allofmp3, itunes, and emule
Customer wants to download music and copy it to CD (for listening in the car and at work).
He doesn’t mind paying for the online music (but is not good at computers). So I do the right thing and look at some music sites. I’ve never looked at the music websites before, but it shouldn’t be too hard.
I’ve heard that allofmp3.com is reasonably priced, so I connect, register, then try to add money to the newly created account… but it seems that allofmp3 no longer supports visa and mastercard payments… OK, scrap allofmp3.
Lets take a look at itunes. After wandering around the website, I start to suspect that I need to download and install the itunes player to the pc… The website is not laided out very clearly, and the terminology used doesn’t make it any easier for an new visitor (even an “experienced one like me”).
Once the itunes player is installed and running, we try to download some music, and we are finally redirected to a setup your account web page.
Once that is done, we get sent to a topup your account page… After filling in the CC details, we can finally download a song.
I download a test song, then play it… so far so good.
Now to copy it to CD… Hmm how do I do that? I spend 10 minutes looking, but the closest I get is a backup to CD (but its not in music CD format, so its useless to my customer.
Ok, I can’t afford to waste any more time on this. Scrap itunes.
I’ve tried to do the right thing. But there are too many roadblocks.
Lets look at emule. I download and install and run emule in 5 minutes. During the download, I tell the customer that downloading songs that you don’t already have, is illegal. I will only show him how to use emule as long as he agrees to only download music he has already paid for either via itunes, or via a conventional CD. He agrees.
I spend another 2 minutes configuring emule, connecting to the P2P network, search for (and find) an MP3 song.
Another 10 minutes downloading the song.
Another 2 minutes burning the song to CD using nero (written in music CD format).
And hey presto, my customer now has a working music CD in less than 20 Minutes.
Now, if it were possible to pay to download and record music this easily, I would have done it.
I reckon itunes is heavily geared towards the ipod generation. This leaves many people in the 30+ age group, who are not interested / capable of using ipods, and who cannot use itunes to burn CDs.
Now, someone might pipe up and say “but hey, its easy to make a music CD from itunes”… But if I couldn’t figure out how to do it, then I’d say many people will be in the same boat as me.
So my message to the music / video industries is: if you don’t change (and change fast), you will become obsolete (and a laughing stock too!)… You are already 5 years behind the times… and your time is running out.
The music industry is already so far behind. You just have to look at DRM laws to see that.
I use itunes as my media player, that said I would never own an ipod. I’ve never downloaded songs from itunes or any of those others because of the drm laws.
I used to use allofmp3.com. Haven’t topped up my account in years though because it is so cheap. They are meant to be getting shut down by the Russian? goverment as well because all though they say its legal the music artists never see any of the money they make.
With so many media players, and music services (don’t forget Napster, Yahoo, Real Rhapsody etc) its a very confusing world. Everyone uses a diffrent combination to the next, so nothing is streamlined for the typical user.
Check out this article on Cnet for an outline in Online Music Australia.
http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/0,239028967,240054461,00.htm
And good luck with figuring everything out.
P.S. To burn a cd in iTunes, make a playlist of the songs you want, insert blank cd, right click on playlist and select burn to disc. Hopefully that helps next time.
Thanks hux.
Next time, I’ll give the playlist a try.
I tend to prefer using winamp for playing music (and jetaudio for video), mostly because thats what I started with.
I don’t like the way itunes installs the itunes helper and ipod service… 2 more memory hungry apps that I don’t want to have active every time the PC starts.
Actually I have noticed the iTunes helper and iPod service and i agree they annoy me alot.
I originally started with Real One Player, then moved to iTunes, and having had unsuccesful luck with others I have never moved. I also now use VLC for video and that took a little getting used to.
It amazes me how such “simple” programs can take so much adjusting to, not only for new users but experienced ones as well.
I know what you mean by adjusting to simple programs.
I guess they seem simple onle once you have adjusted to them.
irfanview might be a good example. You just need 4 keyboard keys for viewing a folder full of photos (space, backspace, “R” “F”)… I love the speed, but most people just put up with whatever cr@p the digital camera maker installs… but then I also hate using the thumbnail view in windows explorer 🙂