iTunes Authorization [Archive]

j_maddison

Apr 29, 2003, 07:49 AM

Originally posted by hvfsl
The main thing that annoys me is you cant use the music store in the UK (or any where else outside US), so it looks like I will have to stick to kazaa for the time being.

I can't really understand why this annoys you, keep using kazaa or limewire and get your music for free. Seriously though, I think that .99c for each song is overpriced. If you download an entire album you start to get into the same cost as bying a CD. Baring inmind that the net is inherintly a cheaper route to market, why does the music industry just see it as another way to overprice its products. Surely they should be cheaper on the net? There are minimul distribution costs incured, no packaging or logistic cots, and the only sores costs is incured by hosting and bandwidth costs. Just seems pricey to me, no wonder people on the net still support peer to peer file sharing and illegal music distribution in the way they do.

if the music industry demonstrated any sence the price of a download would be low. Economies of scale would take over ensuring maximum profitability, and then in a few years once the consumer has become comfortable with the distribution medium then they could increase the price. Just seems ill thought out on all fronts, both for the consumer (another nescient marketing cock up) and for the business (probably marketings fault again, sorry have a pet hate for marketing at the moment. Being made to suffer several module on my msc long live economics!!)

enough ranting.

jay
p.s. arent the new ipods quite sexy looking, makes my old ipod look a bit dated.

alia

Apr 29, 2003, 07:58 AM

What happens if you buy say 1,000 songs (hypothetical here!) and then move them to another computer? Can you authorize them en masse, or is it one at at time? I think that would be the biggest pain when it comes to this system.

Of course, I'm still not in a financial position to switch yet, so I guess it doesn't matter yet. :D

Alia

jimjiminyjim

Apr 29, 2003, 08:00 AM

Well, at least someone is using drm with the consumer in mind. Thank you apple. The drm management seems a little complicated to me - i don't know what they've done with the "rights" of individual users on the same computer, i haven't found much mention of it yet.

I tried to rip one of my CD's to aac, and got a message about access privileges. I think it is because I had the iTunes music folder in "Shared" so that everyone could put an alias to it in their home/music folder. Experimentally, I deleted the alias, and let iTunes create a new folder - it kept all the music from "shared" and then also let me rip the CD that I previously couldn't. This is what I don't like about drm and OS X users - the privileges are complicated, and there are many bugs that still need working out (i must admit, OS X privileges give me far less hassle now than in the first versions).

j_maddison: these songs aren't overpriced - they're on apple's website. (sarcasm) seriously though, now apple as well as the music industry takes a cut, plus, all the work behind the scenes to make a program like this fly probably cost a little money. In the technology world, we're paying not so much for the product as for all the research and development that went into creating and providing it.

jwthomp

Apr 29, 2003, 08:01 AM

"I can't really understand why this annoys you, keep using kazaa or limewire and get your music for free. Seriously though, I think that .99c for each song is overpriced. If you download an entire album you start to get into the same cost as bying a CD."

This is not true. The album price is at a reduced rate. It appears that almost all albums are $9.99. Far far cheaper than the cost of most albums in the store.

The .99 price becomes an excellent deal when you only wish to purchase one or two songs from an album.

One problem that can arise is if you purchase one or two songs from and album and later decide to purchase the whole thing, you don't get credit towards your purchase. So in effect you own "two" copies of some songs. I also imagine that the digital rights mechanisms do not handle this (say putting it on 6 macs).

One thing that puzzles me is the Rendezvous support. If anyone wants to listen to my music via iTunes Rendezvous support, they must have my user name and password for my .Mac account to authorize them, and this counts as one share. I am in a work environment where we are all on Mac's and this basically negates using Rendezvous for sharing music. I can't even pick one or two people to let use my music as I own two other Macs (an iMac and an iBook) that I use regularly and want to be able to listen to the music on those systems. For me this is the biggest drawback so far.

AlfieJ

Apr 29, 2003, 08:08 AM

I can see it happening...your computer crashes, or some prefereces file gets corrupted, and your computer deauthorizes itself.

You've legally bought and downloaded all this music, and you're not allowed to play it on this computer. Let's say you've already got two other computers authorized, and the artificial restriction of 3 means you can't re-authorize your computer. Now you've got headaches trying to convice Apple that you're a decent, law-abiding, citizen before you can re-authorize your computer.

The biggest problem I have with all of this is that you're treated as a criminal first.

Le Big Mac

Apr 29, 2003, 08:15 AM

Originally posted by j_maddison
Seriously though, I think that .99c for each song is overpriced. If you download an entire album you start to get into the same cost as bying a CD.

If you want an album, buy an album at tower records.com. You get the art and a permanent CD w/o DRM. But if you don't want an album, because you want only 2-3 songs (or 1), $1 each is pretty good. You come out way ahead, because you're not throwing money away on songs you don't want. Other than napster-style stealing, where else can you buy a single song that you want for $1? All the EP/CD-singles are $5, and that's only for some songs--the rest aren't available anywhere.

mproud

Apr 29, 2003, 08:21 AM

What's the rule on burning songs you've bought onto compact disc? Wouldn't it change format, or is there still some protection somewhere? Would I be able to burn an album I just bought to play it in the car? Does it count against authorizing/deauthorizing?

arn

Apr 29, 2003, 08:28 AM

Originally posted by mproud
What's the rule on burning songs you've bought onto compact disc? Wouldn't it change format, or is there still some protection somewhere? Would I be able to burn an album I just bought to play it in the car? Does it count against authorizing/deauthorizing?

you can burn a song as many times as you want. DRM is stripped when you do so.

