More Thoughts on Music

02007-02-24 | Copyright, Internet, Music | 7 comments

Ottmar Liebert » Blog Archive » Thoughts on Music
Regarding Steve Job’s open letter RE DRM I want to add a few notes:

Apple should:
1. Make DRM elective, meaning Apple should allow indies like us to elect NOT to have our music encoded with DRM – for extra points they could add CC-Licenses…
2. Add OGG Vorbis and FLAC to the formats supported by the iPod. At present it is easy enough to encode OGG Vorbis files or even install a free plug-in that enables playback via iTunes – but iPods won’t play back the files.
3. Apple should increase the quality of the files sold on iTunes. IMO 128kbps is not worth it and is the main reason I have so far purchased only one track from iTunes. Give us at least 192kbps.

7 Comments

Curt on 02007-02-24 at 20:26

Now I am in absolute full agreement with you here sir!
Reply
Steve on 02007-02-24 at 21:05

I completely agree.

The only thing I would add is another lossless format.

Apple Lossless is great, but proprietary. DGM (Robert Fripp’s label) offers stuff in FLAC. It would be cool if iPod/iTunes had the ability to play FLAC directly without converting to Apple Lossless. Perhaps another plug-in (?)
Reply
ottmar on 02007-02-25 at 0:01

Steve – I agree and added it to the post. FLAC is great, but I was looking for a player and there really is none that is compatible with Macintosh computers. I like the Cowon A2, which plays video as well as FLAC and OG Vorbis and most other music files, but does not work with a Mac. Either Job’s DRM letter is just more corporate bullshit and posturing – which I suspect it is – or Apple should make a move and support Open Source music files. It wouldn’t cost them a cent in licensing either…
Reply
Anna on 02007-02-25 at 5:02

I completely agree.
Reply
Steve on 02007-02-25 at 14:24

Ottmar …

You might be interested in Cog (cogosx.sourceforge.net). It plays both FLAC and Ogg files. It’s a pretty simple player, but what it does, it does very well.

I’d like to see Apple and Jobs make good on his letter …
Reply
Anna on 02007-02-26 at 5:29

Ottmar, I am not sure that all tracks on iTunes are compressed at 128kbps, some people told me that they’ve downloaded tracks that had 96kbps. The tracks were 1.5mb if that.

Today I was reading a few tech websites and came across this story
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/music/0,72785-0.html?tw=wn_index_
Reply
Markun on 02007-06-01 at 10:09

Sorry for the late reply… but with the Rockbox firmware you can play FLAC and Ogg Vorbis on your iPod:

http://www.rockbox.org/

It has some more nice features such as gapless playback and ReplayGain:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WhyRockbox

For installation instructions check the manual:

http://www.rockbox.org/manual.shtml
Reply