This is why I prefer CDs
I've always been an advocate of legal music downloads. In college, the whole Napster craze hit, and everyone I knew was "sharing" music left and right, but since I was a music business major (and later worked in music copyright), I stood my ground and refused to get my music without paying for it. So I bought CDs, and later joined an mp3 purchasing site, MusicMatch, and paid 99 cents per song for anything I wanted to download without buying an entire album.
Fast forward to today, when I'm trying to load music onto a new mp3 player I bought over the weekend. MusicMatch went out of business years ago, and now? NONE of the songs I purchased work. The licesse are no good because the computer has nowhere to connect to in order to verify them. So now I have hundreds of songs on my computer that I paid money for and can't play anymore. I'd searched around, but from what I fin, I'm out of luck. When MM went under, they sold to Yahoo, which then sold to Rhapsody, and at this point, it's been so long that Rhapsody doesn't have any connection to the original MM licenses. My music is just no good. The only thing that would have saved me is if I had burned all the songs to CDs, and could rip them back to my computer, but I don't think I ever did that. They're on my old mp3 player, but that doesn't do me any good, because the copy protection is still in the files there. And I'm afraid if I plug it into my computer, it'll try to validate the licenses on the mp3 player and screw the songs up there as well. *sigh* Even the songs I bought on MTV's old service, URGE, don't work anymore. Apparently when they sold to Rhapsody, they didn't bother transferring the licenses, so now none of the old URGE songs are good. What a pain in the ass. I guess I'm just out a lot of money. Any songs I really, really want, I'll have to buy again somewhere. iTunes, I guess. They have the least chance of going under anytime soon.
I've even looked for a program that will rip out the DRM, but they all seem to require that you can still play the file before they'll do anything. Argh.
Fast forward to today, when I'm trying to load music onto a new mp3 player I bought over the weekend. MusicMatch went out of business years ago, and now? NONE of the songs I purchased work. The licesse are no good because the computer has nowhere to connect to in order to verify them. So now I have hundreds of songs on my computer that I paid money for and can't play anymore. I'd searched around, but from what I fin, I'm out of luck. When MM went under, they sold to Yahoo, which then sold to Rhapsody, and at this point, it's been so long that Rhapsody doesn't have any connection to the original MM licenses. My music is just no good. The only thing that would have saved me is if I had burned all the songs to CDs, and could rip them back to my computer, but I don't think I ever did that. They're on my old mp3 player, but that doesn't do me any good, because the copy protection is still in the files there. And I'm afraid if I plug it into my computer, it'll try to validate the licenses on the mp3 player and screw the songs up there as well. *sigh* Even the songs I bought on MTV's old service, URGE, don't work anymore. Apparently when they sold to Rhapsody, they didn't bother transferring the licenses, so now none of the old URGE songs are good. What a pain in the ass. I guess I'm just out a lot of money. Any songs I really, really want, I'll have to buy again somewhere. iTunes, I guess. They have the least chance of going under anytime soon.
I've even looked for a program that will rip out the DRM, but they all seem to require that you can still play the file before they'll do anything. Argh.