*though you can burn a specific playlist/mix 10 times before you have to rearrage them. most people won't run into this

arn

kdickey

Apr 29, 2003, 08:35 AM

Well then, for those of us with older SCSI CD-Rs that do not work with iTunes we are screwed and cannot burn to CD I assume. If I am to buy any songs or albums I will want to burn a perm. copy for backup and if I cant burn then I dont want to buy.

To bad because I really like apples system. Not supporting some CD-Rs in iTunes may hurt apple.

Is there a way to burn the AACs with Toast? If so then that would work for me.

DGFan

Apr 29, 2003, 08:37 AM

At this point, you can presumably copy the songs to another computer and reauthorize them. Note: by default, Apple allows for a song to be authorized on three computers simultaneously.

I think it would be more accurate to say that a song is linked to an account and that account can be authorized on three computers simultaneously.

bigdog

Apr 29, 2003, 08:42 AM

According to a Fortune article posted recently, you can burn audio CDs fine but trying to re-rip them (to MP3, no idea on ripping to AAC) results in horrible quality. (clicky (http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,447333,00.html))

Apple has also come up with a copy-protection scheme that satisfies the music industry but won't alienate paying customers. You can burn individual songs onto an unlimited number of CDs. You can download them onto as many iPods as you might own. In other words, the music is pretty much yours to do with as you please. Casual music pirates, however, won't like it. The iTunes jukebox software will allow a specific playlist of songs or an album to be burned onto a CD ten times. You can burn more than that only if you manually change the order of the songs in the playlist.

And anybody who tries to upload iTunes Music Store songs onto KaZaA will be shocked. Each song is encrypted with a digital key so that it can be played only on three authorized computers, and that prevents songs from being transferred online. Even if you burn the AAC songs onto a CD that a conventional CD player can read and then re-rip them back into standard MP3 files, the sound quality is awful

DGFan

Apr 29, 2003, 08:43 AM

Originally posted by AlfieJ

The biggest problem I have with all of this is that you're treated as a criminal first.

I gotta go with SJ on this one. The difference between Apple's service and the others is that you're not treated like a criminal with Apple's.

There are some restrictions in the Apple service but none that I would ever run into if I wasn't going to break the law.

usage on:
- unlimited iPod usage
- unlimited computers on a local network
- three unrelated computers
- audio CD's (thereby permanently "unlocking" the restrictions on the music)
- possibly MP3 CD's (seems possible, haven't tried it)

You should only run into problems if there is a technical glitch or you're doing something illegal. Technical glitches suck anyway. I'd hate to have to do surgery to repair iTunes and re-rip MP3's from 100+ albums due to a technical glitch that totally paralyzes iTunes. Dealing with the authorization issue probably wouldn't be a big deal (and might be nothing more than deleting the plist which probably contains an encrypted key or something similar).

Mr Jobs

Apr 29, 2003, 08:46 AM

Originally posted by kdickey
Well then, for those of us with older SCSI CD-Rs that do not work with iTunes we are screwed and cannot burn to CD I assume. If I am to buy any songs or albums I will want to burn a perm. copy for backup and if I cant burn then I dont want to buy.

y dont you just sell you SCSI and get yourself an internal cdr/dvd combo way cheaper, or a external firewire if you dont have a powermac.

SCSI is dead - SerialATA baby all the way, a hell of a lot cheaper

DGFan

Apr 29, 2003, 08:48 AM

Even if you burn the AAC songs onto a CD that a conventional CD player can read and then re-rip them back into standard MP3 files, the sound quality is awful

That's not really news to anyone who's worked with lossy data formats before but I suppose it's worth mentioning again. This shouldn't really be a surprise, though, since it was brought up (often) well before the service went live.

I haven't read through the other thread (200+ messages) but what about reripping them to AAC (from an audio CD)? Would they still be unlocked (or do ALL AAC rips become locked)? And wouldn't the quality be better since it would be using the same codec?

nickgold

Apr 29, 2003, 08:54 AM

My sad tale is the song I've downloaded will not play, because iTunes is convinced it hasn't been authorized to play back my purchased music -- even though it clearly _is_ authorized when I look at my account settings via the Music Store. De-authorizing and re-authorizing doesn't help, in fact my local copy of iTunes never reflects that it has been de-authorized, even when the Music Store reflects that it's been de-authorized. Repairing disk permissions didn't help, nor did putting my Home directory back in the same partition OS X is on. Trashing iTUnes' pref file didn't do anything. I have a note into Music Store Customer Service, hopefully they will have some idea. Only 2 other folks mentioned this problem on the Music Store discussion forum on Apple's site -- I guess that means it's an obscure problem, at least. One guy mentioned it spontaneously started working for him. Maybe I'll get lucky.

What a bummer. This leaves a really foul taste in my mouth, and shows why DRM can be a royal pain and obstacle, even when you have no fundamental qualms with the "limits" of the DRM system itself -- if it simply dioesn't work, you're screwed, and the music you paid for is inaccessible. LAME.

menoinjun

Apr 29, 2003, 08:54 AM

Originally posted by jwthomp
One thing that puzzles me is the Rendezvous support. If anyone wants to listen to my music via iTunes Rendezvous support, they must have my user name and password for my .Mac account to authorize them, and this counts as one share. I am in a work environment where we are all on Mac's and this basically negates using Rendezvous for sharing music. I can't even pick one or two people to let use my music as I own two other Macs (an iMac and an iBook) that I use regularly and want to be able to listen to the music on those systems. For me this is the biggest drawback so far.

One note about Rendezvous...what you described above is not how it works at all. Rendezvous is all about streaming music, not copying music from one computer to another, so you don't have to worry about DRM at all. All you have to do is set it up in your iTunes 4 prefs that one doesn't need a password to use your music, and then once they are on the network it just works!!!

