I’ve been a fan of downloading music for a while–it’s much easier, and cheaper, to buy the one or two songs I’m after, rather than an entire album. I admit (with shame) that I used Kazaa during the early 2000’s, but I quickly went legit. I’ve used everything from Napster (the paid version), MSN music, Wal-Mart’s online store (via Windows Media Player), iTunes, and Amazon.com. One of the reasons I made the move from “free” (i.e., stealing) music was a talk from one of my roommates, who made a very compelling argument that peer-to-peer music sharing was not fair to those who actually own the rights to the music, regardless of whether they make tons of money or charge disproportionate amounts… So I believe in paying for music, and I respect the rights of those who own the songs.
What I don’t like about dowloading music is the embedded digital rights management. Digital rights management (DRM) generally works to prevent you from sharing a download, usually by limiting the number of times you can transfer the song file, or even preventing you from reformatting the file. Probably the most annoying example of this kind of DRM is iTunes. I love the iTunes store because it has a really clean interface, easy to find artists and songs, and it shows all kinds of extra information like song popularity or suggested similar artists. What I hate about iTunes is that I can’t put any of their songs on my mp3 player, because I don’t have an iPod. I won’t get in to the lengths I have to go to in order to get songs onto my phone’s mp3 player (hint: it involves a bit of old fashioned high tech converting from digital to analog to digital).
Even more annoying than iTunes file format is iTunes DRM. I like to burn MP3 formatted CDs for my car stereo for long road trips–unfortunately iTunes doesn’t like for me to do this with its songs. Argh. So, in the past, I would wind up falling back on Wal-Mart’s online store if I was desperate, or just forgo any songs and focus on bundling Podcasts for my road mix. I say “in the past” because I’ve started using Amazon.com to buy single mp3s, because Amazon doesn’t use DRM. That’s right, pretty much all of the songs on Amazon are DRM FREE! And if you like to use iTunes to play your music (all you Mac-o-philes out there), Amazon downloads the song directly to iTunes–so you don’t have to do a separate file search of your hard drive or any extra work. I recommend you try Amazon.com for buying music–and if you’re a big Pepsi drinker you can take advantage of the “Pepsi points” promotion to get your mp3s for cheap (or free).
I think this is a great way to send a message to iTunes and other companies that don’t trust purchasers to make responsible choices to honor the law and their ownership rights. And in case you’re wondering what can happen to a company/product that insists on using DRM to limit the end-user’s ability to transfer files, check out the reviews for “Spore,” a computer game which is getting mostly one-star reviews on Amazon.com, (so far over 2,000 after less than a month) based largely on its use of DRM to severely restrict the end-user’s ability to install the game. Hilarious and scary.
Posted by Micah McMillan 
