iTunes DRM-Free Tracks Now Same Price As DRM Tracks 250
jawtheshark writes "Apple has made the decision to revise the pricing of Plus songs on the iTunes Music store. Whereas previously the DRM-less tracks were more expensive than the 'normal' option (at $1.29 vs. $0.99), DRM-less tracks bought via ITMS will now be priced on the same level as DRM'd tracks. 'Apple plans to expand iTunes Plus to include certain indie music labels starting Wednesday, October 17 (or sometime this week, at least) ... This expansion won't include all independent music labels just yet, although we're optimistic that more will be included in the future. While we have no information on whether the iTunes Plus songs are selling well, we assume that the decision to drop the price is a response to the Amazon MP3 store. Amazon sells individual tracks for between 89 and 99 apiece, all without any DRM restrictions. With that in mind, it's kind of hard for Apple to compete at $1.29.'"
Hard, but not impossible (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I have to figure out how to tell the DRM-tunes from the non-DRM tunes. It was easy when there was a price difference.
Re:Hard, but not impossible (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Hard, but not impossible (Score:4, Informative)
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There are some players out there that won't play AAC, but they are hard to find these days.
Re:Hard, but not impossible (Score:5, Informative)
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Amazon has now made using a none iPod as easy or easier then an IPod.
No DRM hoops to jump through. It just works. And it costs no more than iTunes. Add in that you can use them with you iPod it now gives Amazon a bigger potental market than Apple. Amazon can now sell to everybody that has a Music player.
Now if the Networks will just jump on the no DRM bandwagon.
Hardly easier (Score:2, Informative)
Unless, of course, your musical tastes include: Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews Band, Gov't Mule, The White Stripes, Jet, Pantera, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Dixie Chicks, Green Day... How is it easier to put songs on your non-iPod from the Amazon store when they DON'T CARRY THE SONGS???
Just for an unscientifc experiment, I randomized my iTunes playlist by artist and got the above sample. Not until "Fall Out Boy" in the 11th spot di
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Funny, people griped about iTunes for the same reason when it started... but it got better. Amazon's service is relatively new. It might just get better with time, too. Imagine that.
Stop whining, please? It's tiresome.
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While it is inconvenient, it isn't that hard to check both Amazon and the iTunes Store for a track before buying it online.
Right now my process is:
- Check Amazon to see if they have it - if so I buy it from them (and import it into iTunes).
- If they don't, check iTunes Store and see if it's available without DRM - if so I buy it.
- If I really want it now, buy the DRM'd track from iTunes (if available). If I can deal with not having it immediately, I don;t but
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Re:Hardly easier (Score:4, Interesting)
"Amazon MP3 does not yet offer the complete Dixie Chicks catalog. Not all record labels have approved all of their music for sale as MP3s, but we're working to expand selection. "
Since these same labels haven't approved non-drm sales in the iTunes store either, what makes you think they will on the Amazon site? The same "matter of time" will never happen, given the current greedy culture of the labels.
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I realize all of this will continue to evolve... (Score:2, Interesting)
- still has only EMI (and the independents) at this new rate (compared to Amazon, which also has Universal)
- still embeds buyer information inside the files
- is still more expensive (ten cents, granted, but still...), and
- chose to react rather than innovate
It's the fourth bullet point that dismays me the most.
Re:I realize all of this will continue to evolve.. (Score:2)
...but for now, I'm not terribly impressed. Apple:
...
- chose to react rather than innovate
- still has only EMI (and the independents) at this new rate (compared to Amazon, which also has Universal)
It's the fourth bullet point that dismays me the most.
I'm not sure that's entirely a fair analysis of the situation. Many labels appear to be either hesitant to sign or left Apple because they would not give them the pricing or the DRM they wanted. [nytimes.com]
As I see it, Apple did innovate in pushing the digital market a heck of a lot harder than anyone else, and by pushing the price to a fairly reasonable level that people are actually buying songs at. Because they were first, they're getting shat on for it, or so it seems.
Re:I realize all of this will continue to evolve.. (Score:2)
It's the fourth bullet point that dismays me the most.
Re:I realize all of this will continue to evolve.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm a bit naive but I thought it usually took time, work, and negotiation to reverse the practices of an entire industry. Apple did it first with EMI. EMI is sticking to their strategy hoping that they will survive and has started to offer it to Amazon. Universal is not happy with Apple right now so this is a bit of revenge on their part. Other than that, what is the major complaint here?