I have a G4 and an iBook, and I tried it last night! I have no music on my iBook, but I was able to seamlessly stream music from my G4 without any problems. You should be able to do this over large networks.

copperpipe

Apr 29, 2003, 09:01 AM

I keep hearing people ranting about an alum at .99 is too much. Go and check out the service before you post negative about it here first! In case you haven't noticed, albums are $10. That's cheaper than I've ever seen a new popular album for. Most new big albums sell for $16. That is a very big reduction in price. As for worrying about your computer crashing and all that, back it up! You should back up anyway right? The only real concern right now is getting the indie labels on there.

FatTony

Apr 29, 2003, 09:05 AM

Originally posted by jwthomp
One thing that puzzles me is the Rendezvous support. If anyone wants to listen to my music via iTunes Rendezvous support, they must have my user name and password for my .Mac account to authorize them, and this counts as one share. I am in a work environment where we are all on Mac's and this basically negates using Rendezvous for sharing music. I can't even pick one or two people to let use my music as I own two other Macs (an iMac and an iBook) that I use regularly and want to be able to listen to the music on those systems. For me this is the biggest drawback so far.

From what I understand, this is incorrect. You can share via iTunes Rendezvous without any DRM problems, because the users who log into your iTunes don't get to copy the songs. The songs are just streamed to them. That is why in the demos on stage that when the ibook or PowerBook lid is closed and the computer goes to sleep, their playlists are no longer available.

AVALONdesign

Apr 29, 2003, 09:06 AM

I already listened to streams from 2 other computers in my dorm and they listened to mine. The only problem was making sure the iTunes port was open on all of our firewalls.
It works wonderfully.

tduality

Apr 29, 2003, 09:24 AM

Originally posted by copperpipe
I keep hearing people ranting about an alum at .99 is too much. Go and check out the service before you post negative about it here first! In case you haven't noticed, albums are $10. That's cheaper than I've ever seen a new popular album for. Most new big albums sell for $16. That is a very big reduction in price.
Indeed. Around here in Switzerland decent CDs sell for about $20.

I guess one of the reasons we don't have the service available here is that the record companies try to protect their higher margins here at least for some time.

Martin

noel4r

Apr 29, 2003, 09:47 AM

i have an important question. what if i buy some music from apple then in the course of ten years buy 4 apple computers, can i keep transfering my songs to my fourth apple computer or does it limit the transfer to three macs? i try to buy a new computer every 2 or 3 years and i definitely still listen to music purchased a decade ago...

arn

Apr 29, 2003, 09:59 AM

Originally posted by noel4r
i have an important question. what if i buy some music from apple then in the course of ten years buy 4 apple computers, can i keep transfering my songs to my fourth apple computer or does it limit the transfer to three macs? i try to buy a new computer every 2 or 3 years and i definitely still listen to music purchased a decade ago...

you would not be able to have a full copy of them work on all four computer simultaneously... but you would be able to have them on any three.

arn

Fat Tony

Apr 29, 2003, 10:43 AM

Originally posted by arn
you would not be able to have a full copy of them work on all four computer simultaneously... but you would be able to have them on any three.

What's key is that with apple's iTunes Rendezvous streaming - you only need a _full copy_ on one computer and can stream to as many as you want. (this is not restricted by DRM as I understand it)

arn

Sorry for my ignorance on this, but does that mean you can stream to any computer with iTunes "anywhere" or just within your LAN. Would I be able to stream from my home computer to my work computer? If it's just within a local network, could you possibly be able to stream via VPN as I have setup from my home machine to my office network? Thanks.

trrosen

Apr 29, 2003, 10:45 AM

Sorry folks sharing of purchased music requires activation of the system playing the file. (i tried it) works great with non-purchased files though.

Also I burned a cd (WITH TOAST) and re-ripped into ACC thus stripping DRM. I cant tell the difference between the files.

Also the burned disc mounted up and iTunes found all the track info like it was a store bought cd.:D

nickgold

Apr 29, 2003, 10:54 AM

DRM DOES limit the number of Macs you can stream your PURCHASED music to, via rendezvous. However, this limitation does not affect songs, even AAC files, that you rip yourself -- only the ones in the AAC protected format that are purchased through the online store.. Seems ironic, but that's clearly how it works, and this is well documented.

DeusOmnis

Apr 29, 2003, 10:54 AM

For all you people worried about being able to play on only 3 computers, it's not like the Mac Underground wont deal with that issue quickly enough.

nickgold

Apr 29, 2003, 10:56 AM

You CAN stream to any achine on the internet, using an IP address. They DO NOT have to be on your subnet (although they do for rendezvous sharing to work, obviously).

Advanced -> Open Stream

AVALONdesign

Apr 29, 2003, 11:09 AM

Yeah. The only thing I don't like about this service is not being able to stream the music you purchase, as if you have less rights to the files you purchase online rather than the ones you purchase in a store.

Joep

Apr 29, 2003, 11:09 AM

I guess the Record Companies want us 'international' people to start rippin', stealin' and burnin' music, until they lost enough income in the rest of the world too. Then they will allow Apple to sell their music in the rest of the world. I guess this is more than an invitation. It's a challenge.

Alt.binaries.sounds.mp.complete_cd here we come. Let the 'free' music be ours, while you americans pay the musicians. Thanks guys.

AVALONdesign

Apr 29, 2003, 11:15 AM

Yeah, I definately wouldn't blame the U.S.-only store on Apple. I'm sure the record companies are just trying to keep this to a very small crowd, incase it's something that turns out to be detrimental to their business, then they only have to worry about the 3% or whatever of Mac users that are using it.

trrosen

Apr 29, 2003, 11:31 AM

It seems steve was a little off as far as the present quality of the service. Many of the previews for older somgs are of very low quality. Id say less then 56k mp3 streams...definatly not ACC 128.

maybe this is due to time constrants or somebody screwed up but the are very low quality

j763

Apr 29, 2003, 11:33 AM

DRM is very easy to workaround -- I don't know why so many people are fussed about it. It is an annoyance, but nothing more.

