By silicon.com, 29 April 2004 16:25
A year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iTunes Music Store, positioning it as the people's legal alternative for downloading music on the internet.
The record labels approved of it, yet it offered a relaxed copyright protection policy. You paid 99 cents per song, but could transfer them to your iPod, burn them onto as many CDs as you want, and play them on up to three Macs.
It was no Napster. But people liked it, and a year later 70 million songs have been bought at the site, says Apple.
Take a closer look, though, and you'll see that today's iTunes is not the iTunes we once knew. The newest version, introduced Wednesday in the US (we won't have iTunes or the mini iPod in Europe until later this year - thanks, Steve), featured some concessions to the music industry, such as limiting the number of times you can burn a playlist onto a CD from 10 to seven (the restriction to 10 from no limit came earlier this year).
Even more disappointing, the latest iTunes disables MyTunes, a third-party app that allowed you to save songs streamed over a network to the hard drive of a different computer than the one they were originally downloaded to. And once you upgrade to the new version you can no longer share music with computers running older versions.
Apple positioned the MyTunes change as a bug fix, but it sounds like backpedalling to us.
True, Jobs said iTunes would be label-friendly from the beginning. But over time the concessions are starting to outweigh the improvements for music buyers, which have come mostly in the form of usability tweaks.
Perhaps Jobs has hit the same wall everyone else has - having to play nice with the RIAA and friends in order to maintain a large enough variety of music to please subscribers.
Speaking of the RIAA - The hunt for music pirates is still on. What, going after 5-year-olds this time? Nah, looks like it's sticking to the university-aged set. A new round of copyright lawsuits brings the total number of downloaders sued to almost 2,500. Just the thing for business - alienate the age group that once made you rich.
Comments
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1. James
iTunes has always limited you to 10 burns of the same playlist. You can then reshuffle songs and do 10 more burns of the different playlist. That upper limit was changed to 7 instead of 10. But the songs themselves can still be burned an unlimited number of times.
2. anonymous
Worth pointing out: though the DRM has changed and you can only burn a playlist with purchased music to CD 7 times in a row, the number of computers you may share it with has INCREASED from 3 to 5.
You get a negative, you get a positive. Pointing them both out is called balanced reporting. :)
3. anonymous
"(we won't have iTunes or the mini iPod in Europe until later this year - thanks, Steve)"
Thanks _Steve_? He's the one throwing up the roadblocks and keeping iTunes from Europe out of sheer malice? Hey, I've got this bridge to sell you.
"Apple positioned the MyTunes change as a bug fix, but it sounds like backpedalling to us."
Does "shutting off an avenue for music piracy" mean the same thing as "backpedalling" in your dictionary?
"But over time the concessions are starting to outweigh the improvements for music buyers..."
This explains why all the other music services have surpassed iTunes. Oh, wait...
Cut us a break, please.
4. Steve Patterson
As someone who has used the iTMS since day one - to the tune of over 550 tracks - I can say it is much more user friendly with each revision. The revised limit to seven from the original 10 playlists is irrelavent to the majority of users not creating CDs for all their friends. The ability to stream to more computers within my network lets me distribute my music better throughout my house.
5. Ken Terry
You neglect to mention that Apple upped the number of computers you can play songs on from 3 to 5. Try un-biased reporting giving all aspects of the story, not just the negitive ones to make your point.
6. James
Ha! Give me a break! iTunes isn't becoming more "label friendly" by any means. If you really need to burn 10 copies of the same playlist, what are you doing? Just because Apple plugged some holes to prevent DRM stripping, it's not bowing to the mighty RIAA. You say that this release is just more RIAA stroking, Ha! the party shuffle feature alone I have been waiting for since version 1.0 (I was at macworld when iTunes 1.0 was released). Itunes has improved with each version and this last one, 4.5, establishes it as one of the greatest applications ever written for any platform in my mind.
7. Dale
I can't believe I just wasted 3 minutes reading this trash. Oh wait, I just wasted another 2 minutes commenting on it. Tricked - Aaargh.
8. Curious George
How is it "backpedaling" to disable a piece of 3rd party software that allowed the illegal distribution of iTunes music?
9. anonymous
Amen Brother!
Why is everyone falling all over herself to say how wonderful the new iTunes is? Now, I agree, most of the new features are great! Great for business, anyway...and OK for me...but the one thing no one has complained about is this.
I don't care if any NEW tracks from now on have a new license agreement. But when I bought my music from the iTunes music store BEFORE this new agreement, I was contractually obliged to ten burns of the same playlist. What happened? You decided to change your mind about our agreement? Can I change my mind then and abandon your business model and steal from you too? What the F*&^!
JSK!
10. G
Whoever wrote this is biased and TOTALLY LAME. Skewing facts. TOTALLY ignoring others. This belongs on some idiot's Geocities page and not better.
11. Anony Mouse
More biased gutter journalism from silicon.
12. David
I love the brain washed attitude of the Mac users who are unable to take some criticism aimed at the down trodden company that can do no wrong.
Get back to your Quark Express and Photoshop – bl**dy art students!