Information that is not hidden and can easily be removed. Information that reveals nothing more than the owner of the file. Information that has been embedded in every track Apple has sold (DRM or not) since the begining of iTunes. It's Apple's way of trying to track if someone buys a DRM free track and puts it on a P2P. When you buy anything (especially with a loyalty card), don't you think more information is gathered about you and sold to third parties?
Company 1 offers new product or service.
Company 2 offers more or better features than Company 1 months later.
Company 1 matches Company 2's offer a few months later.
In your scenario, you've called out Company 1 for failure to innovate. Wasn't Apple the first of the two to offer DRM free tracks? Didn't Apple convince EMI to do so? In my world, the two are just competing.
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Certainly not, but I don't think you've understood my point. Of course Apple has set in motion a great thing: the re-invention of an industry whose practices and ethics have always been suspect. But is what I said, at face value, not true?
"Information that is not hidden and can easily be removed..."
That's beside the point. Amazon doesn't do it. While this was to be expected in files containing DRM, why can't Apple now do the same?
"Wasn't Apple the first of the two to offer DRM free
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What precisely is the problem here? It's not as though you're sharing those files around is it? And it's only your name, in an easily removable tag. I'm yet to hear a serious reason why this is so bad that uses actual logic. At the absolute worst and most cynical, it could be described only as a "minor inconvenience."
Apple
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Yeah, Apple is just copying amazons music store! Without drm and all! Bad Apple bad!
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Re:I realize all of this will continue to evolve.. (Score:2)
Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
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Itunes imports the music when the file is clicked, so that is not a problem. I anticipate iTunes sales to plummet, and the iPod to slowly lose market share as the coupling becomes much less. Another point is that, for me, the itunes store is much slower than the amazon store. T
All tracks to be 99 (Score:5, Informative)
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Huh (Score:4, Funny)
"If you want to ride the roller coster you have to get corn holed first, or you can just get on the ride."
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Re:Huh (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yea it is up to a cooperation to educate people. That will work well. I can see the message now.
"This song has DRM protection so that it can not be stolen."
"This song lacks protection" Do you want this free protection on your download y/n.
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Re:Huh (Here is why) (Score:2)
Ignoring the DRM for a moment, I think 128Bit music should cost less than $0.50 a song anyway. Full CD quality costs about $1.50 a track when you buy a CD; depending on tracks of course.
Back to DRM, I think this is great for the user. It give Apple more leverage to push down prices for DRM'ed music simply becau
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Up is down!
In is out!
Left is right!
Black is white!
I love the variety of Slashdot, where you'll always get someone popping up to describe how a new and beneficial development is actually a bad thing.
Choice is bad!
Options are wrong!
Change is evil!
Better is worse!
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More important (to me at least) (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon and Magnatune work on Linux. Or just about any OS, for that matter. And they work with any MP3 player ('cause they're, you know, MP3s).
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Good point. I'd not realized the price discrepancy.
Also, apparently you cannot re-download without the magic software. (can't find my source for this anymore. It was either Ars Technica or a Planet that I read.)
Regardless, at least it works to some degree, in contrast to iTunes. And Magnatune Just Works Better. :)
Regarding US-only: I did find this [venturecake.com].
Re:More important (to me at least) (Score:4, Interesting)
We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
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Is there any OS, software, or music player left that can't handle DRM-free AACs? Anywhere? DRM-free AACs are what iTunes Plus is selling.
It amazes me after all this time that people still think AAC is a proprietary format, or that iTunes somehow contaminates DRM-free files with DRM. Sometimes I think it's willful ignorance.
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It amazes me after all this time that people still think AAC is a proprietary format, or that iTunes somehow contaminates DRM-free files with DRM. Sometimes I think it's willful ignorance.
No, it's not. AAC *is* a proprietary, patented technology. While there is no requirement to have a license for distribution of AAC content, but a license *is* required fo anyone making hardware or developing software that encodes/decodes to/from AAC. Don't confuse "possible to be free of DRM" with "non-proprietary". Th
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DRM is a pain. My, erm, brother's sister's nephew's uncle's wife bought some old iTunes MP3s back when they were all DRMed. She now doesn't have an MP3 player and my brother's sister's nephew's uncle is having to play them through iTunes, record them through Goldwave and save them as MP3s. Not perfect, but it works for those who aren't audiophiles. It does mean that she realises buying from iTunes with DRM was a bad idea, though.
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Seems like a painful/time consuming way to do it. I simply burn a CD with the DRM'd tracks and then re-import it.