It's incredibly simple to avoid -- just burn the music you buy onto CD from iTunes. Then, rip the music from the CD at 128kbps AAC. If you're good with Toast (http://www.roxio.com/en/products/toast/), you don't actually need to waste a physical CD anyways.

Simple, non?!

j763

Apr 29, 2003, 11:33 AM

Originally posted by trrosen
It seems steve was a little off as far as the present quality of the service. Many of the previews for older somgs are of very low quality. Id say less then 56k mp3 streams...definatly not ACC 128.

maybe this is due to time constrants or somebody screwed up but the are very low quality

What songs have you sampled that sound this bad? Give us some names!

jettredmont

Apr 29, 2003, 11:37 AM

Originally posted by alia
What happens if you buy say 1,000 songs (hypothetical here!) and then move them to another computer? Can you authorize them en masse, or is it one at at time? I think that would be the biggest pain when it comes to this system.

RT(F)A

You authorize/deauthorize a computer, not individual files. Your .Mac/AppleID account is branded on the files, and authorize specific computers (ie, instances of iTunes?) to play music branded to that ID.

Presumably, when you authorize a new computer to do this you will require internet access at the time of authorization (not necessarily a big deal, as this is an internet-based service ... the only scenario this knocks out is downloading the files at work (CPU1), then putting them on an AAC CD or DVD to transport to your hypothetical, completely disconnected home PC ... this would require that you take your home PC to some location where you can get internet access of some sort just to authorize it on your AppleID account ...)

Since all songs are branded with your AppleID, you will also not be able to transfer ownership of the songs to anyone else (at least, not individually; just the entire group en masse along with your AppleID account itself ... :) )

Qball

Apr 29, 2003, 11:42 AM

Originally posted by j_maddison
Seriously though, I think that .99c for each song is overpriced.

Maybe, but I think this whole setup is the music industry admitting that most albums have some good songs and some real crap filler too. Albums at $17.99 with one or two hits are basically a bait-and-switch tactic and the industry knows it. It will not be so easy for artists to pull this off now -- albums will have to be of a higher quality. The quality of music could improve because of the Music Store.

Now the thinking goes that you can spend less to get exactly what you want. The six good songs will cost you $5.94. Not bad.

It's just weird to think about a super-rich artist like Eminem making his money 99 cents at a time! It's kinda humbling.

dscottbuch

Apr 29, 2003, 11:45 AM

Originally posted by AVALONdesign
Yeah. The only thing I don't like about this service is not being able to stream the music you purchase, as if you have less rights to the files you purchase online rather than the ones you purchase in a store.

This seems to be a common misconception. You DO NOT have the RIGHT to stream the music you bought on a CD to anywhere even thought you may be able to do it. You have the RIGHT for personal use of the music.

I don't like the draconion measuring being taken to prevent this particular abuse because its trying to put a genie back in the bottle, rather than adapt to a new paradigm under which money can also be made. That aside, those who want to stream music to all, just because they own it, are confusing RIGHTS with ABILITIES. Just because I can hit you in the nose doesn't imply I have that right.

j763

Apr 29, 2003, 11:49 AM

Originally posted by dscottbuch
This seems to be a common misconception. You DO NOT have the RIGHT to stream the music you bought on a CD to anywhere even thought you may be able to do it. You have the RIGHT for personal use of the music.

I don't like the draconion measuring being taken to prevent this particular abuse because its trying to put a genie back in the bottle, rather than adapt to a new paradigm under which money can also be made. That aside, those who want to stream music to all, just because they own it, are confusing RIGHTS with ABILITIES. Just because I can hit you in the nose doesn't imply I have that right.

True. But I think the point that avalon was trying to make was that music you import from CD has 0 restricions on it, where music you purchase from the iTunes Music Store is accompanied by many restrictions.

Again, I'd recommend grabbing some blank CDs and start burning!

jettredmont

Apr 29, 2003, 11:56 AM

Originally posted by jwthomp
This is not true. The album price is at a reduced rate. It appears that almost all albums are $9.99. Far far cheaper than the cost of most albums in the store.

Not quite true. you need to take this on a case-by-case basis. For instance, Norah Jone's excellent album is just as expensive online as at Best Buy ($13.86). It has 14 tracks, so album price here is == track-by-track price. I don't know why, but Pink's album is marked as "By Song Only" ... you can buy every track, but there is no album price.

I haven't found a "majority" of disks at a discounted rate. It seems more are grouped around $.99*#tracks, and then a select group discounted below that.

Seems to me we're hitting the vagueries of each label's contract with Apple. Perhaps some allowed discounting of some of their artists' full albums while others licensed only per-song or album-same-as-sum-of-tracks pricing.

The .99 price becomes an excellent deal when you only wish to purchase one or two songs from an album.

Exactly. That's where Apple gets my money: when I can preview all the tracks of an album and fairly confidently say "not for me" on all but a handful. For full albums, I can get the same tracks along with a physical CD and jewel case and liner notes (sorry, I'm shocked that "cover art" is all Apple's providing here!) for nothing more than a periodic stop in to the Best Buy on my ride home from work.

The album strategy, IMHO, needs work before this goes full-access (Windows+International). Either you compete on price (which Apple has never done very well) or you compete on features (give us access to music videos and extra content that wouldn't fit on a CD along with 70 minutes of music for our money!) Fewer features for equivalent cost leaves only convenience, and frankly the convenience just isn't all that significant when every street corner has a music store!

