inqk.net

As I’ve made clear in a few posts to the blog, I believe in DRM-free music. I believe in it so much I’m willing to support the Russian mob and spend $20 on a Damon Albarn side-project I don’t even really want. Yesterday, though, promised to be the end of those dalliances for good when Apple finally launched the DRM-free section of the iTunes Store. You might recall Apple and EMI announced this a while ago with May scheduled as the time it was all going to go live. You can’t cut it much closer than May 30 but hey, at least it’s here, right?

Well, maybe not. I’m sorry to say that my first experience with the process wasn’t particularly positive. First step was to upgrade to iTunes 7.2. I’m not sure why this is necessary but long ago I stopped questioning why various iTunes upgrades were required. If the Mighty Steve issues a dictate I obey it. With iTunes updated I moseyed over to my iTunes account (up until this point only useful for downloading album art) and ‘enabled’ iTunes Plus. ‘iTunes Plus’ is what Apple is calling their sans-DRM files. As well as sporting improved portability these files are also encoded at a higher fidelity than the old 99c ($1.70 if you’re unlucky enough to be a member of the Australian store) ones did.

OK, so far and so good. Downloading a 30 MB file isn’t the most user friendly experience in the world but it could be worse. Rest assured, it got worse.

Just as an aside: Is there no way for Apple to make their software more modular? Perhaps I’ve become spoilt by Firefox’s automatic update system (which, coincidentally, is updating itself as I write this) but frankly, if you’re a major developer producing software in the year 2007 and you require me to manually download your entire program every time you fix a bug you’ve screwed up somewhere. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

I digress. The next step was to see if there was any music I actually wanted. Luckily for me EMI is the big music label based in England and controls the works of a number of English artists I like. I recently listened to a dynamite live set from Arctic Monkeys on Triple J and decided their new album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, would be a good one to experiment with. Purchasing music on iTunes is notoriously easy and after adding Favourite Worst Nightmare to my shopping cart it was all I could do not to toss a few other ones in there as well. When I’m in an actual store and I have CDs in my hands they have a certain weight – the weight of responsibility saying, ‘You can’t afford all this music.’ But online there is no weight; it’s effortless. I don’t even take out my wallet so there’s no moment where I realise this is my grocery money I’m spending. Luckily I was able to hold firm this time but who knows what will happen if more labels start to add their music. What of Amazon’s upcoming store? If I can purchase music at US prices… well, I might never be seen again.

I say ‘might’ because I’m not particularly looking forward to using the iTunes Store again. While things up to this point in the story were relatively positive it quickly went downhill when I tried to actually download the music I’d purchased. You see, when you purchase songs in iTunes it automatically begins to download them. Or so the theory goes. For me it was a little less with the downloading and a little more with the endless waiting. While the download appeared to initiate it didn’t seem to want to go any further than that first step regardless of what I did. Occasionally one file would randomly download while another complained that the network connection was timing out. Deciding maybe it was just slow I left the computer on overnight and went to bed, looking forward to listening to my new music on the train to work in the morning. Unfortunately my early morning commute was without musical accompaniment. I awoke to find the download still pretty much where I’d left it – going nowhere. Since a torrent had successfully downloaded overnight I knew the problem wasn’t that the connection had dropped out.

I tried it a few more times and was able to get most of the songs from the album barring four or so. Not quite the replacement for going down to the old record store. I tried again 12 hours later upon coming back from work and met with varying degrees of success. Again, some files whizzed by while others stagnated. One track in particular, ‘If You Were There, Beware’, is still refusing to download as I type this. I’ve grown so desperate I’ve emailed Apple technical support in the hopes of a resolution to this problem. I’ll let you know how that goes.

All in all, not exactly the type of experience that fills one with confidence. I want to like this. It’s what I’ve been waiting for it for years. I guess I can wait a little longer.