I’ve been debating this question for a few days now. While using Windows I used winamp for a while, then ditched it. Eventually, I ended up just playing my music in Windows Media Player. I never set up play lists, I just opened up a handful of songs at a time and went from there. As you may have read before, I’m a little paranoid about handing my data over to a program without knowing what the program is going to do with this data.
I don’t remember any of the specifics of things I’ve heard in the past, but for some reason I have this suspicion that iTunes doesn’t play well with non iTunes store music. And since I’ve never used iTunes, all my music is DRM free, mostly ripped CD’s. My biggest fear is that iTunes would bring down an Iron fist and start trying to control where I can play my music. Although these feelings seem foolish, its hard for me to adopt iTunes with this fear. Tonight I decided to give iTunes a whirl and see if I could debunk my suspicions.
It wasn’t long before realized that I was wrong, which is great, because I really want to use iTunes :) When I import my music into iTunes they retain their original file format and don’t get converted to the DRM laden ACC format. This means that iTunes won’t be able to control what I do with my music!
As I import more of my music and get some time to explore more of iTunes I’ll give my full blown opinion of iTunes.
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I have been using iTunes since Apple bought Sound Jam back in 00 or 01, so far I have had few issues with it. I don’t do DRM either, and I haven’t had any trouble with iTunes messing up my files. I use it for movies too so I can put them on my iPod and it seems to handle those fine.
I think the default CD song ripping settings are for ACC, but last time I used it (7.0 I think) you could set it mp3 instead. Do you know if all ACC files have DRM? I thought it was only the ones purchased from the apple store.
I don’t do DRM either. It just seems evil to me, lol. It hasn’t messed up any of mp3’s, which I was really worried about.
I don’t think that CD’s ripped to ACC have DRM, but I can’t tell you for sure. I don’t know why Apple would add DRM to ripped songs, but you never know. I ran across a program that would remove DRM from songs that were downloaded from the iTunes store. I guess that when you burn the ACC files to CD the DRM is removed. The program would burn the ACC files to a CD-RW then rip the songs off the CD-RW. Thus removing the DRM. I think the program was automated and could remove the DRM off your entire library of music. I forget where I saw the program and even what it was called. If I run across it again I’ll let you know.
Nomad/Xero,
I ran across a program that strips the DRM from songs purchased in the iTunes store without using a CD-RW. Its called FairGame.
Good Luck!