One problem that can arise is if you purchase one or two songs from and album and later decide to purchase the whole thing, you don't get credit towards your purchase. So in effect you own "two" copies of some songs. I also imagine that the digital rights mechanisms do not handle this (say putting it on 6 macs).

Correct. Your "2" copies of the songs are still only available to three Macs, as each is branded with your AppleID and only three Macs can be authorized on a single AppleID at once.

One thing that puzzles me is the Rendezvous support. If anyone wants to listen to my music via iTunes Rendezvous support, they must have my user name and password for my .Mac account to authorize them, and this counts as one share.

Really? Are you sure? My impression was that iTunes streaming allows your computer to "authorize" any number of clients. As Mr Jobs said in the demo, you have access to your friends' shared playlists while they are in the area, and when they leave, they take their sons with them (he said it better though :) )

I think we need someone to experiment with this...

I am in a work environment where we are all on Mac's and this basically negates using Rendezvous for sharing music. I can't even pick one or two people to let use my music as I own two other Macs (an iMac and an iBook) that I use regularly and want to be able to listen to the music on those systems. For me this is the biggest drawback so far.

Well, the Rendezvous support using MP3 or non-branded AAC (ie, self-ripped in iTunes) works great in a work setting. We had a handful of shared playlists floating around here about ten minutes after Job's announcement.

frinky23

Apr 29, 2003, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by trrosen
Sorry folks sharing of purchased music requires activation of the system playing the file. (i tried it) works great with non-purchased files though.

Also I burned a cd (WITH TOAST) and re-ripped into ACC thus stripping DRM. I cant tell the difference between the files.

Also the burned disc mounted up and iTunes found all the track info like it was a store bought cd.:D

Are you saying that with Toast you can burn a CD using the AAC files downloaded from the service? I don't care about re-ripping to strip the DRM, I just want to burn music CDs and iTunes does not support my CD burner (an internal Plextor 40x burner). I've sent a message asking Apple to add support for my burner, but I doubt that will happen.

jettredmont

Apr 29, 2003, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by kdickey
Well then, for those of us with older SCSI CD-Rs that do not work with iTunes we are screwed and cannot burn to CD I assume.

[...]

Is there a way to burn the AACs with Toast? If so then that would work for me.

The AAC files are just files (look in your iTunes Music folder). Drag them to your Toast project and burn them.

The computer is authorized/deauthorized for your AppleID account, not the songs. This keeps things quite simple and seamless in 99% of all cases.

Maclicious

Apr 29, 2003, 12:06 PM

I've downloaded my first legal digital songs from the internet, as easily and seamlessly as if they were already in my music library. I'm stunned. This service is going to do great, great things for apple and the music industry, too.

jettredmont

Apr 29, 2003, 12:09 PM

So this appears to answer my question about what happens if your Mac dies completely, or is lost or stolen (this is on my mind as my Windows laptop completely died a few weeks back ... sometimes won't boot up at all and other times will start booting and run for about 2 minutes before crackling and dying ... a sad thing!)

Unfortunately, the answer's not good (you can't "deauthorize" a computer for your account without physical access to that computer). But, hopefully, Apple techs will be able to handle this special case by fiddling with the authorization on their database if such a thing ever happens. I hope so, anyway!

steve-not-jobs

Apr 29, 2003, 12:24 PM

Sorry for the list of questions, but it's all a bit vague for me;
If I download a song from the store and burn it to CD do I need to decompress it before I can play the CD in a standard CD player (eg in my car)?
Also my Home Theatre plays MP3's burned on a CD - I guess AAC is completly different, so again I would need to decompress the file before burning.
How much quality (if any) do you lose when decompressing?
Do you only get a problem if you try and recompress to say MP3?
Thanks

alia

Apr 29, 2003, 12:31 PM

Originally posted by jettredmont
RT(F)A

You authorize/deauthorize a computer, not individual files. Your .Mac/AppleID account is branded on the files, and authorize specific computers (ie, instances of iTunes?) to play music branded to that ID.

Presumably, when you authorize a new computer to do this you will require internet access at the time of authorization (not necessarily a big deal, as this is an internet-based service ... the only scenario this knocks out is downloading the files at work (CPU1), then putting them on an AAC CD or DVD to transport to your hypothetical, completely disconnected home PC ... this would require that you take your home PC to some location where you can get internet access of some sort just to authorize it on your AppleID account ...)

Since all songs are branded with your AppleID, you will also not be able to transfer ownership of the songs to anyone else (at least, not individually; just the entire group en masse along with your AppleID account itself ... :) )

Thanks for clearing that up! As I don't have my own Mac yet, I can't test it out for myself. Too bad my mom isn't big with iTunes! I could have her test it out for me on her mac. :)

Thanks again!

Alia

soosy

Apr 29, 2003, 12:54 PM

Originally posted by j763
True. But I think the point that avalon was trying to make was that music you import from CD has 0 restricions on it, where music you purchase from the iTunes Music Store is accompanied by many restrictions.

Again, I'd recommend grabbing some blank CDs and start burning!

Yes, I too find it quite strange that potentially pirated music already in your library you can stream, but songs you buy through Apple you cannot stream. I guess that's just how any sort of DRM works -- legal songs are going to have DRM which means some restrictions.

This would be an incentive to buy the actual CDs (unlimited use plus booklet, case versus instant downloading at slightly cheaper price). I suspect the Record Labels are hoping that with copy protected cd's you eventually won't have any more flexibility with a store bought CD than you will with a DRM AAC download.

In the meantime, it's irksome.