Yes, this has the same issue as using Goldwave (converting from one lossy format to another) but it does save a lot of time. It also gives me a physical version (the CD) that I play in my car's CD player (it won't play MP3/ACC files on a data CD).
The real downside for me is that, unless it's a full album, it won't autom
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She didn't bought iTunes MP3s.
In other news almost all my music was pirated for free as MP3s so they work on most places. The rest are pirated wma and ogg
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Boiling RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
Announce the "intermediate" step of "no DRM, we'll pacify you by raising the price. X months later we'll do what we really wanted to."
Radiohead album a factor as well? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who knows.
Now I'm really upset (Score:4, Funny)
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It's like the whole iPhone thing. People went out and bought it at a know
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I'll sue my grossery store next time the lowers the price on apples, damn morons! How can they do that when I bought apples the other day!?
Bad luck for you thought, but I guess the companies which went DRM-free wanted more money, or Apple thought they needed more money to convince them, but once Amazon used the lower price they had something to tell companies to convince them that a lower price was necessary.
Bad luck and sad for you but clearly
DRM digging it's own grave (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that DRM is digging it's own grave, thanks to the immense popularity of the iPod (I heard in the US like 80% market share).
The iPod uses DRM, but only Apple's DRM. And it can of course play unprotected songs.
Apple does not license it's DRM to other vendor: in effect becoming the only vendor selling DRM'ed songs to 80% of the market of digital music players. The rest of the players can fight of the left-overs.
Apple gets a lot of market power: the labels want to sell music, but only music with DRM. To reach the majority of the market, they must play together with Apple. And Apple has proven not to be very easy a business partner.
Thus the only way the music labels can tap into that 80% of the market, without going through Apple, is by selling non-DRM'ed songs. And there is a good reason for a music label to have multiple resellers for your product: then the resellers have to compete with each other to buy their music. Which likely gives rise to higher prices for the labels.
This way I see DRM having dug it's own grave: one DRM scheme became very popular, giving one player a very powerful virtual monopoly over online music sales. The label-mandated DRM now locks everyone in to that one player: Apple with their iTunes Music Store. And the only way to break this monopoly is to drop DRM, and that is exactly what is happening now.
And already we see the fruits of this development: iTunes forced to lower their prices, other stores offering flexible pricing options ('priced between 89 and 99 cents' - not much of a difference but there is flexibility), and certainly this will start opening the market for more online music resellers. This can not be a bad thing.
Getting even more off-topic: here in Hong Kong recently retail chain HMV started to sell tracks through ATM-style kiosks. Digital sales, but not online. These kiosks are in their retail outlets, offering buyers a huge collection (about half a million tracks or so; that requires quite a large brick 'n mortar store to house), and instant downloads to their digital music player. Again they use DRM: in this case Microsoft's Plays For Sure scheme. Now without DRM I'm sure HMV would have a much bigger market. I have no idea on the market share of Plays For Sure devices, though it's for sure less than half. So DRM free can instantly double one's market. If PFS devices are only 20% of the market (just a guess), they could increase their market five times just by dropping the DRM.
I doubt the record labels will ever agree that DRM limits their sales; confirming the R in DRM stands for Restrictions. Not Rights. Restricting not only what the user can do, but restricting your own market even more in the process.
Wouter.
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...the resellers have to compete with each other to buy their music. Which likely gives rise to higher prices for the labels.
This is based on the law of supply and demand. Of course, given the supply is infinite, demand will have little impact on its value. Which is why prices are going down with more locations to purchase from - the artificial restrictions on supply are being removed. If this keeps up digital music will soon be sold at a value close to what the consumer thinks it's worth, which is about the last thing the music cartel wants. Things they want less include people not paying anything for music and being in a
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...the resellers have to compete with each other to buy their music. Which likely gives rise to higher prices for the labels.
This is based on the law of supply and demand. Of course, given the supply is infinite, demand will have little impact on its value.
I do not agree that music supply is absolutely infinite. There is a limited number of suppliers (record labels), and a limited number of songs available. Admittedly each song comes in unlimited copies, but you will normally not buy more than one copy of the same song.
So for example if you want to buy the product "Metallica songs", or "Britney Spears songs", then there is a limited number of songs from only single suppliers. If supply was truly infinite, then everyone could start producing "Britney Spears
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Let's State the Blazingly Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
So the dinosaurs bellow in the night, pull their tracks, and now look at the shelf space for the independents: smaller, hungrier people who see opportunity in the new distribution technologies. The dinosaurs seem to have forgetten the door they left open during the three years they didn't get MTV.
