Downloading Music, what's the best place?

[Polo]

Hi,

Well, I just wasted 2 dollars, 1 in napster.com and the other one in itunes.com, I downloaded the software and everything I went ahead and bought a specific song I like from napster here at my school and then I took it home (where I dont have internet access) tried playing it in my windows media player and I cant play the dumb thing....

I thought i was an mp3 but the thing is protected or something so wont play neither on windows media player or the napster software at home (when I try playing it, it will look for internet conection)

anyways, so the next day I do the same thing... but at iTunes bought the song (same song) tried playing it, but itunes uses m4p or something like that, so it wont play on windows media player and when I try to play it on the itunes software it will look for internet access...

is there a place where you can just buy a simple mp3 and play it wherever you want without having to have internet???

I was going to go to yahoo music center.... but wanted to ask for advice here..

maybe someone can help me with this one...

thanks...

anyone?

[jlaine]

I've caved and gotten the Urge service that you can tie into WMP11 beta - and so far been liking it, even though DRM makes me want to vomit.

I did the 14 day free trial and ended up going to the all access account for 10/month.

You can lock in 3 pc's with the single account, so you should have enough licenses to toss things where you want them. And then there is ways around DRM too, but <shrug>.

[TruthElixirX]

You could look into allofmp3.com. Its legiality is a little shady (if someone else understands it better I'll let them explain) but I believe that technically they are legal right now and DRM free.

[MentaL]

i use allofmp3.com , and yes its illegal but russia has no laws and they do share a portion of the profits to the riaa thingy.

[TruthElixirX]

Originally Posted by mentalrz

i use allofmp3.com , and yes its illegal but russia has no laws and they do share a portion of the profits to the riaa thingy.

It isn't illegal. The RIAA doesn't like it, but it isn't illegal. Under the Russian law, the music is being paid for and licensed like it should be. After that you are importing the songs (which is legal) into the U.S.

That is how I understood it anyways.


/is not a lawyer.

[Freesteyelz]

Hmm...I'll need to check into that but the rule of thumb is that if the practice seems shady it is for good reason. Personally I do not trust sites or services that offers anything if it is located in a country that does not enforce copyright laws.

Just looking at the "Legal Info" I'm already a skeptic. Anytime a site has to justify whether or not their content or service is legal often is not.

[TruthElixirX]

Originally Posted by Freesteyelz

Hmm...I'll need to check into that but the rule of thumb is that if the practice seems shady it is for good reason. Personally I do not trust sites or services that offers anything if it is located in a country that does not enforce copyright laws.

Just looking at the "Legal Info" I'm already a skeptic. Anytime a site has to justify whether or not their content or service is legal often is not.

I don't buy my music from there anyways, I use iTunes. Currently it is sort of a gray market. The artists are re-embursed liek they are supposed to be, according to Russian law. The big question as far as legality from what I've read is: Is it legal to import it in the U.S. The site has been up for a couple of years now and so far no one has gotten in trouble yet. (that I know of)

[Freesteyelz]

I don't know if the artists are compensated from the music site; unless we get some confirmation from the artists themselves we won't know for sure. Statements from the Russian site doesn't mean a thing. Now the RIAA has their own agenda and they only represent the production companies, not artists. So if they do in fact get any royalty it is more likely that the artists will not receive a penny.

The question of whether importing content is legal depends on our nationality, where we purchase the content and the legalities surrounding the content(s) in question. Though, contraband of any type will still apply here in the United States. It's to the effect that the act of purchasing the content may be legal but the content itself may not be. In the end, unfortunately for the consumer, if the content is not licensed; it is illegal.

[FleaBag]

So the files on that site are regular, unencoded mp3's?

[tinkerbell]

The files do have a tag of somesorts on them, I noticed I cant play the tracks I bought from allofmp3 on the vb jukebox, but yes they do play on all of my computers players and if you burn them to disk as data they play like regular mp3s in the dvd players and cd players that play mp3s.

I agree its annoying to purchase tracks from itunes napster etc and then to be only able to play then on the machine you purchased them on or you have to download the license again from another machine and you can only do this a certain number of times.

If I purchase music I expect to be able to play it when and where I want to play it if i want to listen to it. You can run the tracks through a clean program (software to enable you to transfer your tapes/records to cd), whether you think it is worth it or not will depend on how many tracks you have bought.

ie play on computer and record to an external media then reverse the process, since I have software to allow me to put my tapes etc onto cd I just use this; I can then enjoy my music anywhere.

Where theres a will theres a way and as long as I am only doing this so I can listen to music I have bought I dont see that it can be breaking any laws.

Karen