(not that I ever plan to support a copy-protected cd by buying one)

frinky23

Apr 29, 2003, 01:09 PM

Originally posted by jettredmont
The AAC files are just files (look in your iTunes Music folder). Drag them to your Toast project and burn them.

Of course, but will Toast burn them to a music CD (as in will play in an audio CD player), or are you limited to a data backup CD?

nickgold

Apr 29, 2003, 01:33 PM

You can burn the protected AAC files directly from iTunes, as a standard, non-DRM music CD. Toast not necessary at all.

Dave Marsh

Apr 29, 2003, 02:05 PM

Can someone clear this up? It appears you must be physically connected to the Internet for it to determine your computer is authorized before permitting you to play your purchased songs. Nothing else would seem able to control limiting the number of authorized computers. If something were downloaded to your computer to authorize it, you could simply disconnect and use it forever, right?

Dave Marsh

Apr 29, 2003, 02:10 PM

Rendezvous streaming works great on non-AAC DRM encoded songs (i.e., up to the iTunes concurrent limit of five streams). With purchased songs, wouldn't you be able to stream them to another authorized computer? Or, does the authorization only apply to physically copying the purchased songs to another computer, so that you can stream purchased music to non-authorized computers on your local subnet, as with your non-DRM protected music (i.e., up to the five streams iTunes limit)?

Fat Tony

Apr 29, 2003, 02:25 PM

Originally posted by Dave Marsh
Rendezvous streaming works great on non-AAC DRM encoded songs (i.e., up to the iTunes concurrent limit of five streams). With purchased songs, wouldn't you be able to stream them to another authorized computer? Or, does the authorization only apply to physically copying the purchased songs to another computer, so that you can stream purchased music to non-authorized computers on your local subnet, as with your non-DRM protected music (i.e., up to the five streams iTunes limit)?

I had an earlier question somewhat related to this and found this on MacCentral:

Apple, analysts on the new music service (http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/04/28/appleanalysts/)

Sharing your tunes

Using Rendezvous zero configuration networking, users can now share their music on an internal network with other iTunes 4 computers. A checkmark in the preferences allows all music or certain playlists to be shared with a password if you choose.

You can also connect to other people's playlists over the Internet using iTunes 4. By entering a friend's IP address and the password they assigned to their music library, you can access their entire library of music or individual playlists and stream it to your computer. You cannot, however, download any of their music to your computer.

"There is an advanced feature that's intended for your own personal use that will allow you to type in your IP address so you can listen to your home music library from the office," said Bell. "We designed the feature around personal use in a local network."

trrosen

Apr 29, 2003, 03:14 PM

Originally posted by frinky23
Are you saying that with Toast you can burn a CD using the AAC files downloaded from the service? I don't care about re-ripping to strip the DRM, I just want to burn music CDs and iTunes does not support my CD burner (an internal Plextor 40x burner). I've sent a message asking Apple to add support for my burner, but I doubt that will happen.

Yeah it works. It was a surprise to me too i thought i would have to hack my system to enable disc burning support on my Sony 48x24x48x but I dropped the playlist right from iTunes into toast and it started converting. Maybe Quicktime 6.2 gives toast the ability to read the AAC files or on of the resent updates to it 5.2 added the functionality

jettredmont

Apr 29, 2003, 03:49 PM

Originally posted by steve-not-jobs
Sorry for the list of questions, but it's all a bit vague for me;
If I download a song from the store and burn it to CD do I need to decompress it before I can play the CD in a standard CD player (eg in my car)?

The act of burning a Music CD (as opposed to an mp3 CD) decompresses the audio to a format known as PCM (Pulse Code Modulated), the standard for CDs.

Also my Home Theatre plays MP3's burned on a CD - I guess AAC is completly different, so again I would need to decompress the file before burning.

Correct. You have two options: either decompress the AAC to CD for your home stereo, or "cross-code" it to mp3 (which is essentially decrypting the AAC to PCM and then encrypting back down to MP3 at a chosen bitrate).

How much quality (if any) do you lose when decompressing?

None (or very little ... depends on how well your player/decrypting codec is written). You lose quality on compression. Of course, the AAC files are already compressed, so you've already lost quality from the studio masters or pressed CDs that Apple uses as its source. So long as you have a well-coded player, however, you should lose no quality on decrypting the AAC stream.

Do you only get a problem if you try and recompress to say MP3?
Thanks

Yes. Cross-coding is generally not advised because over multiple generations (cross-code to 192kbit MP3, then cross-code to 128kbit MP3, then make a few edits and resave as 128kbit MP3, etc) you tend to hear very noticable artifacts (blips, bleeps, bloops, and clicks :) ) crop up in the audio. Artifacts tend to self-reinforce, such that every generation has more noticable artifacts than the last, until all you have is one big artifact mess.

Now, with a single-cycle cross-code, you're probably not going to notice anything. It's certainly worth trying on a bit of music you know well. Take the original CD, import into iTunes with AAC, then cross-code it to mp3 (I don't see a simple way to do this with iTunes ... you might need a third-party utility ... you might be able to burn AAC files to an "MP3 CD" with an implicit cross-code thrown in there for free, but I haven't tried it), burn it to an MP3 disc, and play it on your home stereo. If you can't hear the difference, then the cross-coding process should work just fine for you. If you can hear the difference, then just burning to CD as CD audio (not MP3) would be your only option. If you can hear the difference in just that one AAC round-trip, then you have pretty much ruled out the possibility of using internet audio for your ears altogether :)

C14ru5

Apr 29, 2003, 03:52 PM

It has been mentioned a couple of times that it is possible to remove the DRM encryption by burning a CD or by using applications like Audio Hijack to achieve a digital copy, then to re-encode the file into AAC format without any perceptable loss. This is true, as long as you encode the file using the same algorithm that was originally used, in this case AAC@128kbps.

