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ITUNES (at least currently) only has DRM (Digital Rights Management) music on their site. Any iTunes tracks that you purchase and download are in a "protected" AAC or M4P audio format. Only it's not YOU that is being protected, it's Apple, or rather Apple's bottom line. Apple explains this by saying that their proprietary format gives you superior sound quality, but that's a smokescreen. It's all about DRM, and DRM is all about the money. The ability to make copies of copyrighted materials is seen by the recording industry as a threat to its profitability, and perhaps rightly so. DRM (Digital Rights Management) was created by digital media publishers so they could control the duplication and dissemination of their content. But DRM is actually a misnomer. Because rather than granting rights, DRM actually restricts the consumer from doing perfectly valid and reasonable things with music they own. MP3 is the standard for digital audio. An MP3 music track can be played on almost ANY player, whether it's portable or computer-based. You can burn MP3s to a CD and they'll play just fine on almost any modern CD player. But Apple's iTunes software doesn't create MP3 files when you buy a song. The files are "protected" and cannot be played on a computer which does not have the iTunes software. You CAN copy them to your portable music player, as long as you bought that player from Apple and it says iPod on it. Understandably, this makes Linux users, and the millions of owners of non-iPod music players a little upset.
Whenever possible it is advisable to a DRM Free Music Download service to purchase all of your music. My Favorite is Amazon but there are other to choose from as well
For more information and/or instructions on how to convert your existing iTUNES Library to MP3 go here. |
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Why you Should not Use Itunes |
