iTunes Plus: Worth your time
I took the time last night to give the new DRM free "iTunes Plus" store a whirl. While the selection is small right now it includes many albums that are very good. Last night I upgraded my "Huey Lewis and the News" album and bought two DRM free albums ( Royksopp and Coldplay ) for a grand total of under $20. The Coldplay album was only $8.
So the iTunes plus store removes the last barrier to me becoming a larger iTMS user DRM. I want to know that when I buy music I can use it where ever with little or no penalty. I want to share it with close friends and family without having to generate second-gen copies. I would like to know if I ever abandon iTunes or iPod's I can bring my music with me. iTunes plus does all of that and still managed to keep the price reasonable and even cheaper than Amazon most of the time.
My biggest complaint about iTunes plus ( and of the music store in general ) is very limited searching and browsing capability. I like to "Browse the stacks" on occasion and the iTMS makes it very hard to do that. If you don't know the name of the artist and the album doesn't make the "Top 10" it's almost impossible to find.
Some people have been complaining about the ID embedded in the track metadata, but I really don't care. I have no intent of posting these track in in a public location so I do not think of it as a restriction. I have a small concern that the *IAA's sue first, do research later mentality will end up clipping quite a few innocent iTunes users as hackers change the embedded metadata before posting tracks.
I just hope that other distributers catch up and start releasing DRM free tracks.
So the iTunes plus store removes the last barrier to me becoming a larger iTMS user DRM. I want to know that when I buy music I can use it where ever with little or no penalty. I want to share it with close friends and family without having to generate second-gen copies. I would like to know if I ever abandon iTunes or iPod's I can bring my music with me. iTunes plus does all of that and still managed to keep the price reasonable and even cheaper than Amazon most of the time.
My biggest complaint about iTunes plus ( and of the music store in general ) is very limited searching and browsing capability. I like to "Browse the stacks" on occasion and the iTMS makes it very hard to do that. If you don't know the name of the artist and the album doesn't make the "Top 10" it's almost impossible to find.
Some people have been complaining about the ID embedded in the track metadata, but I really don't care. I have no intent of posting these track in in a public location so I do not think of it as a restriction. I have a small concern that the *IAA's sue first, do research later mentality will end up clipping quite a few innocent iTunes users as hackers change the embedded metadata before posting tracks.
I just hope that other distributers catch up and start releasing DRM free tracks.