The same thing has worried me for years about Audible audiobooks. I ought to be able to keep what I have bought, so I want to back up the hundreds of books I've bought from them. Except that burning an audiobook to CD means many, many discs and a whole lot of time.

One of these days, Audible will stop operating, and I'll have a whole lot of nothing.

For those who have complained in the past that Mr. Manjoo is nothing but an unpaid Apple shill, this post (plus his one last week calling Apple a liar for claiming the new iPhone costs half the price of the old one) should set the record straight. Here, he quite clearly bashes Apple -- and unreasonably, in my opinion.

Just because your music tracks are hobbled by a DRM scheme does not mean you don't own them. Just because you can't drive your car 125 mph, or into SAC Norad, doesn't mean you don't own it. Just take the commonsense step, as other comments here have noted, of backing up your tracks onto CD. Voila, no DRM. And no loss of quality until you re-rip those tracks.

But more importantly, know what you're buying. The major labels have made sure that there are plenty of alternative outlets selling digital music, most of whom aren't forced to use DRM the way Apple is. The iTunes Store is convenient because it operates right out of iTunes, and has the best selection I've seen yet. If you don't like the deal, go somewhere else.

You seem to think Apple is the one imposing this DRM business. The fact they have iTunes Plus should make it clear it's the major music labels that are pushing this. The discrepancies between iTunes Plus and Amazon's MP3 store are because, again, the music labels think somehow they're propping up Amazon and diminishing the importance of iTunes by withholding DRM-free tracks from iTunes and giving them to Amazon instead (that is, the major labels on Amazon that aren't EMI.)

However, agreed, what happens if Apple has a server glitch, I don't know. But, I use my iTunes music without an internet connection all the time, so presumably it doesn't have to phone home regularly. Still, agreed, it's a flaw in DRM.

But, let's remember the geniuses who think this DRM is great - the media owners. It's even worse with video, look at NBC Universal - they not only wanted Apple to charge more for their content, but to apparently to somehow purge non-DRMed video files from iTunes/iPods. (I infer this from NBC's subsequent deal with Microsoft / Zune.)

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/microsoft-may-build-a-copyright-cop-into-every-zune/

First, there is a way to “own” these songs. I have NEVER owned an iPod or other portable music player. I use iTunes strictly for buying individual songs. I have something in excess of 950 iTunes-purchased, DRM-restricted songs, which I have ONLY, EVER used for making CDs. When iTunes burns a CD, it produces a completely normal, home-computer-burned CD, playable on anything. Absolutely no DRM or any other restriction affects any track on any iTunes-burned CD.

Second, even upon moving these files to another computer, Apple’s servers and their admittedly annoying DRM scheme have never failed me.

I HAVE listened to iTunes tracks, in headphones, directly from the iTunes application, AND because I have considered this very issue, listened to the same songs burned to a CD, and then played back on the same computer, through a conventional CD-playing app, such as WinAmp. I have pretty decent ears, and hear no perceptible difference. Of course, in principle, manipulating them on the fly as iTunes burns a CD also must degrade them. My only complaint about iTunes, aside from knowing that the resolution is inferior to even some mp3s, is that many iTunes files are just downright quiet, and this makes for a lower-volume CD track.

Before removing iTunes and my songs from my second-to-last “authorized” computer, I undertook the laborious task of burning all 950+ songs to playable CDs (about 76 of them). I wasn’t taking any chances. This was facilitated by the comparatively recent version of iTunes that finally creates CDs with CD-Text, of the type that displays song information on some car stereos.

Apple’s DRM scheme is annoying, but thus far, extremely reliable, in terms of a newly authorized device (in my case, again, only PCs) having to check in with Apple’s servers.

However, virtually EVERY Windows Media Audio file I’ve ever purchased from Walmart.com, Buy.com or Napster.com, has eventually lost contact with whatever the heck holds its authorization Out There. Windows Media Player graciously offers to retrieve the license, but NEVER has worked. I only have access to these Windows Media Audio songs because I’ve burned them to CDs.

You're quite right about the quality of reproduction. Once every 6 months or so, I get a chance to listen to some music on my ancient mid-fi setup and I'm always amazed at what I've been missing in terms of detail. But if I want to actually listen to music as opposed to reproduction, lo-fi "lossless" it is, at my desk and in my car.

One thing I find to be amusing about Amazon is that while they've embraced DRM-free music, they have no problem with DRM on eBooks. It's honestly a double standard that I don't understand.

It is a funny article, an article about DRM that doesn't mention the labels. The labels? Yeah, the companies that have pushed and enforced DRM schemes

Sin by omission.

Cheap computer speakers, iPod ear buds, an under powered car stereo system in a car with loud tires and lots of rattles, and overly svelte HTIB's that cost under 300 bucks.

This is how most people are listening to their music. It's pretty hard to get all that jazzed about the difference between 128, 256 and lossless when that is the case.

I recently signed up to the free download site spiralfrog (horrible name, to be sure). Although the music comes in the form of .wma files, which are restricted, the price is unbeatable. I paid $8.99 less than the earlier poster for the new Coldplay album. Actually I think the site is a plot to sell more hard drives. I've downloaded 821 songs in less than two weeks.