Free downloads & they're legal....

[nightflier]

It looks like hell finally froze over:

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,20311624-7484,00.html

[audio_dude]

sweet!
but a few comments...

"The drawback of the service, to be launched later this year, is downloaded music will not play on the iPod - which accounts for 70 per cent of digital music player sales - nor will it be burnable to CD."

now, unless these tracks are DRM'ed, you can easily change the format or import them into iTunes, so this is total BS, and no CD burning?

oh well, i might just have to pick up one of those dime-a-dozen sandisk sansa's for this!

[noddin0ff]

I forget where I read, but I believe the DRM is planned to allow you to play the files on the computer they were downloaded to and on ONE other device. Duplicating or burning to CD would not be allowed.

... I just found this in the NYTimes article

"For consumers, SpiralFrog’s free downloads will come with many more strings attached than Apple’s paid ones. Users of SpiralFrog will have to sit through advertisements and will be prevented by special software from making copies of the songs they download or from sharing them with other people.

They will have to revisit the SpiralFrog Web site regularly to keep access to the music they download. And the songs will be encoded in the Microsoft WMA format, meaning they will probably not work on Apple iPod portable music players.

One thing that made iTunes Store such a success was the very reasonable DRM restrictions that seemed rather generous at the time and still do. 'Free' is a pretty good deal, though. However, I'm betting the DRM will feel Orwellian as per usual with Microsoft.

Now if someone would actually use files that were not so heavily compressed...

[likeitloud]

No CD Burning, Useless. Gotta keep the collection moving.

[Feanor]

It looks like hell finally froze over:

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,20311624-7484,00.html

Der Ring das Nibelungen in its entirety in, say, 5 minutes, load it on my iPod, and burn it on CDs for my 2 or 3 friends and acquaintances, I'm not interested.
.:16: :23: :17: :17: :9: :7:

[noddin0ff]

Well, I think that not being able to burn a CD should NOT be a deal killer. What do you want the CD for?
Portability? You can hook up your portable player to anything including car/home stereo.
Quality? You can't polish a turd. If the files are compressed, putting them on a CD isn't magically going to make them better on your home stereo.
Archiving? Well, that's not how it works. It's free.

For me, the ads are the deal killer.

[noddin0ff]

I think of this as more of a radio model. Except you always get to pick the songs. The price you pay is commercials and you have to listen on certain devices.

[basite]

sweet!
but a few comments...

"The drawback of the service, to be launched later this year, is downloaded music will not play on the iPod - which accounts for 70 per cent of digital music player sales - nor will it be burnable to CD."

now, unless these tracks are DRM'ed, you can easily change the format or import them into iTunes, so this is total BS, and no CD burning?

oh well, i might just have to pick up one of those dime-a-dozen sandisk sansa's for this!

re-record the tracks (record wave source on your pc) and save them in the format you prefer, then, you can do everything you want, crappy protection.

[nightflier]

While the orwellian Microslease copy protection is a pain, the deal killer for me too, is the ads. I just hope that this will create some competition in the marketplace to get Rhapsody, eMusic and the other guys to back off on their own restrictions. Like someone else said, iTunes is the least irritating, but there are still plenty of complaints about the service. Personally, I'm still buying CD's (usually used ones) and ripping them to disk. It's a pain, but I'm just not ready to subscribe to online music. The idea that music that we once owned we now have to pay a subscription fee for (like software) is just wrong. I paid for it once, I don't want to pay for it again. Let's hope that free music with commercials puts some fire under the pants of the other guys.