Have you bought any legal downloads yet?

[James]

I'm doing a little bit of research and was wondering if y'all could help me, being the music & t'internet geeks, uh, I mean 'enthusiasts' that you are!

Now that more & more legal download sites are appearing I was wondering whether people have started buying tracks from such sites yet?

Most of them charge between £1 and £1.50 per track (with downloadable artwork) and let you buy via credit/debit card, or SMS...

So have you, or are you likely to buy songs (and maybe even albums) from legal download sites?

[Roo]

[Content removed]

[Anna]

I'm waiting for iTunes to come over here. It sounds crazy, but I just can't bring myself to trust Wippit and MyCokeMusic and all of those companies when my heart has been so firmly rooted in Apple for so many years. I feel an affinity to Apple, almost like I owe them something, because I've been with them for so many years, and they really do inspire that kind of brand loyalty. I've been using the iTunes Music Store on my computer just to preview tracks and suchlike a fair bit recently...and it's getting me really excited already!

Edit: Keep listening to the Pixies, James, it's good for you

[Joe]

Have I bollocks! I used to download a lot but don't bother anymore. It just takes me too much time, it's a whole lot easier to just order something off Play

[Phoenix Ferret]

i've voted for the last one, but its very very very rare i buy anything from a high street store. distros, shows and second hand stores all the way for me. so i guess thats the nearest equivalent.
PF

[Roo]

[Content removed]

[Heartspark]

I buy more music since I started downloading stuff.

Yeah, that's like me - there are so many CDs I've bought after listening to a couple of the tracks off of Winmx, if I couldn't do that then I wouldn't risk buying something I might hate.

[Matt]

I buy music from iTunes, I also buy stuff from Warp.

I also bought a bunch of mp3s from They Might Be Giants.

I think the important thing is that the downloads offered are in a decent format...

High Quality MP3
MPEG-4
FLAC

All good.

Windows Media Format - not good.
RealPlayer - not good.

[James]

The problem is that they haven't introduced Digital Rights Management in anything other than WMA yet, have they?

[Matt]

The problem is that they haven't introduced Digital Rights Management in anything other than WMA yet, have they?

DRM is present in the AAC files on the iTunes Music Store. It's FairPlay, which is an open DRM scheme, not owned by Apple. I could open my own music store (I am, actually) and offer Fairplay-AAC files, they'd play on iPods, and in iTunes.

DRM is evil though.

[James]

Would FairPlay work with WMA too? OR is it specifically for AAC? Do you have a link I can find out more?

[Matt]

Would FairPlay work with WMA too? OR is it specifically for AAC? Do you have a link I can find out more?

It's specific to AAC. Also, you'd need player support... which is er.. iTunes.

http://64.244.235.240/news/whitepaper/d ... _paper.pdf

There are much better alternatives to DRM though.

[chloe55]

i'd never download an album.. if i was gonna do that i'd rather buy the actual thing. but i'd use it for indivdual songs i guess

[Matt]

i'd never download an album.. if i was gonna do that i'd rather buy the actual thing. but i'd use it for indivdual songs i guess

what if you couldn't get the album any other way?

[behooved girl]

i've bought some stuff off the itunes music store. now that i've got that and my ipod, i hardly have a need for proper cd's anymore. i use my ipod to run music through my hi-fi and in my car. i actually just ripped a ton of my cd's and sold them a few months ago.

i hate DRM, but i don't mind fairplay. you can still burn it to cd or copy it to your ipod as many times as you'd like. the only thing it really prevents is sending the aac file to another person through p2p and whatnot, which is understandable. and if you REALLY wanted to send the song to somebody, there are ways around it.

apple needs to hurry up and bring the ITMS to europe, man.

[Matt]

okay, it seems that Fair Play and FairPlay might be different. they're both limited to mpeg-4 though, which is odd.

maybe apple 0wns FairPlay, and the other guys own Fair Play... but non-Apple one isn't going to play, DRM-wise, on iPod.

[liddleruth]

i chose No, I will continue to download for free until I have no option but to pay
& when i have to pay, i wont download tracks anymore. although, actually when i do download tracks these days, it's usually legal, but you dont have to pay to download demos unsigned bands& artists et al have put up on their sites.
i dont like mp3s as your music to *keep* because they're compressed so they're not all that.
and as for downloading artwork, that is absolutely crap if you have a printer like mine (which coincidently is out of ink...) & we only really get black & white ink anyway. & it's a completely shiite pile of shitttttttteeeeeeeeeee! *kicks printer*
*gets ink all over foot*

Edit: Keep listening to the Pixies, James, it's good for you

lol, & when i read it... he's listening to andrew w k. nice.

[louise dumdedum]

i have bought one, and that was just because i was curious about how it worked. and it didn't really work that well.

i don't really download much stuff illegally because it takes a while and it's just hassle.

i buy most cd's either from the interent, or i shop around and try to get them really cheap somehow.

[nicsta]

i chose that i will continue to do it illegally until i have to pay.. just cos its so easy to get them for nothing, and i cant afford to go and buy a full album or whatever for one song! i dont do it that often anymore, i initially did it when i wanted LOADS of songs and obviously couldnt afford them all or they had been deleted or whatever. Another reason i dont do it so often now is cos i end up with so many viruses it fucks up the computer and it isnt worth it just for a song.