To CD or not to CD? That is the question...
I recently decided to purchase Marty's August 2005 Album of the month (see previous post). Now, I have declared recently that I will be going totally digital with my music, and that CD's will now be a thing of the past in my life. Besides, if we believe what we're told by our geek friends, there should be no difference between the digital music we pay $9.99 for online and can download at our desks, than the music we pay $15.99 for in the music store that requires us to show up in person. I used to be one of those faithful, vowing to never purchase a CD again.
Then, along came digital rights management. Remember the good old days when an MP3 was really just an MP3? Those days have passed. My favorite conglomeration of software monopolies and the members of the RIAA have gotten together and created new formats of music files that are music files, with a little bonus "fuck you" included - a feature that allows those distributing the music to control how many machines you copy the music to, what kinds of devices you can use to listen to the music, and sometimes even how many times you can listen to a song. Yes, the days of personal decisions of how to store and use your music seem to be coming to an end. Sure, if you listen to your music on one computer for the rest of your life and never loose your license files (sometimes required to allow the music to be played), this will never affect you. But if you happen to loose those license files, or if you happen to try to transfer the files more than five times, you really no longer own the file, and you basically have to purchase the file again. I don't know about you, but I've owned more than five computers in my lifetime, and am planning to probably own more.
So what to do? I've found myself turning more and more to the antiquated CD as my preferred music format of choice. Sure, you now have this thing that you have to store and keep track of, but so far no one can tell you how many times you can replicate the music on that CD. I can play it in my car, on my iPod, and transfer it to as many computers as I wish. But how long do we have until CD music files are corrupted with this DRM as well? I have, in the past, been one of the biggest proponents of selling and buying music over the internet. However, I may not be able to sustain this position, given current trends. Thoughts?
Then, along came digital rights management. Remember the good old days when an MP3 was really just an MP3? Those days have passed. My favorite conglomeration of software monopolies and the members of the RIAA have gotten together and created new formats of music files that are music files, with a little bonus "fuck you" included - a feature that allows those distributing the music to control how many machines you copy the music to, what kinds of devices you can use to listen to the music, and sometimes even how many times you can listen to a song. Yes, the days of personal decisions of how to store and use your music seem to be coming to an end. Sure, if you listen to your music on one computer for the rest of your life and never loose your license files (sometimes required to allow the music to be played), this will never affect you. But if you happen to loose those license files, or if you happen to try to transfer the files more than five times, you really no longer own the file, and you basically have to purchase the file again. I don't know about you, but I've owned more than five computers in my lifetime, and am planning to probably own more.
So what to do? I've found myself turning more and more to the antiquated CD as my preferred music format of choice. Sure, you now have this thing that you have to store and keep track of, but so far no one can tell you how many times you can replicate the music on that CD. I can play it in my car, on my iPod, and transfer it to as many computers as I wish. But how long do we have until CD music files are corrupted with this DRM as well? I have, in the past, been one of the biggest proponents of selling and buying music over the internet. However, I may not be able to sustain this position, given current trends. Thoughts?
posted by Marty Stroodler at 9:44 PM
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