If I were Apple, I'd talk to the independents and help them start some internet radio channels and provide sponsorships so the new channels can afford the air talent and the short-term loan to Sound Exchange (who will be collecting all internet recording performance fees and then giving out to the record companies who hold the copyrights on the recordings.) People only buy what they hear and can find.
DRM-free, but what about 256kbps AAC? (Score:2, Interesting)
Switch the naming around (Score:2, Insightful)
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Seems like iTunes PLUS should now be called iTunes, and the remaining stupid studios that still demand DRM should be put in iTunes PLUS. Afterall, you are getting MORE with a DRM laden file. They should also charge $1.29 for the extra stuff (drm) you get in those songs.
Or maybe they could call the DRM laden songs "iTunes Minus" as in "iTunes minus the freedom to do what you want with your music" :-D Still, iTunes's DRM is not as bad as some making it out to be. In fact, it's quite silly when you consider that you can burn the tunes to a CD and then rip them back. Pain in the neck? Yeah. Waste of time and resources? Yeah. But these things were put in place to appease the record companies, not out of any innate desire by Apple to limit your enjoyment of your music.
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The likely outcome (Score:5, Interesting)
Step 1 - Universal wants higher prices, but Apple refuses.
Step 2 - Universal dumps Apple and goes to Amazon, and Amazon starts selling songs at prices lower than the iTunes Store.
Step 3 - ?
In Step 3, Universal needs to achieve the goals it set out with contract re-negotiations with Apple. The goals were higher prices, with a larger percentage going to Universal for sending over a digital copy of an album four years ago. (The artists, are, as you might imagine, quite irrelevant in their calculations).
So why are they selling tracks at $0.89? To drive people away from the iTunes Store, knock it off its pedestal as the dominant online music retailer, and then jack up the prices once that has occurred and there is a new major player on the block who is more...accommodating...to the wants of the major labels.
Am I suggesting that people abandon Amazon and start paying more of their hard-earned money to Apple? No. What I am suggesting, and what I have done, is to put a moratorium on my online music purchases until things settle down a bit, as I strongly believe Amazon is going to end up screwing us in the end. We have to keep in mind the only reason Universal went with Amazon was because Apple refused to let them dictate terms that would end up raising the price of online music to a point higher than physical CDs themselves.
It's ridiculous to think that these prices are going to last, and that when the "correction" comes, that it will be anything but drastic. Giving Amazon a great deal of business, and thus, the big labels more leverage over operations that have fought for the end users, is detrimental to online music retailing as a whole.
Let me reiterate, the problem is not that the music is being sold by a company other than Apple, but WHY that music is being sold by a company other than Apple at the prices currently asked.
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The Complete Interpretation of the Events (Score:3, Insightful)
It's ridiculous to think that these prices are going to last, and that when the "correction" comes, that it will be anything but drastic. Giving Amazon a great deal of business, and thus, the big labels more leverage over operations that have fought for the end users, is detrimental to online music retailing as a whole.
It's ridiculous to think that these prices are not going to fall more, maybe even to a point that I will find reasonable. Universal essentially lost the war, and now they're just trying to pick up the pieces. This is how I interpreted the whole series of events:
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Do you do this with your gas also? "There's the gas-n-go cornering the market with $0.99 gasoline...I better not buy until they settle on a more reasonable price."
Interesting logic...can I sign up for your newsletter?
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1. Buy used CDs
2. Rip CDs.
3. Store CDs as backup in a box under your bed.
You can set the encoding quality to what every you want. You can pick the format that you want. And you are not giving your money to the record companies.
And it is 100% legal.
Re:The likely outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that the whole thing wit Amazon is kinda fishy, but I don't agree that it should stop people from buying from Amazon. The way I see it is this: People should buy cheap DRM-free music from whatever source they like, and avoid buying DRMed music.
Because let's say people drop iTunes and move to Amazon, buying tons of MP3s. Well, the MP3s don't tie them to continuing to use Amazon's service. You can still use your iPod, or any other MP3 player you choose. Now let's imagine that, having won a lot of market share, the big labels force Amazon to raise prices and use DRM. Right then, stop using Amazon.
Your years of using Amazon won't tie you to Amazon as long as it's all DRM-free. And if Amazon is a huge success with cheap DRM-free music, and their sales dry up when they increase price and add DRM, then it sends a clear message: consumers want cheap DRM-free music. Consumers are willing to pay for cheap DRM-free music. If you want to make money selling music, the music must be cheap and DRM-free.