Naturally, this brings up the question of how legal such an action is. Recently there has been a lawsuit against the author of the DeCSS application (the mac port is called OSEx) for removing region information from DVDs - supposedly for backup reasons. The DVD industry didn't win in this case; however, they will very probably try again. The debate is about whether or not one is allowed to analyze/exploit property which one does legally own. The same problem will appear in the case of removing the DRM encryption of a AAC file of which you believe you completely own in all legal aspects. I'm really interested in seeing how this issue will develop over time. The basic rule is: As long as there are barriers in this world, people will seek to overcome them, legally or illegally :-(

shadowfax

Apr 29, 2003, 03:56 PM

arn, how does one go about reporting errors in grammar on articles? I assume you care about that? "seemless" is not the word you were looking for there in the news article, if it is one at all. it's "seamless." should we just PM you?

Matthé

Apr 29, 2003, 04:09 PM

why $ 0.99 or $10 is too much:
considering that these prices are lower than their cd counterparts is not saying music is actually cheaper this way.
the biggest costs for a record label are: big contracts, production, distribution, stock,...
almost all of these costs have been eliminated by using a digital way of dispersing music. What remains are production (of the music) fees, contracts and some administration
the risk for the recordcompany is thus very low
so actually profits are much higher considering the huge reduction in cost.

this leads me to conclude a further evolution of something that has already been happening worldwide: a lot of people are starting their own label because it has become even harder to get a contract and usually your fate as a signed artist is in one persons hands (that is why tons of potentially good music goes to waste on the subjectivity of one man)

the impact of services like this could be huge on the record industry:
if all those artists/small labels start coming along services like this, who needs all the majors and their distributing force? why sign at all when you can sell your music directly without all those moneyhungry middlemen?

money could finally go back to the people that deserve it: the artists

Mudbug

Apr 29, 2003, 04:18 PM

Originally posted by nickgold
You can burn the protected AAC files directly from iTunes, as a standard, non-DRM music CD. Toast not necessary at all.

I too have a few burners NOT SUPPORTED by itunes, so the "burn" option in the top right corner really has no meaning on a few of my macs.

so back to the question - can you burn AAC files thru Toast - I dunno yet. I'll get back to you when I do find out.

-edited 'cause my html didn't work...

steve-not-jobs

Apr 29, 2003, 04:41 PM

Originally posted by jettredmont
The act of burning a Music CD (as opposed to an mp3 CD) decompresses the audio to a format known as PCM (Pulse Code Modulated), the standard for CDs.

Correct. You have two options: either decompress the AAC to CD for your home stereo, or "cross-code" it to mp3 (which is essentially decrypting the AAC to PCM and then encrypting back down to MP3 at a chosen bitrate).

None (or very little ... depends on how well your player/decrypting codec is written). You lose quality on compression. Of course, the AAC files are already compressed, so you've already lost quality from the studio masters or pressed CDs that Apple uses as its source. So long as you have a well-coded player, however, you should lose no quality on decrypting the AAC stream.

Yes. Cross-coding is generally not advised because over multiple generations (cross-code to 192kbit MP3, then cross-code to 128kbit MP3, then make a few edits and resave as 128kbit MP3, etc) you tend to hear very noticable artifacts (blips, bleeps, bloops, and clicks :) ) crop up in the audio. Artifacts tend to self-reinforce, such that every generation has more noticable artifacts than the last, until all you have is one big artifact mess.

Now, with a single-cycle cross-code, you're probably not going to notice anything. It's certainly worth trying on a bit of music you know well. Take the original CD, import into iTunes with AAC, then cross-code it to mp3 (I don't see a simple way to do this with iTunes ... you might need a third-party utility ... you might be able to burn AAC files to an "MP3 CD" with an implicit cross-code thrown in there for free, but I haven't tried it), burn it to an MP3 disc, and play it on your home stereo. If you can't hear the difference, then the cross-coding process should work just fine for you. If you can hear the difference, then just burning to CD as CD audio (not MP3) would be your only option. If you can hear the difference in just that one AAC round-trip, then you have pretty much ruled out the possibility of using internet audio for your ears altogether :)

Great thanks - a very useful non-techie answer.

elmimmo

Apr 29, 2003, 05:01 PM

Originally posted by arn
You can't migrate to a PC yet. Not until Apple releases a PC client... because you can't play them on the PC yet.Has anybody actually tried this? There are quite a few non-DRM AAC/MPEG4 decompressors for Windows, quite more than for the Mac in fact.

Did anyone try to read those audio files in one such thing?

coolsoldier

Apr 29, 2003, 05:39 PM

I have a few computers that are not macs as well as a few older macs that can't run iTunes 4 and/or cannot connect to the internet. NONE of these computers will be able to play my Apple downloads, even the systems that support AAC. If it's AAC, it should work on any player that can do AAC. Otherwise, they shouldn't call it by that name. I know that there are ways to circumvent the DRM, but they're all too much hassle. I'll stick with CDs for now.

wilco

Apr 29, 2003, 05:46 PM

Originally posted by Matthé
why $ 0.99 or $10 is too much:
considering that these prices are lower than their cd counterparts is not saying music is actually cheaper this way.
the biggest costs for a record label are: big contracts, production, distribution, stock,...
almost all of these costs have been eliminated by using a digital way of dispersing music. What remains are production (of the music) fees, contracts and some administration
the risk for the recordcompany is thus very low
so actually profits are much higher considering the huge reduction in cost.

That might be true if the costs you mentioned above had already been discarded, which of course, they haven't.

Those costs are still present, and until the record industry goes completely digital, they will remain.

I'm no fan of the record industry, but I would expect that the price their digital files would still reflect some of these costs.