13. anonymous
Funny how you criticize the reduction of the number of times you can burn THE EXACT SAME CD (who -- without pirating music -- needs more than 7 copies?) yet you neglect to mention that you can now play purchased music back on FIVE computer instead of the previous restriction of three. That's definitely a trade-off I'm willing to swallow, and I suspect it's one that most *legitimate* users will prefer.
It's also amusing to see people whine because applications used to pirate music no longer work. Cry me a river.
14. sjk
Yep, the increase from three to five authorized systems is far more important for me (and many other folks, I suspect) than the reduction of playlist burns. Apparently some people can't distinguish which one was a significant issue vs. a relatively minor inconvenience.
Never ceases to amaze me how little intelligence is behind so much criticism. And the ceaseless amount of angry, selfish impatience and bitterness. I find nothing "persuasive" in those attitudes.
15. Sam Katz
old tracks stay the same.
With any tracks purchased before 4/28/04, your rights are the same: you can burn the same playlist 10 times.
I agree that iTunes is becoming more label-friendly, and I resent it. Napster and some others (iTunes may have been one) hard-code the number into the EULA so you are theroretically protected..except if they have an update provision.
However, if there is a contractual "duty to warn" when the EULA is updated, then that duty has not been satisfied.
16. mikre
you're a putz.
concessions to the labels... sure.. seems okay.
but it's misleading.. you can always just change the song order and recopy.. but guess what, you've probably never made 5 copies of one CD anyway.. so what do you care?
17. Dale Cosby
"I love the brain washed attitude of the Mac users who are unable to take some criticism aimed at the down trodden company that can do no wrong.
Get back to your Quark Express and Photoshop – bl**dy art students!"
And I love how Mac users are always stereotyped as graphic artists and publishers. I work for an IT company and use a Mac for tons and now we even have an Apple server for email and web hosting.
As far as thinking Apple is perfect, not hardly. I am dissapointed with the "commercial" features in the latest iTunes, small though they may be, namely the link that takes you from your library the store rather than to that artist in your library but over all it is still the best out there just as Excel is the best speadsheet (which I prefer to use on a Mac, lol)
18. Joe
I see so many complaining about Silicon.com being 'so horrible', yet why are you reading it? Hehe Just saying.
While I can see why Apple is modifying thier code, to resist third-party-programs, I don't understand how they can just say "sorry, old versions are locked out", or change terms on a whim. Should of been 7 at the beginning, instead of waiting till now. :/
Of course, everyone knows that you can just use the CDs you burn, to make an image, and just write that to get the same quality. This is a HARMLESS change, just wondering why they waited so long. Also, I know you can just make another playlist, and effectively do the same thing. :)
19. David Wright
I haven't used iTunes - I am happy with Musicmatch, and I can't buy tunes through iTunes in Europe anyway, I also don't have a personal MP3 player...
If the limit is the number of times that a "playlist" can be burned, then I can't see the point of having the limit at all. If the limit is not on the number of times the individual tracks can be copied, then there is no point of DRMing the system anyway.
I have a library of around 3,400 tracks, all of which I have legally purchased - mostly ripped from my CD collection, but a couple of downloads as well. The first time I ripped, I used Windows Media DRM encoded format, but now I use plain, unprotected MP3, having been caught out when I upgraded my old machine after having ripped 100 CD's in Media Player and then not being able to play them!
Personally, I can't see the point of burning multiple copies of the same "album". I have a CD Changer in the car and burn "mood" selections for the car.
I don't actually have a CD player in the house anymore, I rip everything onto my server, it is more convinient, and as my mood changes, I don't have to rummage through ~300 CD's for the next track I want to hear.
Whether I buy music on CD from a shop or online as a download, I wouldn't buy copyprotected music, it and means that if I swap platforms, it probably won't work anymore...
20. jdb
To Dale
If you have a Mac you can switch the option feature of the arrows to allow quick access to your local music library without the option key. It makes the option key go to iTunes Music Store.
Open a terminal and run this line:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES
Sorry, I have no idea how to do this with Windows iTunes.
21. Nick
Usual Silicon.com half-truths and negative spin towards Apple
Where Apple and Silicon.com are concerned the cup is always half-empty, never half-full. It must be hard work keeping up a barrage of negativity in the face of such creativity from Apple, but obviously Silicon.com has a position to maintain
22. Craig
Are you just trying to bait us Mac'olytes, Silicon? On the plus side, this is the only Apple article I've read lately that didn't mention Microsoft!
23. Matt
Why bother posting poorly researched articles? Makes the author seem incompetent. Perhaps he is.
- iTunes 4.5 increases the authorized computers from 3 to 5. A great benefit to many.
- There was 10 playlist burns from day 1, there's never been a "previous reduction".
- iTunes 4.5+ reduces that to 7 playlist burns.
- Change 2 songs around in the playlist...bam...7 more burns.
- MyTunes is no different from P2P, of course they disabled it.
- Currently purchased music won't be affected by this change, only future music.
For the record, I'm a PC user. I have no intention of going Mac.
It would be nice to see unbiased journalism from time to time, eh?