Normally I purchase my music off iTunes since I use an iPod; however, this time 'round they didn't have the song I was looking for (Bloc Party - "2 More Years", damn fine song). In the past I might have just fired up Limewire and "borrowed" it, but I figured I'd go legal this time so I downloaded Yahoo's music service and got it there. Turns out, music off of Yahoo (and MSN) come in a protected .WMA format, which cannot be converted via iTunes, meaning I can't put it on my iPod. The only means I've seen of converting protected .WMAs is Tunebite, which requires me to shell out $20 or to burn the song onto a cd, then burn it back into iTunes, which will degrade the quality of file. Does anyone know another way to get around this?
You can burn an wma into a cd format with Windows Media Player right? then just rip it back into the mp3 form when you're done.
But at the expense of the quality of the file, which I wanted to avoid that. I know its barely noticeable, I just kinda of annoyed. Meh
See what happens when you try to purchase a song legitimately!? It's almost like they want to keep downloading! But seriously, I find it very annoying when companies try to write protect their cd's. I guess piracy is a justification companies to screw over the legitimate buyers.
I didn't buy an iPod simply because they don't play wma's. Glad I went with the 40 GB Creative Zen, holds about twice as much as the 40 GB iPod (using wma's) and was a fraction of the cost.
Download Replay Music @ http://www.replay-video.com/replay-music/index.php Basically you run the program while you listen to the music (or have it run with the sound off), and it records what ever is being played into mp3 format. Ive used it a couple times to get some streaming music off of Real Rahpsody during their free trials.
I have no beef with the labels protecting their product but it seems silly that neither Yahoo, MSN, or Napster support what is the far and away industry leader in portable mp3 players.
I like the iPod/iTunes combo, but this is Apple's fault. Apple chooses not to support WMA on the iPod, and they will not license their Fairplay DRM to other music services so that they can provide music that is compatible with iPods. I'm confident there would be several stores that would provide AAC files with Apple's Fairplay DRM if Apple would only license it.
Apple has always had a holier-then-thou attitude with their products, and iTunes/iPod are no different. Thank god their are bored hackers out there to just piss them off.
You're not getting any higher quality that way than if you burned a CD and then ripped to MP3. The original file is the same bitrate either way and you're still encoding it again in another lossy format. I've done both, and the result is good enough for me. But it's easier for me simply to burn a CD and rip the song from it and encode it in whatever format I want.
What is annoying about selling you something on which you can't write again? Maybe I am misunderstanding... did you try to say something else? All CDs you buy are WRITE-PROTECTED. What did you mean by that? You can convert the WMAs you legally own to MP3 or AAC within iTunes. If you own a WMA legally, you can get it again for free.
