Napster and Ipod (Read 792 times)

I'm NOT a techie at all, so please excuse the question if the answer is "obvious", but just wondering... I've been sampling songs on Napster and was thinking it'd be cool to do the $10/mo membership for unlimited songs. Then I read their FAQ that said Napster won't work with Ipod (I have a shuffle). I'm wondering...if you can download the songs onto your computer, why couldn't you just upload them onto your Ipod like you do with music you take off of one of your cds from home and then load it onto your computer? Does Apple do something to make this not work? Do they "know" when you're trying to load a song from another music site?

I'm not certain, but I think that Napster set-up allows unlimited downloads for a month, but after the month they *poof*. k

I think I read that they're yours forever, but I'm only interested if they're compatable with the shuffle. If it sounds too good....

Yeah...I think burning them to CD may be the only option, too, as Cynthia suggested (though that's a good way to back music files up), too.

You could play the song, record it with Audacity, and then export the recorded song as a MP3 (this requires you download the LAME MP3 encoder) from audacity. Once you have the MP3 save it off and then drag the file to your ipod in ITUNES. Walmart, Microspft, and Amazon have DRM (Digital Right Management aka Copy Protection) free music.... co-worker was telling me that Amazon has something that integrates it well with iTunes.... I still buy cds and rip them with iTunes so I can't really comment on that.

This is a perfect example of the pitfalls of DRM (digital rights management aka copy protection). Because of the DRM that the record labels require on their files, music that you purchase on one service is incompatible with another. Songs purchased on iTunes won't work on anything but an iPod (unless they're iTunes Plus -- more on that later). Songs purchased on Napster will only work on Napster-approved devices. Heck, songs with Microsoft's Plays for Sure won't even play on Microsoft's own Zune. It's a big mess, and it's all due to the record labels' paranoia about piracy. Fact is, there will always be piracy, but there will probably be less if you give consumers choice and freedom to play music they purchase on any device. Wouldn't it suck if a CD you bought from the Sony Music label would only work on a Sony CD player? That's what's going on now with digital music. What to do? Fortunately, there are some legal avenues for unrestricted DRM- free music. iTunes Plus: Last year, Apple's Steve Jobs called for an end to DRM. Now, songs in iTunes from the EMI record label are DRM-free AAC files. Contrary to popular belief, AAC is not an Apple format -- it's the next step in the evolution of audio formats. It can be converted to mp3 if you have a device that doesn't play AACs (more and more of them do). Amazon: Amazon sells unrestricted MP3's from EMI and Universal record labels. They make a nice bit of software that plays nice with iTunes on both Windows and Mac. Wal-Mart.com: Wal-mart sells some unrestricted MP3's from EMI and Universal. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart's site is only designed to work on Internet Explorer (though they claim to to be making it Firefox compatible. Anyone who makes an IE only site should be beaten with a rubber hose and shot, but that's another discussion). Don't buy WMA's -- they are DRM'd emusic.com Emusic has a different twist on the subscription model. $10 a month gets you 30 downloads in unrestricted Mp3 format. You keep 'em. Two catches -- 1) there are no major labels. All indie and smaller labels. That's not all bad -- a lot of older artists, as well as jazz and classical are available, as well as newer independent artists. And the tide is turning -- Paul McCartney made his most recent album available on eMusic. 2) second catch is that the downloads don't roll over -- if you forget to use your 30 downloads for this month, they're gone. So where does this leave us? Well, given that the tide has started to turn and more and more labels are experimenting with legal DRM-free music, I think it's a bad idea to lock into a Napster-like subscription model. $10 a month for all that music is great, but you don't own it, and have to pay in perpetuity for the right to listen to it on a handful of devices. I don't know about burning to a CD and importing as MP3, but that's a pain, and you do lose some quality doing that. I would focus on DRM-free avenues like the ones I mentioned. Sockoni is better off sticking with iTunes, but always keeping an eye out for DRM-free songs. Personally, I tend to only purchase DRM'd songs that I can't get any other way and wouldn't want the entire album. And if it's an artist you really like, the kind of artist that you would get the whole album from, there is another alternative. There's no DRM, it'll play everywhere, and the sound is high quality -- completely uncompressed.. You guessed it, the Eight-Track CD.

jeffgoblue is exactly right, this is a DRM issue. He has the right idea's on a solution. Also, with the Napster subscription, you are allowed all the music you want for the fee, but once you stopp the subscription you no longer are allowed to listen to any of the music you got while you were subscribed. The idea is you are not buying the musing you are paying for the privilege to listen to it.