July 10th, 2008, 12 Comments »
Back in the eighties, Vancouverites would frequently made odysseys across the border and visit the foreign temples of capitalism. At that time, there were a ton of brands which didn’t have a presence north of the border: Old Navy, The Gap, Banana Republic and so forth. People felt thrilled and sophisticated to be wearing clothes that you couldn’t buy in Canada.
Times changed, and we have more than enough of those once-exotic stores up here. However, there’s a new segregation in town, and it’s digital. Canucks can’t watch Hulu, the popular TV on demand service. Likewise for a lot of BBC programming.
Personally, I’m frustrated by the fact that I can’t use Rhapsody’s or Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 services. I’d happily pay ten bucks for an album, but not if it comes with DRM or in some proprietary format. So iTunes is out. I already subscribe to eMusic, but they often don’t have albums that I want (Hem, for example).
Canadians are second class citizens, I assume, because these services haven’t negotiated deals with Canadian rights holders. And they’re probably in no hurry–there’s only 30 million potential buyers up here.
In the meantime, my only alternatives are going to a store and buying a hunk of plastic (unreliable and not very green) or illegally downloading the albums I can’t buy on eMusic (sometimes unreliable). I trust we’ll get MP3s on Amazon.ca eventually, but hopefully it takes less time than for The Gap to come to Vancouver.
12 Comments »
September 27th, 2007, 6 Comments »
A couple of years ago, I downloaded The Waifs’ great cover of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” from the iTunes store. I’ve bought less than five songs from iTunes, so I suspect this was one of their free weekly downloads.
When I acquire a song from iTunes, I usually convert it to MP3 format, and delete the iTunes file. I did convert this song, but didn’t delete the original.
This song came around in the big, randomized playlist on my newish MacBook, and I got the dreaded digital rights management-powered message. This is the first one of these I’ve seen from iTunes (click for a readable version):
Let’s see…those five machines would be my Windows desktop, an iMac at the office, our two old laptops and Julie’s MacBook.
It’s no skin off my nose, because I already converted the file to MP3. Interestingly, I only have access to one of those five machines anymore. I could only de-authorize one, therefore extending this file’s life by only one machine.
From the error message, it looks like the authorization is account-wide, not song-by-song. Does anybody know if that’s the case?
In any case, this is pretty complicated stuff for Nomal Human computer users, and it’s a cautionary tale for iTunes song owners. If you forget to de-authorize your old machines, I think you’re limiting your music library’s lifespan. Do I have that right?
UPDATE: Thanks to Dan, who points me to this article describing how to deauthorize all your iTunes-enabled machines from your iTunes account settings. It worked like a charm.
6 Comments »
June 12th, 2007, 2 Comments »
Having a little more time on my hands, I’m rediscovering some good songs in the nooks and crannies of my iTunes library. One such song is by the Cardigans, and has an awesome name (and chorus):
Not a staggering work of lyrical genius, but kind of fun. From their 2005 release, Super Extra Gravity.
2 Comments »
