images from me to you

I refuse to buy music from Itunes or windows media player or any of the big name players for two reasons: price and restrictions. I think they did not really change pricing structure from CD/physical media based to purely digital based. If a CD costs $12 to $15 in the store then the same data, minus all the shipping, packaging, storage, manufacturing, etc should not be $10 online. That is not even my biggest concern. The worst part is that if you buy from itunes, your music will only play in itunes/ipod. If you buy from most of the others, it won't play in itunes/ipod. I like to use itunes for my home computer and first I had a Dell DJ mp3 player and now a Zen Vision:M.

I want to be able to use my music they way I want to. I'm not selling my stuff on the street or swapping it with tons of people, at most I share with a friend to see them go and buy the same music. I just bought a CD yesterday of The Thermals. I would have never heard of them had I not got a mix CD from a friend with a track of theirs on it.

Well the music industry might be coming around. They might move as fast as glaciers and act like the dark overlords, but maybe they are changing.

As even digital music revenue growth falters because of rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are moving closer to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to take.

Executives of several technology companies meeting here at Midem, the annual global trade fair for the music industry, said over the weekend that at least one of the four major record companies could move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format within months.

NYT article on the matter