So, after much anticipation, Apple is now offering a Windows-compatible version of their iTunes online music store. For those of you that don’t know, it’s a program that will allow you to buy, download, and play music from the Internet. It’s been out for the Apple operating systems for a while, and people seem to love it.
It’s an attractive concept for those of us opposed to music piracy, so I decided to see what the buzz was all about. I downloaded the software, installed it, created an account, gave up my credit card number, and bought a song for $1.
Hey Apple: Screw you.
The service worked fine –well, even. But what they don’t tell you until you’ve paid your money is that file you buy isn’t in .mp3 format, and you can’t play it except through their clunky software or a portable iPod player (starting price: $299). That means I just bought a song I can’t play in my mp3 player, and I can’t play it on my PC using Winamp, my preferred media player. I paid for the song, it’s mine. But I can’t play it where or how I want? F that.
I want to buy digital music. I really, really do. And I won’t steal music by downloading it from a peer-to-peer network. But prices for CDs are completely out of whack with reality, and nobody’s offering an online product that’s not choking on its own restrictions in the name of control.
So I’ll probably just keep doing what I’ve been doing: Buy a few CDs a year from artists that I’m positive I like, rip them to .mp3, and then stick the CDs on a shelf to collect dust. Bah.
Oh, and also: iTunes totally hosed my co-worker’s iPod when he installed it. Wiped out all 136 songs he had on there, then screwed things up so he can’t even add music to it. Nice.
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