That's the message we all want to send, right?
Amazon MP3 in Canada (Score:2)
However, this can only be a good thing with Apple and Amazon competing. I'm sure it'll come to other countries eventually.
it proves DRM is worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
song_value + DRM_value = song_value
DRM_value = song_value - song_value
DRM_value = 0
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Does itunes sell to anyone or you gotta have ipod (Score:2)
Answers (Score:2)
The files are 256kbps MP4 files, somewhat better quality than comparable sized MP3s.
You will need to transcode them to MP3 for most media players, because pretty much all music players only support MP3 and WMA... things like MP4 (AAC - Advanced Audio Codec), OGG, etc are pretty rare.
Re:Does itunes sell to anyone or you gotta have ip (Score:2)
What's changed is that you now have even more flexibility. You can now stream it using anything that understands the (documented) AA
Do the tracks have phthalates in them? (Score:3, Funny)
I demand compensation! (Score:2)
I demand that Apple pay me, and others like me, ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Or I'll send in the sharks.
Free music (Score:2)
- Your local public library. The URL depends on your location. You can get a search for the type of music that you like and get a list of titles that can be put on reserve. When the CDs are returned, they are shipped to your local library branch and an e-mail notice is sent to you. You go over and pick them up, rip them into any format and bitrate that you want, and transfer them to your digital music player. Take the CDs back to the lib
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Yes competition is good. I has caused apple to lower it's price to keep a few of it's customers. It also has caused some music labels to rethink how they sell music. (I know one of them is selling music online with non-DRM).
You think Apple lowered the price because of competition? Apple weren't profiting of people's desires to have DRM free music, Jobs said himself that he is opposed to DRM, and that having DRM creates overhead that increases the cost.
If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. -- Jobs
So of course he wouldn't sell DRM music for extra if he didn't have to. He wouldn't be so hypocritical as to call for everyone to embrace and request DRM-free music [apple.com], and then charge extra for DRM-free music.
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DRM free music is a higher value, but one that other stores have already been selling at $0.99, hence Apple has to cut costs to compete, its that simple. I truly believe they dropped the price because they couldn't compete anymore on the no-drm
Re:3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Funny)
But I'm not a pundit.
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back again after a compression/decompression cycle.
Lossless compression => you don't lose any information, this is ideal
non-lossless => double negative
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But to keep this on topic, people aren't going to rebuy their songs if the come out with higher quality, because most people are happy with what they already bought. Some peop
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An audio waveform encoded to CD loses resolution. We can't usually hear the difference but it still loses information between the instrument or voice, and the CD.
The only useful argument is how much loss are you prepared to suffer?
I would argue that 128kbit/s is okay for outdoor listening and 256kbit/s is good for just about any form of audio indoors. Some music is improved by listening to the CD (as opposed to the 256kbit/s AAC) and some music can only be t
AAC is not Apple's proprietary format (Score:4, Informative)
AAC is just the MPEG 4 audio codec, it's a publicly defined standard, and somewhat better quality than MP3 for equivalent file sizes. There are a few other media players that support it... but most only support MP3 and Microsoft's proprietary WMA. It's ironic, too, when some company whines about Apple's "non-standard" formats when it's *their* decision, not Apple's, not to support MP4.
One wonders if Microsoft cuts them a deal on the license for WMA if they leave out MP4/AAC, OGG, etcetera...
You can transcode to MP3 if you need to, if you must buy a media player from a company that kowtows to Redmond.
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I'm just saying use what is popular and 'standard', in so far as the most commonly used format on an -- MP3 PLAYER.
The point to having a DRM-free format (Score:2)
Nobody's stopping you from transcoding the MP4 you get from iTMS into an MP3. Your MP3 from Amazon is 256k, the MP4 from iTMS is 256k, and if you have a golden ear you'll probably prefer the MP4 to the MP3. Transcoding the MP4 to MP3 will probably not produce as good an MP3 as you'd get from Amazon, but unless you have a golden ear you won't be able to tell... and even if you do it's unlikely to be noticable o
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What in the hell are you talking about? I can convert iTunes DRM free M4A files to MP3 inside iTunes by right-click -> Convert Selection to MP3, no problem whatsoever. Of course, it may not work on Windows, I don't have to test that handy, but there sure isn't any limitation like you mention on OS X. Are you talking about stripping DRM within iTunes to convert to MP3? If so, even though I hate DRM schemes, that's the way DRM is