Why iTunes is Evil
Why is iTunes evil? Well, as most of you may already know, I'm quite fond of Macs, and in fact most of the time I prefer using Mac OS rather than using Windows. But I do have one major gripe, and its about iTunes.
You see, before the age of iTunes, before the DARK times... We had other outlets that we used to reliably download and distribute our music. We could either get our music legally (ripped tracks from CDs we owned) or illegally (downloaded them from the web via Napster, Limewire, or KaZaa) but the point is, we HAD our music! No complaints, no fuss. Life was simpler then.
Then one dark and cloudy day, the recording companies began to gripe that their music artists and music composers were losing money due to the fact that so many people were downloading music, and that sells of music records in general had dropped because the masses were now downloading their music online for free.
So eventually, Apple invented iTunes. A convenient way for users to download music- one song at a time, in the MP3 format, for a small price. Brilliant!
At first, I thought it was great! Highly innovative, and a good idea. So I downloaded a few songs, every now and then, life was good. 
Apple claims that:
iTunes puts your entire music and video collection a mere click away, giving you an all-access pass to thousands of hours of digital entertainment. Browse. Organize. Play.
But here's the real truth... given to you by a (formerly loyal) iTunes customer.
- What was once the widely-recognized and supported mp3 format, before long turned into the highly protected and proprietary m4p format. So if you own anything besides an iPod, you're in bad shape.
- The ability to convert purchased m4p songs back into mp3 was DISABLED in iTunes and most external converters can't do this either.
- Want to take all of the purchased songs off your old computer and put them on your new one? Forget it. You have to "authorize" each new machine to do this, and you can't do it more than 5 times. Sounds to me like iTunes controls the songs you paid for, more than YOU do.
- Calling them "Updates", Apple has shown willingness to REMOVE features from iTunes which makes it increasingly harder to give away, or loan your purchased iTunes songs to friends or family.
- Apple has been known to use blacklists and legal threats to keep people from adding functionality to iTunes (and iPod). Thanks for giving me an enema.
- iTunes helps music artists? Hah! Now that's comedy. Many artists report that they're seeing $0.07 or less from the sale of their music on the iTunes Store—which means that most of your money spent on there goes to greedy recording companies who are still busy suing grannies and little children.
So in short, buying an iTunes song to me, is beginning to seem like a worse and worse deal. I might even resort to just recording music right off the radio like I used to back in the day.
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Update:
Oct 21, 2008
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