Re:I bought a CD, not a licensing agreement
by pyre on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @06:18PM
(#801239)
> You're not locked into a specific codec, audio quality, or player.
You're not locked into a specific player with mp3 audio either, and IIRC there aren't any subscription services that give you mp3 audio... so you are limited in your choices of music player in the first place since subscription services all use some form of DRM.
If you buy CD audio, or are able to find a service that sells FLAC/APE/ALAC audio, then you're also not 'locked in' to a particular codec or audio quality (because at that level you can easily transcode downwards in quality and/or to lossy codecs).
> If the service or technology went down, you're not out anything--you just move to a new subscription service.
This is assuming that the subscription services use compatible DRM schemes, or that your player supports both DRM schemes... Otherwise you're stuck needing to buy a new player. And that's not to mention any time and effort that you put into building custom playlists that won't transfer to the new subscription service.
It's sort of like all the personal information that people put into Facebook. They are investing a lot of time into one vendor of social networking services. The more time that they spend on Facebook, the more heavily invested they are in staying with that particular vendor, because it becomes more and more painful to rebuild all of your information/connections/etc on the new service.
You're not locked into a specific player with mp3 audio either, and IIRC there aren't any subscription services that give you mp3 audio... so you are limited in your choices of music player in the first place since subscription services all use some form of DRM.
If you buy CD audio, or are able to find a service that sells FLAC/APE/ALAC audio, then you're also not 'locked in' to a particular codec or audio quality (because at that level you can easily transcode downwards in quality and/or to lossy codecs).
> If the service or technology went down, you're not out anything--you just move to a new subscription service.
This is assuming that the subscription services use compatible DRM schemes, or that your player supports both DRM schemes... Otherwise you're stuck needing to buy a new player. And that's not to mention any time and effort that you put into building custom playlists that won't transfer to the new subscription service.
It's sort of like all the personal information that people put into Facebook. They are investing a lot of time into one vendor of social networking services. The more time that they spend on Facebook, the more heavily invested they are in staying with that particular vendor, because it becomes more and more painful to rebuild all of your information/connections/etc on the new service.