I wasnt sure where to put this, sorry. I wanted to know if there is a way to play songs downloaded from iTunes on Foobar. The ONLY thing that bothers me. I believe the format is AAC. Could there be a fix in the latest version to allow this or what? Thanks.

No way, as the songs from iTunes Music Store are DRM (protected by Digital Rights Management). You could always burn to a CD from within iTunes and rip them back for use with playback by Foobar in a non-DRM format (AAC (unprotected) m4a, MP3, FLAC, etc).

If you buy DRMed music, then you accept vendor lock-in and that you are no longer in control of your music. It's part of the deal. No, other developers cannot do anything about it - only you.

I thank you for buying music through iTunes, as it helps support music artists and songwriters like myself. I sell the songs I own the rights to via iTunes, MTV Urge, Yahoo! Music, Real Rhapsody and most other online stores. Some music stores use Microsoft's DRM, iTunes uses Fairplay.

I wish everyone bought via an online music stores, as I get 60 to 70 cents in my pocket for each song purchase or a proportional cut from the album sales. If I sold a couple 100,000 albums online I would be a millionaire and could then write music and give it away for free. There is no way I could make money from my efforts if people pirated my music. I respect all copyright laws and encourage others to do the same.

If someone really is miffed by DRM, then I provide a lossless FLAC file for them to download after the buy it on iTunes. As long as they own a purchased license of the song/album, I as an artist/copyright owner would be happy to give them a lossless version. The pirates though are stealing from me, so I don't appreciate that.

Regards.

A happy Itunes artist

That's not strictly true. I play both my iTunes and MSN DRMed tracks in J. River's Media Center. They don't internally decode it or anything, but they pass the stream to the appropriate codec (QuickTime and/or WMA), and as far is the end-user is concerned, he doesn't know the difference.

My point is that it is possible for third party programs to play these files; it's just that Foobar's author(s) choose not to do so for some reason.

thank you for the info goodnews, i will do that.

Good for you. However, are all artist like that? Artists that are under the RIAA labels would not be able to do that even if they wanted to, since the label takes the copy/distribution rights of the songs. Also, how would one know that you're the artist or how to contact you? And how would you verify that the person actually bought your song?

I do agree on your idea in providing a lossless version to people that bought your song. I just wish all artists would think the same way, and bypass the RIAA labels altogether.

All good ideas. but you provide no information in your profile of how to contact, or a website, or anything of the sort.

so there is no deal like: if you download N songs from X album then you get the X album for free in CD version? (at least that seems like the only really reasonable way of selling drmed crap.)

So, you wish that everyone would buy albums for the price of a CD, but which (ignoring CD-burning) have a builtin timebomb of about 5-8 years (they either will stop working when the DRM becomes "obsolete", or after a few new computers), plus usage-limitations - just so that you get more money? Isn't this a quite egoistic and egocentric attitude?


Stuck in the past.


Thats nice and respectable of you - but how many artists do that and how many of your fans know that and go through the hassle of doing this? Below 1% maybe?


This myth has been refuted so often that only believers can still believe in it.

- Lyx

Haha! sure ...

For Independant artists, the best site and deal for the artists or me, the music listener, is CD Baby, from what I have read and heard.

Check out the about information: About CD Baby

Its why I grab CDs from alot of artists from there. From Local to World, they carry a good selection of each genre...though I am partial to the huge collection of Rockabilly.

As a consumer and avid rabid music listener, I reccomend this site as you can find new artists and support the artists not the record companies.

A few artists I have picked up CDs of: Devil Doll, Ghoultown, Los Skarnales and there is more.

If you are into experimental electronic stuff, I suggest Mile329 Link

- Gow