Rotten Apple

I know Liv's a big Apple fan now, and rightly so with her lovely new toy. But sadly for comparative Luddites like me, with my 2 year old MP3 player, the news of Australia iTunes finally coming on line is not such a boon. Because of the horrendously restrictive DRM, and a whole new format (M4P), I can happily buy new songs from iTunes, but can only play them using iTunes. Windows Media Player (which remains my preferred PC music player) and my walkman can't play the file at all.

I had suspected that would be a problem, so only purchased a single track (for $1.69, which is less than my $2 per track limit) - Dear God by XTC - to test it out.

So if I want to walk and listen to my legally purchased music at the same time, I'll have to buy an iPod. As much as I'd like to say I won't, on principle alone, I actually had planned to get a new player soon-ish, and I do love the convenience of purchasing music while sitting. So Apple may win on this one ... or I may just keep buying second-hand CDs and ripping away... or I'll just wait till the conversion software available to take DRMed music to plain old MP3s catches up to iTunes 6... Yeah, I like that last one. All the convenience of on-line shopping plus being able to listen to music I buy.