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+--- Thread: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead (/showthread.php?tid=185114)
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - Bimwad - 11-16-2015
Who needs DRM? It has always been but a small hurdle, and only served to inconvenience the paying customer.
In 2015, the media cartels have finally succeeded in convicing people to rent ALL of their entertainment--first movies, then tv, and now music.
People have gladly given up ownership in exchange for variety and convenience.
And now, they have the largest music distributor on their side, trying to shove Music down every user's throat.
Once everything has settled in nicely, they'll start to test their price discrimination theories to see where the limits lie, like they did with song and album pricing.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - silvarios - 11-17-2015
Reason #342 why DRM stinks. Hate it.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - silvarios - 11-17-2015
Bimwad,
True, true, I don't hate streaming services, but the end game is here.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - silvarios - 11-17-2015
Paul F. wrote:
So, because Apple owns a music service that does DRM, you refused to buy an iPod that has no DRM, because Apple sellls DRM'ed music totally separate and unrelated to the iPod?
Yeah.. makes good sense.
The iPod stinks. Try getting your non DRM stuff of the iPod. Oh wait, can't. I loaded my own podcasts and music onto my iPod and I had to find a third party app to take off my own stuff when I got to my location. Well, I could have enabled disk mode and loaded the same content twice. Then there's the whole requirement of needing an app to drop media onto the iPod. Why is that a thing? Besides vendor lockin of course.
The iPod was a brilliant device when it came to on device use, but the ecosystem was the pits.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - sekker - 11-17-2015
I had this happen with ebooks when fictionwise was purchased by B&N. The reader app for iOS broke, then Amazon purchase and basically killed the only third party reader, Stanza.
I lost three early Apple songs since each hard drive upgrade / transfer counted as a user machine.
I now get ALL media into DRM-free versions - buy BR and convert, use Calibre to own my ebooks, etc.
My daughter uses Spotify. I am 100% sure she would pay 3x what she pays now to keep it. Just wait a few years.
Until then, I'm keeping my licensed content in a form that's computer- specific agnostic.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - Lux Interior - 11-17-2015
silvarios wrote:
The iPod stinks. Try getting your non DRM stuff of the iPod.
Well, first, I didn't delete my non-DRM stuff off of my computer after I loaded it onto my iPod.
I only used iPods for music. I guess I never had a problem with iTunes/Soundjam, either.
If I did need to get my stuff off, there were utilities.
But I haven't used stand-alone (i.e. non-iPhone) iPods regularly for years.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - silvarios - 11-17-2015
Lux Interior wrote:
[quote=silvarios]
The iPod stinks. Try getting your non DRM stuff of the iPod.
Well, first, I didn't delete my non-DRM stuff off of my computer after I loaded it onto my iPod.
I only used iPods for music. I guess I never had a problem with iTunes/Soundjam, either.
If I did need to get my stuff off, there were utilities.
But I haven't used stand-alone (i.e. non-iPhone) iPods regularly for years.
You didn't read what I wrote. You travel someone with your content and you can't get it off your iPod. Not everyone had a laptop back in the day. Then you had to download a tool to read the iPod, many were paid utilities and you had to hope the location would let you download the tool in the first place. I learned that the iPod could be a travel companion, but if I wanted to a. listen to non DRM content and b. have access on the go to that non DRM content, the only option was disk mode and loading the same content twice. These days it's worse, try interacting with non DRM content iTunes while an iOS device is connected to a different computer than the one you loaded the content onto. Last time I tried this (from iOS 2-iOS 6 days), pretty sure I was told my only option was to erase and re sync from the other computer.
Anyone defending the idea that your own content can be locked away from you because the vendor says so, man, I really don't have words. The fact that Apple locked non DRM content to the device was pretty crappy.
On the flip side, the fact you can't access your DRM content without iTunes is also pretty crappy. I switched to Linux, how do I get my content? I have a Roku, how do I get my content? I have a Mac with a web browser, but a version of iTunes that is too old since the content has been updated with a more recent version of FairPlay, how do I get my content? The whole ecosystem is one big bag of hurt. Enabling web access would go a long way to making this stuff usable. The proper DRM tokens can be set in modern browsers. Maybe not FairPlay itself, but HTML5 is properly infected by DRM now.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - kahuna1342 - 11-17-2015
I'm sure that all 12 people that bought Zunes are severely disappointed.
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - Lux Interior - 11-17-2015
silvarios wrote:
You didn't read what I wrote. You travel someone with your content and you can't get it off your iPod.
I get it. I only used my iPod as a portable music player. And at 5 GB in 2001, it was fsckin awesome.
On the flip side, the fact you can't access your DRM content without iTunes is also pretty crappy. I switched to Linux, how do I get my content?
It may be crappy, but that's business. Why should Apple care if you switch to Linux? But now their music is DRM-free, so yay Apple?
Re: Sorry.. your Zune DRM Content is officially dead - silvarios - 11-17-2015
Lux Interior wrote:
[quote=silvarios]
You didn't read what I wrote. You travel someone with your content and you can't get it off your iPod.
I get it. I only used my iPod as a portable music player. And at 5 GB in 2001, it was fsckin awesome.
Of course if was. That's the mythology. It was awesome only being able to use Macs to use an mp3 player. By the way, it was $400, which was really awesome too!!!!!!!
Lux Interior wrote:On the flip side, the fact you can't access your DRM content without iTunes is also pretty crappy. I switched to Linux, how do I get my content?
It may be crappy, but that's business. Why should Apple care if you switch to Linux? But now their music is DRM-free, so yay Apple?
Nice cut and paste that dropped the whole quote. There's a whole use case I just posted. The point is Apple makes money on something then dictates the whole experience for the rest of your life. Also, music might be DRM free, but apps and movies certainly are not DRM free. Let's not worry about apps right now because that's a whole other ball of wax. Never mind all the music I already have in DRM format, which isn't a ton of money thankfully, maybe $20 or so, but it's another $25 to unlock that music. At that point, I could just repurchase the music from another store.
No, the real point is let's not forget the lesson learned from the start of the thread. DRM servers go dark all the time so there's always the chance it can happen here as well. Again, why are we encouraging DRM? Just because it is from Apple? I see why a stockholder would think that way, but a user? As I once wrote about FairPlay DRM:
"If one has to tolerate a DRM scheme, one could do worse than FairPlay."
and
"To reiterate, the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) isn't a horrible service, and you could certainly do worse, but I'd like to believe the digital music buying public will show their support for better existing options of DRM-free digital music. Higher quality, a wider range of formats, and a more open mechanism (the browser) for purchasing content should be more than enough incentive to test the waters with those previously listed alternative services."
http://www.lowendmac.com/thompson/06/0524.html
What we are forgetting is that if iTunes decides to stop selling content say, to push streaming services instead (because it's the right business decision), your DRM laden purchase won't disappear immediately, but you won't even be able to reinstall the OS on those devices current functioning and you will never be able to transfer the content. It's funny UltraViolet gets a bad wrap, but every device I've tried to use with it has actually functioned. Do I want UltraViolet DRM? Nope, but I would take interoperable DRM over FairPlay any day. Which mirrors the same opinion I had when FairPlay and PlaysForsure were the big options at the time. In hindsight, had Microsoft provided some kind of "DRM shim" for Mac OS, Linux, etc. I would have backed the Microsoft initiative, given the wider range of playback device. Still would have been suboptimal.
I actually don't mind DRM as much when it's streaming content, largely because I don't own the content anyway. If I stop paying, then it goes. Yet, DRM for purchases is the pits. You essentially pay more for the right not to own the content.