On a side note, have any of you started compiling a "suprised" list regarding the artists offered on the music store.

Here's a brief version of mine

Suprised to find them:
Mike Watt
Pulp
Paul Weller/Jam/Style Council
Uncle Tupelo

Surprised by absence:
Beatles
Sex Pistols
Belle and Sebastian
Badly Drawn Boy

arn

Apr 29, 2003, 06:08 PM

Originally posted by Shadowfax
arn, how does one go about reporting errors in grammar on articles? I assume you care about that? "seemless" is not the word you were looking for there in the news article, if it is one at all. it's "seamless." should we just PM you?

just use the submit story link. :)

arn

rockman2023

Apr 29, 2003, 06:11 PM

Personally, I think 99¢ per song isnt a big deal. Think about it......you buy a bag of chips for a $1 (maybe even more). And roughly $10 for a CD isn't bad either.

As for the AAC audio.....can't you just use iTunes to convert it to mp3?

http://forums.macrumors.com/images/icons/icon3.gif OR...use AudioHijack to convert to mp3 if iTunes won't let you.....hmmmm...... http://forums.macrumors.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

MacSlut

Apr 29, 2003, 06:48 PM

Originally posted by Mudbug
I too have a few burners NOT SUPPORTED by itunes, so the "burn" option in the top right corner really has no meaning on a few of my macs.

so back to the question - can you burn AAC files thru Toast - I dunno yet. I'll get back to you when I do find out.

Yes you can (from a technical standpoint) burn a DRM AAC file to a standard audio CD (CD-R or CD-RW) using either iTunes or Toast.

You can then rip it back to you computer as a Wav, AIFF, AAC or MP3.

Will you hear a difference when comparing it to the original DRM AAC?
Probably not, assuming you rip as a high quality file.
You should not be able to hear a diference between a 44.1KHz 16-bit WAV or AIFF and the original DRM AAC. If you rip to AAC or MP3, the difference will only be what is inherent in the compression to begin with.

Let's say you have an MP3 only player and want to convert your purchased downloads to the player. Burn your song to a CD-RW (just keep using one for this task) or CD-R. Make sure you're burning it as an Audio CD in Toast or iTunes. If you play this CD, it should sound exactly like the original DRM AAC.

Now rip the song from the CD to disk using a high quality MP3 setting (or AAC if that's what you want).

What's the quality of this new MP3 or AAC?

Well, lets talk in terms of comparison to original as opposed to yumminess. By this I mean doing an A/B test as opposed to just listening to the file and saying it sounds good (yummy).

Lets say you take the original store purchased CD and compared the song to one purchased through iTunes. Can you hear a difference? If not, stop right there, the answer is that the DRM stripped files won't sound any different either.

Listen closely for the differences. Identify the differences...not just the tin sound but all the subtle differences...like tasting a wine. You'll hear some differences you might actually like (yummy) because the audio is more compressed (in the analog sense).

Now the difference between the store purchased CD and the iTunes purchased song should be more significant than the iTunes purchased song and a high quality encoding in MP3 or AAC. The reasons:

1) During the original encoding for iTunes, the audio is compressed...as in made less complex. Analog compression was a big thing in the '70s, and today compressing the audio makes it easier to encode and tends to add a quality that most feel is yummy, but it does change the audio from the original source. During the process of stripping DRM the compression is neither undone or redone...the sine wave has already been compressed within the threshold of the encoding algorithm. Though it should be noted that it is different between AAC and MP3 as well as with different bit rates so there will still be a difference between the original DRM AAC and the stripped version, but much less than the store purchased CD and the iTunes purchased song.

2) You can encode the new file at a higher bitrate. You aren't limited to a 128K AAC. This with a higher bitrate there will be a lower difference from what is now the source and the copy.

Bottom line: It's really easy to strip DRM and still have good results whether it's MP3 or AAC. If there is a concern about audio quality its more of an issue of the original source file and its 128K AAC encoding.

From a legal standpoint you can't do any of this. It's illegal to disable or remove digital copy protection - period.

My argument (though I'll be the first to admit it won't fly) is that DRM AAC is not copy protected. It's more of a copy annoyance, and a minor one at that.

[edited to include moral standpoint]

I wanted to add that given the price of the music that Apple is offering...especially for entire albums, the ease of downloading and finding music, makes it compelling for me to purchase my music this way, and unlikely that I'll download files from sharing services, unless they aren't available through iTunes.

Stripping DRM is something that I feel is morally justified for personal use...such as transferring to my MP3 only player.

Your moral mileage may vary.

Dave Marsh

Apr 29, 2003, 06:58 PM

I can't find the exact quote right now, but I believe I read in the iTunes Help system that you CANNOT convert a purchased AAC-DRM song directly into MP3.

gwangung

Apr 29, 2003, 07:12 PM

nickgold

Apr 29, 2003, 11:56 PM

Originally posted by MacSlut
From a legal standpoint you can't do any of this. It's illegal to disable or remove digital copy protection - period.

My argument (though I'll be the first to admit it won't fly) is that DRM AAC is not copy protected. It's more of a copy annoyance, and a minor one at that.as transferring to my MP3 only player.

What is odd about Apple's choice of DRM, is that it seems to inherently violate the DMCA -- the very act of recording the AAC-Protected file as a standard audio CD, or even MP3 CD, is striipping away a level of digital rights management -- which is apparently outlawed by the current sad excuse we have for a democracy called the USA.

Odder still is that Apple's lawyers, a generally savvy bunch, should have understood this before moving forward -- did they set things up like this intentionally? To display the DMCA as a blatant crock of you-know-what? To reclaim fair-use, but surprisingly, doing it from the fairly protected angle of a large corporation? The world may never know.