Monday, November 07, 2005
Et tu, Switchfoot?
I am.. beyond disappointed with Switchfoot. Switchfoot is my favorite band. I love their sound and their lyrics and their attitude and their originality. I even like their album art and T-shirts and such. And really I do like their new album. Not quite as much as the last one yet, but I tend to like Switchfoot albums more and more as I listen to it. I usually end up liking each new album slightly more than the last.
So, what's the problem? The CD is what they call "content protected". The idea, I suppose, is to absolutely and completely keep anyone from stealing their music. I must admit, they did a very thorough job. I didn't even know you could BE this anal retentive with a CD. Now, it's that I think they don't have the right to protect their interests, but this CD's protection causes some collateral to my enjoymment and my bank acount. Here's the rundown:
You put the CD into your computer.
You must read and agree to the end-user license agreement.
You may then play the songs on the little interactive media player that comes with the disk.
At this point you're wondering, "Well.. how do I pull the tracks from the CD?"
You can actually see them if you explore the CD's context in windows, but they are greyed out and you can do nothing with them. (If you examine the properties, it will tell you that it is content protected.)
On the music player interface that comes with the disk there is an option to save the tracks to your computer.
It works, even if it does take forever to save them.
You try to add the tracks to iTunes only to find out that you can't.
And the step-by-step frustration goes on. Basically they come in wma format. You can burn them to CD's for various reasons up to 3 times. That part seems reasonable to me. But you can't convert the files to mp3 or aac and you can't synchronize the files and you can't upload them to your iPod. I believe you can put them on an mp3 player as long as it supports the wma format. But people.. iTunes is the wave of the future. More people have iPods than discmans these days and more and more people are being converted. I myself am a recent convert.
So yeah, now I have all of my music in one place except for this one freaking CD. Why did it have to be my favorite band that did this to me? GAH. Soooo.. now if I want these songs on my iPod I have to buy them again on iTunes. If they'd told me about the bullshit before I bought the CD.. I would have just waited till I got home to the states and downloaded the album from the iTunes music store. So for all their anti-piracy messages about "illegally downloading or copying music is stealing", they're ripping off the little man (heretofor referred to as "me").
Last night I couldn't even listen to the CD I was so frustrated with it. I'll probably listen to it a lot this week in my computer at work and then that'll be it until I can re-buy it on iTunes later. -_- I can always give the CD to someone in my family I guess.
For a more positive note on the whole music thing, I caught an episode of Rock Star INXS the other day. I really enjoyed it! Most of the singers were very talented and they sang really great, classic rock songs (such as "Hard to Handle" and "All of the Day and All of the Night"). The show was like American Idol without the fruitiness. I also thought it was really cool that they were auditioning both men and women. The winner gets to be the new lead singer of INXS, which is already a well-established, popular band. People are used to hearing the band with a male singer, so it could totally change their sound. I'm not a big fan of theirs, but I do like them. I just.. don't have any of their music and coudln't name any of their songs. :-p
Anyway, it was also good because it reminded me of some songs that I needed to download off of iTunes. I don't remember music that I really love until it's brought back to my attention sadly. There's already so much great music out there that I'll never get to hear and when you add to that the music I've listened to and loved and forgotten about and you've got a bonafide tragedy on your hands.
Here's my new Switchfoot (those dirty bastards) shirt!
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/reykas/Miscellaneous/switchshirt.jpg
So, what's the problem? The CD is what they call "content protected". The idea, I suppose, is to absolutely and completely keep anyone from stealing their music. I must admit, they did a very thorough job. I didn't even know you could BE this anal retentive with a CD. Now, it's that I think they don't have the right to protect their interests, but this CD's protection causes some collateral to my enjoymment and my bank acount. Here's the rundown:
You put the CD into your computer.
You must read and agree to the end-user license agreement.
You may then play the songs on the little interactive media player that comes with the disk.
At this point you're wondering, "Well.. how do I pull the tracks from the CD?"
You can actually see them if you explore the CD's context in windows, but they are greyed out and you can do nothing with them. (If you examine the properties, it will tell you that it is content protected.)
On the music player interface that comes with the disk there is an option to save the tracks to your computer.
It works, even if it does take forever to save them.
You try to add the tracks to iTunes only to find out that you can't.
And the step-by-step frustration goes on. Basically they come in wma format. You can burn them to CD's for various reasons up to 3 times. That part seems reasonable to me. But you can't convert the files to mp3 or aac and you can't synchronize the files and you can't upload them to your iPod. I believe you can put them on an mp3 player as long as it supports the wma format. But people.. iTunes is the wave of the future. More people have iPods than discmans these days and more and more people are being converted. I myself am a recent convert.
So yeah, now I have all of my music in one place except for this one freaking CD. Why did it have to be my favorite band that did this to me? GAH. Soooo.. now if I want these songs on my iPod I have to buy them again on iTunes. If they'd told me about the bullshit before I bought the CD.. I would have just waited till I got home to the states and downloaded the album from the iTunes music store. So for all their anti-piracy messages about "illegally downloading or copying music is stealing", they're ripping off the little man (heretofor referred to as "me").
Last night I couldn't even listen to the CD I was so frustrated with it. I'll probably listen to it a lot this week in my computer at work and then that'll be it until I can re-buy it on iTunes later. -_- I can always give the CD to someone in my family I guess.
For a more positive note on the whole music thing, I caught an episode of Rock Star INXS the other day. I really enjoyed it! Most of the singers were very talented and they sang really great, classic rock songs (such as "Hard to Handle" and "All of the Day and All of the Night"). The show was like American Idol without the fruitiness. I also thought it was really cool that they were auditioning both men and women. The winner gets to be the new lead singer of INXS, which is already a well-established, popular band. People are used to hearing the band with a male singer, so it could totally change their sound. I'm not a big fan of theirs, but I do like them. I just.. don't have any of their music and coudln't name any of their songs. :-p
Anyway, it was also good because it reminded me of some songs that I needed to download off of iTunes. I don't remember music that I really love until it's brought back to my attention sadly. There's already so much great music out there that I'll never get to hear and when you add to that the music I've listened to and loved and forgotten about and you've got a bonafide tragedy on your hands.
Here's my new Switchfoot (those dirty bastards) shirt!
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/reykas/Miscellaneous/switchshirt.jpg
# posted by Squisher of Scorpions @ 4:12 AM 
