Tuesday, September 05, 2006

iTunes Music Store = Garbage

The iTunes Music Store is for the short-sighted. Speaking as recently cured member of this sect, I have to say...stop buying AAC files now! What's an AAC file you might ask? Why, it's a file that only plays on your iPod and in your licensed copy of iTunes. Unless you burn it to a CD and burn it back to a nice format, like OGG or MP3- losing all track metadata (artist, title, album, etc.) unless you burn the CDs whole, which doesn't work if you're only buying the good songs, as is my wont.

You may not have been burned by this yet, but as more non-Apple options for entertainment become prevalent- you will be, you will be.

The alternatives- if you like independent music, emusic.com is great. If you like buying from dodgy Russians, allofmp3.com is even better. And now, MySpace is letting artists make money more or less directly from downloads on their pages.

Prediction: Fox will be one the biggest "record labels" in five years, if the others don't adapt, they could just go away.

I am interested to see what Universal's Spiral Frog thing turns out to be, but if it doesn't output MP3, I am not interested.

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