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Why do legal music downloading services have so many restrictions and compromises? They just don't seem very appealing. I understand that there are probably legal reasons for this but these barriers need to be overcome if the RIAA really wants to bring music piracy under control by making these legal services appealing to the masses.

All I ask for is a site with a huge music collection that offers 192kbps+ mp3s with no restrictions or bs. I'm talkin' about downloading songs that are damn near CD quality for like one or two bucks each and then being able to do whatever you want with them without the service keeping track.

Out of the current services I see they all offer restrictions and/or compromised sound quality. 128kbps AAC files and 128kbps-160kbps mp3s just arn't as good as 192kbps+ or high vbr mp3s. Professional and independant audio tests prove this. On top of that once you get those downloaded songs you often have to pay extra to put them on a CD or portable player, and some services will take your songs away once you end your subscription.

So how about you guys? Does anyone here take advantage of these legal music services? I'd be surprised. Ha!

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

OC Remix is a GREAT site. Free music, FULLY legal, no restriction- and the music is BEYOND CD. My personal suggestions are Terra in Black, Windfish Ballade, and, well, everything there!

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

Yeah, only if you like midi quality video game music.

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

M.. MIDI!? Good lord, man, they have friggin' ORCHESTRAL stuff there! I have listened to MIDI music, and OC =/= midi! OC = FRIGGIN' SWEEEET!!!!!!!

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

I think what he's saying is that he'd rather rock or rap or something by a known band, rather than listening to video game music and it's many remixes.
I personally don't go much for music downloading at all, unless its something I really want. Then I'll try to find it on a website before going to a music downloading program. And as for all the legal stuff, it seems that a lot of people like iPod.

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This one time I punched a bear in the forehead TO DEATH! I still have the scars on my chest. I am the manliest man that ever did man.

League: Z3roHawk
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The restrictions are unfortunate, and very irritating. It's the good old RIAA blocking fair use rights yet again because now, it seems, anything that could give you the slightest potential to make a copy of music you've bought is a problem, because they think you'll just head out to Kazaa and distribute it or something. See also the stupid copy-protected CDs (some of which actually rendered some Macs physically unusable in the past because they were so broken: they got stuck in the drive and would never come out).

On the other hand, though, I can't really think of a solution other than the hardware digital rights management guff that's being proposed for the relatively near future. Having Big Brother built into my PC scares the hell out of me, and you can be sure I'll avoid that little technological innovation as long as I can.

Quote (Tiddles @ 30th May 2004 04:18)

On the other hand, though, I can't really think of a solution other than the hardware digital rights management guff that's being proposed for the relatively near future. Having Big Brother built into my PC scares the hell out of me, and you can be sure I'll avoid that little technological innovation as long as I can.

I don't care if that means I get more options to do stuff or whatever, hell no. I'm with Tiddles there.

WinMx works fine for me, and I dont see any reason not to use it. I don't share, i just take.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

here's my question, is P2P networking music downloading programs (ie. KaZaA, WinMX) legal???

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~ A Hero Is Someone Who Stands When Their Legs Are Gone~

Yes they are, but to actually download copyrighted music isn't.

Here's a little scenario:
You see your favorite song from a cd you don't have on TV. You decide to tape it. Isn't this the same thing as downloading music through Kazaa? You're still bypassing the stores and not paying, right? I say they completely do away with any type of device that can remotely be considered a recorder! (who's up for sarcasm??)

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"It is a part of human nature to be evil, and it is a part of human nature to destroy evil, therefore, when evil is destroyed, so will be the human race..."
- Atma

Quote (Zechs @ 30th May 2004 14:08)

here's my question, is P2P networking music downloading programs (ie. KaZaA, WinMX) legal???

Technically, no. It's copywrite infringment. For all practical purposes though, it's damn hard to stop you. And the people the RIAA has been going after to make examples of are those that are sharing music, not downloading it. Much stiffer penalties for distributing it and all.

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~Justin
Murphy was an optimist.

I hesitate to reply at all, because this is one of those topics about which I tend to have a lot to say.

Yeah, I think they flubbed up the intention of the legal music download service pretty nicely - not that this surprises me, coming from the same crack team that decided "sue our customers" constitutes a sound business model. The DRM chips are an even worse idea.

The particular school I've been attending recently rolled out a trial service of sorts, in which every enrolled student (I believe) has complimentary access to the new and not-improved Napster. I think they talked the school paper into running a few articles of praise about the experiment, but from what I've seen it's turning out to be a rather spectacular failure, for many of the reasons you (i90) detailed. Personally, I've yet to use it - I am satisfied that they're attempting to track users under identifying information, which was a dead turnoff for me. Even if not for that, I'd not use it as a protest against the music industry thinking broken MP3 distributions are going to cut it. Hard as it may be to believe in this day and age, I still get my music on faithful old CD (and I still have quite a few audio cassette tapes, too). The price is truly ridiculous anymore, but at least I can be sure the RIAA won't be coming after me because of them.

In the end, the free market is a slanted democracy in which your money is your vote, so ultimately that's the only way they're going to get the message. I can promise you I'll solder a computer together myself from raw components before I'll power up any DRM-crippled piece of trash, and I'm glad to see some of you saying much of the same, but at the risk of being a pessimist, I fear that isn't going to stop them. For you see, like most of the computer industry, they are going to see the vast majority of their paying customers as naive, gullible, trusting sheep, easily frightened by mysterious technology laws even the technically inclined strain to understand. More than that, I would go so far as to wager that the vast majority simply don't care.

I try to have a little faith and take the position that at least they'll never build a lock that can't be picked.

I use Kazaa and Grokster and programs like that no matter what...if I like a band enough then I will buy a CD to support them, if not then it's downloading time...I could really care less whether or not it's legal.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles