Is today the day iTunes goes non DRM ?

[Gottaa]

Apple Insider seem to be suggesting today Apple will be going non-DRM and over x-mas period there will be some pretty good deals here for free music/albums/video's, etc, etc.

If you have an iPod or iTunes, keep an eye out, even if they are just right about the good deals it'll be worth it.

A little late for me as I got NoteBurner and ripped all the DRM off my iTunes stuff already but good if it'll make it easier in the future

 

[Janie]

I find iTunes best for finding hard to get b-sides and odd songs I like by artists I prehaps don't want an entire album by! Or those annoying 'Greatest Hits' packages that include one or two new tracks.
However for proper albums by artists I like I still much prefer to own the entire package (CD, Artwork, Inlay, Case etc) though.

 

[Corwin]

well was it?

 

[Gottaa]

Nope, still crappy DRM'd, as I've already paid for NoteBurner though I'm happy to still use iTunes, and the first thing I do after buying a song is ripping it to an mp3. Unless I can find what I want on play or amazon

 

[Janie]

What's DRM stand for (or mean)?
Never had any problems with anything i've brought though iTunes, plays find on the iPod and burns fine to CD.

 

[Gottaa]

Digital Rights Management

It basically means you buy it on iTunes and it's an m4p file, that means your iTunes can play it, it means your iPod can play it, it means up to 3 other copies of iTunes with your login can play it, it means you can burn it to an audio CD. What it won't let you do is play it on any other device at all, which means no non-apple mp3 player, in my case it won't play it on a music system called Sonos which basically means I put all my music on a NAT Hard drive which plugs into Sonos and I can play any song I want in my library in any song I have Sonos setup

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6337781.stm

That BBC article does an okay job of explaining it.

The big issue being if you ever wanted to listen to that on anything non-apple you'd be out of luck and would either need to burn everything to CD and then rip it back in (a hassle, cost and loss of sound quality), or buy a program to do it, or in some cases pay Apple even more money to make it an iTunes Plus song which has no DRM (a standard MP3 file) and is higher quality

 

[Janie]

Ahh I see. I still stick CD's in stereo in the Living room and our bedroom has a iPod docking station (lame name) which obvisously plays straight from the iPod and doubles as the charger.

 

[Medivac]

Itunes is nice isn't it ?