Digital Music: Why It Sucks March 31, 2008
Posted by fredcharles in Uncategorized.trackback
My first musical disaster happened a long time ago while I was living with my parents. I woke up to find that my basement had flooded, ruining over 200+ albums that I had accumulated. All of my original Yes, Genesis, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Alice Copper were gone. Not to mention a load of others that were out of print.
I still lament over the loss of my record collection. Even back then, it would have cost me thousands to replace them. When I lost my records, CDs were already available. I ended up replacing all of my vinyl on CD.
This past weekend, I suffered another music disaster. My hard drive, containing no less than 12000 songs. At first, I didn’t panic. Most of the songs on that drive were copied from my CD collection, which remains intact. Still, there were still several albums that I purchased from iTunes that were lost on the drive.
I still remained calm. I have some of those albums backed up on CD and the rest were on my iPod. There are programs that allow you to pull files from your iPod and load them back to your computer.
One thing of note, Apple does NOT allow you to re-download your music. You download it once and that’s it. If you lose it, you are SOL. To be honest, this policy sucks. They have a record of everything that I downloaded, why not let me just pull the files down again?
The final part of the disaster struck yesterday when my iPod got wiped. I’m not sure how this happened. One minute, all of my songs were there and the next minute…gone.
So now, I don’t have any backups of those albums. Now I’m pissed.
Since Apple does will not allow me to download these albums again, I’ve vowed never to purchase digital music again. Sorry, but I’ll keep my hard copy CDs.
If music is going to become completely digital, then these companies need to come up with some kind of policy that allows customers to get their music back in case of a disaster. Even if I could get the last 6 months of purchases back, I would be happy.
So let this be a lesson to you:
1. Whenever you buy music online, make a hard copy or two.
2. Read the policies of that store before you buy.
3. Pray that CDs never go away…
fredcharles
> They have a record of everything that I downloaded, why not let
> me just pull the files down again?
I only have a 3rd grade education, but let’s see…could “security” be the reason? After all, it is fairly easy to see that, in certain circumstances, an email address, user name, password, id #s, etc. could very well be passed along to others, thus, allowing them to get the free re-download whereby the original download may, otherwise, be copy protected. I’m no geek, and this is my limited brain at work here.
> Now I’m pissed.
As are we all, about something.
> Since Apple does will not allow me to download these albums
> again, I’ve vowed never to purchase digital music again.
Have you seen Will Smith in “I Am Legend?” In the near future, you may relate firsthand, in terms of music.
> Sorry, but I’ll keep my hard copy CDs.
Ibid.
> If music is going to become completely digital, then these
> companies need to come up with some kind of policy that allows
> customers to get their music back in case of a disaster.
I have a suggestion…
Until the company policymakers create such a policy, in the meantime, why not pay Walmart a visit in the interest of purchasing (investing in) blank CDs, or whatever the latest format is, and start creating archive records of your music. As opposed to a couple of copies, I might suggest a minimum of five (5) copies.
> Pray that CDs never go away…
Tsk, tsk…are you aware of the (pardon the pun) record-setting statistics now occurring with the closing of physical music retail stores? Have you noticed that traditional “physical” distributors that once delivered physical products to music retailers have merely become a faint memory? Math Problem Time:
No stores - no distributors = no physical product as the justification.
Prayer for CDs to never go away? With CDs plummeting while digital music, at this point, shows that its selling power is at a 30% increase over this same time last year, there ain’t that much prayer in the universe.
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I hear you on the music loss. I had a drive dedicated to music years ago. Its was a finely tuned, perfectly organized orgasmic ear-fest. But due to a communication problem, my bf at the time wiped the whole drive >.<
I’ve been considering buying some digital music via Amazon.com. I haven’t read their policy. They have every Dune album I want and it would be much easier and cheaper to buy and download them. Of course I’ll be keeping backups of them if I do go that route.
Sorry to hear about your loss, its a huge blow. I’ve been there, done that.
sorry about your hard drive crash, that really sucks. apple is kind of weird sometimes, they’re like a controlling jealous husband. it’s policies like that, that drive people to download music for free.
sorry about your loss.
i have a few crates of records in my garage that i am contemplating keeping… i just don’t know what to do, all of my stuff is digital now and they take up so much space.
Oh, Fred! That royally sucks. I hate Apple’s policies, especially where iTunes is concerned. SeLiNa’s comment about the controlling, jealous husband is spot on.
Hi Fred. That’s a nightmare I hope I never have to face. If you do purchase digital music in the future, try Rhapsody. They let you re-download your purchases.
I can’t understand why people use Apple. I’d never consider paying for the services of such an autocratic and greedy organization.