What price an MP3?

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Now for the rest of this blog I’m going to come across like a curmudgeonly old grump who only likes listening to Radio 4 and restricts his TV viewing to Newsnight. But I’m not, honest. I listen to Radio 6 Music each morning on my way into work, and have on very special occasions been known to throw a few shapes on the dancefloor. People soon ask me to stop, but we’ll gloss over that.

The fact is, I haven’t bought a CD or downloaded a track on iTunes for over a year. My MP3 player is, right now, gathering dust in a draw, and it’s full of tracks I transcoded from my rapidly ageing CD collection. And while I used to get a thrill out of firing up the various components of my hi-fi and losing myself in the expensive Sennheiser headphones I bought a decade ago, I’m now far more likely to be inserting the latest In The Night Garden CD at the behest of my young children. (more…)

Being denied access to your own music. In 29 easy steps.

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

Here are the actions yours truly just performed in order to utterly fail to play a DRM-protected album, bought and paid for, by me, approximately two years ago.

Double-click on first track, sitting neatly in Cardigans | Gran Turismo folder under My Music. Windows Media Player starts. Tells me it needs rights. Click ‘get rights’. Need to download Napster client.

Sigh. (more…)