Qtrax — Ad-Supported Music With iPod Compatibility? 131
dnormant writes in with a note about QTrax, a 5-year-old startup that just announced deals with all the major labels to provide free, ad-supported music downloads. The new wrinkle is that, though the free tracks come encumbered with Windows Media DRM, QTrax claims that they will be playable soon on iPods. Wired's assumption is that the company is on the verge of a deal with Apple to allow use of its FairPlay DRM in place of Microsoft's. (Apple hasn't licensed FairPlay to anyone so far.) The AP coverage of the story assumes that QTrax has found a way around FairPlay on the iPod, and if so, that its solution will break the next time Apple updates iTunes.
Re:Radio (Score:3, Insightful)
or a better question is why buy them in a drmed proprietary format from a company that can't let in a little competition? why is it that apple still receives praise when they've proven that they're even worse than the big bad wolf microsoft?
The article is funny for 1 reason alone (Score:1, Insightful)
I thought the whole SCO affair had made his reputation less than great?
No DRM is the key! (Score:2, Insightful)
When will companies realise that the answer is to stop shipping DRM? Amazon and others are doing it now with great success. Even iTunes Plus does it. Companies that base their business on DRM are condemned to a slow but certain death.
Re:The part that irks me (Score:5, Insightful)
How rude of The Register to lambaste the company for building software using code that others are handing out under licenses that say "don't pay us a cent".
Re:Radio (Score:4, Insightful)
DRM seems to be a fair way to rent movies temporarily or to buy music you can burn to CDs at any point. Outside of that, its a "trust me!" game that you shouldn't trust past what you can't afford to lose at any moment in time.
Tom Krazit of CNET and Eric Savitz of Barrons Deny the Jesus Phone [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:Radio (Score:4, Insightful)
- Apple has thwarted any retail market for devices that are not iPods, as Microsoft prevented the sale of DOS and Windows alternatives?
- that Apple should be forced to license FairPlay to other companies, like how Microsoft was forced to license Office to rival third parties for resale under different brands?
- that Apple should be forced to fund alternatives to iTunes for use with the iPod, the way Microsoft has enabled integration with Notes clients from Exchange, or CalDAV from Outlook clients, or WiiConnect compatibility from the Xbox 360?
- that the iPod should play WMA DRM, just like Microsoft supports PlayStation 3 games on the Xbox 360?
- that Fairplay should work on PlaysForSure players, just as Microsoft had to support Win32 apps on Unix?
Because any of those ideas would be batshit nuts. What were you really thinking?
And when in recent history has Apple become "even worse than the big bad wolf Microsoft," as I missed the story about:
- two decades of holding back better technology,
- promising vaporware that wasn't delivered for years if ever,
- being charged with monopoly market exploitation and overcharging customers by various states and countries,
- attempting to cover it up political astroturf campaigns uncovered by the LA Times,
- delivering unusable technology at absurd prices,
- raising the price of a desktop OS by 400 percent
- stealing code and violating copyright while advertising anti-piracy campaigns
- tightening spyware-policed phone home DRM on their OS
- starting a format war to control the world's media DRM and push a shitty authoring system like HDi
- working to raise the price of media downloads while killing off all fair use rights like WMA and WMV
- shipping a new OS whose main features revolve around HD DRM policing and OS Activation
- inventing Paladium
- delivering a crappy mobile OS they can't hardly sell but would love to stick the world with
- delivering a proprietary alternative to PDF, JPEG, MP3, H.264, Java, OpenDocument and every other open format with the intent to screw the world with a poorly designed file architecture that forces dependence upon a derelict monopoly
- delivering an open sourced alternative to the NT kernel
- delivering an open sourced, standards based alternative to the IE browser engine
- delivering an advanced graphics compositing engine for Vista to copy 7 years later
- delivering the advanced Cocoa frameworks to power Mac OS X and the iPhone, well ahead of
- delivering a smartphone that blows away the state of the art and forces innovation into a dead industry
- promoting an open alternative to DirectX in OpenGL
- promoting an open alternative to WMA DRM with the MP3 playing iPod
- promoting a mild DRM that offers fair use rights to revitalize the dead music industry
- promoting an end to DRM restrictions in music downloads
- promoting an open alternative to WMV/VC-1 by pushing joint development of ISO MPEG standards
- creating a competitive music player that sells better than DRM obsessed, subscription touting rivals
- creating a competitive operating system that sells better than DRM obsessed, authorization touting Vista
- promoting the use of open file formats such as PDF, PNG, MP3/AAC, H.264, OpenDocument
- promoting a standards based web and working on HTML 5 rather than a Win32/.NET/Flash-based web
- contributing back to the GPL/BSD community in core OS, security, and web rendering
- developing a calendar server and releasing it to the community under the free Apache license
Anyway, that's why there's a difference. Not sure why its so invisible to you. Also, the sky is generally blue on clear days.
Apple TV Promises to Take 2008 [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:Yet another solution in search of a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
It works fine. We have put some MP3's on an iPod and backed up the entire iPod to hard disk under Linux. I guess the only thing you don't get backed up is the keys, but that iPod has never had DRM tracks, so it's a moot point.
Pick your fav program here. Some are multi-platform.
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/managing_your_ipod_without_itunes [freesoftwaremagazine.com]
Re:More info at The Register (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The didn't work out so well for... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have Rhapsody and it works out great. My kids and I each have a portable unit, for $15/month, we each have an unlimited amount of music to listen too on any of our computers (linux as well), or on our portables. One subscriptions allows 3 authorized computers and 3 portable devices. We can also use the Rhapsody web interface on any computer and and it does not count against the authorized total.
For me, I already have the stuff I want on physical media or FLAC but I like the convenience of using Rhapsody on my portable. For my kids, they listen to new stuff and what is popular right now, not what was popular 6 months ago. Buying the tracks or the physical disk of "NOW That's what I call Music volume 2x" is only good for them for a few months.
So in three years, you spent $540 and have 540 songs. I have paid $540 and have had unlimited access to millions of songs. I don't care if I own it or not, $15 a month is the cost on a single CD or 15 songs.
The system does not work out for everyone but I've listened to more stuff that I would have NEVER bought or heard otherwise. There is no risk. I can drag over play lists, if I do not like them, oh well. I know my daughter has a dynamic play list of some type of top hits, every time her portable syncs, she has what someone considered to be "hot" now on her device. If you really do want to purchase a song as your own like iTunes, you can for $0.79. I've only done that once and that was before we had subscription compatible players.
I don't care what you like better, I know what I like better. Why do you even care what your friend is doing anyway?