig I'm going to build, and the motherboard has an onboard SPDIF connector, and the video card does as well. The stereo on my dresser, however, is a ten year old POS, but it's pretty far down on the list of things to replace next.

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