Here's a question for all the music geeks: what's the dealio on burning copies of an album purchased from iTunes? Once I "buy" the digital copy, do I have unfettered access to making CD copies for my car? Can I burn a "regular" audio CD that will play in my car? The reason I ask is that I'm pretty tough on car CDs and it's not uncommon to trash a CD within a year or two. I'd rather buy my music via CD, but we live in a remote location and if you want anything other than pretty mainstream stuff it's mail order only. Given that theStart is putting out a new CD on Tuesday and I have no way of getting the album here in town, I thought I'd check out the iTunes thing.
UPDATE: Nevermind. I checked the iTunes Help file and found my answer. Seems like a pretty easy process and I can burn the album 7 times. What's to keep me from burning an audio disc, then taking the disc and ripping a copy on another computer? Will that copy have some kind of anti-copying protection? This is all so ridiculous to me. If I buy the album, I should be able to burn as many personal copies as I see fit. Whatever happened to the days of recording a vinyl album to cassette tape?
3 comments:
Quote:What's to keep me from burning an audio disc, then taking the disc and ripping a copy on another computer? Will that copy have some kind of anti-copying protection?
Absolutely nothing. There is even software out there (I can't tell you where because that would infringe on the DCMA) that set up a virtual drive, you play your music, it burns it to the virtual drive, then turns around and re-rips it, so you have a DRM free digital song.
Apparently the new version of iTunes somehow prevents the workaround you discovered, or at least prevents the results from being played on iPods. It's the one thing that's made me really seriously cross so far. The DRM was, as far as I know, originally a "deal with the devil" Apple made to get the iTunes store going at all. Now I realize they've apparently hung onto it past the time when labels were even saying "please, sell our music DRM free!" but it's not like they came up with the idea as a way to piss off the consumer. At this point, however, I'm getting crabby. I often make mix CDs and wind up burning 10, 15, even 20 copies to share with friends, and getting dinged because I "cannot burn that playlist again" is a sure way to make me grit my teeth in an extremely irritated fashion.
Needless to say, I will be burning my entire purchased catalogue to CD, then ripping it back again before upgrading to the new iTunes version. Henceforth I may try the workaround via another program like Audion (burning with iTunes but ripping with Audion). If I learn something useful, I shall report it.
You don't want to burn and then re-rip music. That will lower the quality. It only starts out as AAC 128 bit, so it isn't all that great to begin with. Buying your own CD is always the most flexible option.
Still, you might be able to get music using the new iTunes Plus, which is double the quality with no DRM, for only 30 cents more per song. Still, you don't want to burn and then re-rip.
Why would you need more than 7 copies of an album anyway. You can also create your own playlist (adding or removing something) and get 7 new burns.
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