Wasting time with Jet

KimmyK brought this up with a comment awhile back, figured I shine some light and corrupt some minds (heh, heh, heh, heh!)

Napster, Napster, Napster...You Clever lil bastard you...

You were so cool when for first showed up...giving The Finger to the Music Industry and promoting the distribution of music among peers without the capitalist pigs and their corporations raping starving artists for money...

But then the government stepped in and shut you down...

Then someone else stepped in, took the copyright, the logo and the trademark and turned you into the very thing you sought to destroy, a lapdog for Satan.

So now you been reformed, a new man, sorta speak, unplugged from the system ala Agent Smith in Matrix Reloaded....wandering around making copies of yourself trying to take over while looking for that one simple thing...PURPOSE.

Okay, maybe I'm getting carried away here...

Inna Nutshell...Napster is iTunes, it's Y! Music, AudioGalaxy's Rhapsody, it's all those annoying Music Downloading subscriptions that lets you Cherry Pick songs for so-called pennies per track and let them get burned on a custom CD, yadda, yadda, yadda...

BUT there ARE a few catches.

First, the library is LIMITED! YEAH we got ALL the LATEST CRAP, but ANY that came out before 2002, heh, heh, You're screwed.

To be fair, They DID have a lotta Ol' Skool stuff from the 80's Stuff I couldn't find ANYwhere or didn't know still existed!...but there's so much MORE that should be here and isn't!

Why can't I find the 12MC's Remix to "Whoa"?

Why can't I find "Addams Family" soundtrack with that funny song MC Hammer did?

Why can't I find "Typical Reasons (Swing my Way)" by that white guy from the Fat Boys when he went solo?

Why can't I find "Dedicated" by R.Kelly back when he was with Public Announcement?

"Humpin' Around", "Girlfriend", "On our Own" from Ghostbusters 2...WHY can't I find these Bobby Brown songs???

It's jus certain songs, man...that when you think of them, you want them...and they ain't there.

Maybe iTunes has a broader library, then again...maybe not.

Twist #2 The ol' Bait and Switch!

Whoo, Modern Technology these days, they really know how to sell the illusion...

Freakin' Criss Angel got nothing on Napster!

Okay, With the basic subscription (which I purchased via Gift Card rather then letting these psychos have my credit card info!) You have the choice of downloading all the songs you want on up to 3 PC's at once (In case you go to a friends house and you wanna have access to your account there, you can...it's actually kinda cool...) You download the songs in WMA format and play then using your Windows Media Player (Gotta have versions 7 and up or no dice...VERY important, tell ya later...)

So you got these files on YOUR PC, right? taking up disk space on YOUR hard drive, right? You can listen to them on ANY program that plays WMA's Nero, WinAMP, etc, etc...

BUT...try to burn these files on a CD OUTSIDE of the Napster program (Cuz the software lets you make your CD, too, you don't need to use Media Player or any other burner, yadda, yadda, yadda...) and suddenly...BAM! you hit a wall!

These WMA files are ENCRYPTED, they cannot be burned or transferred on ANY portable device until you get the "Burn Rights"

What are Burn Rights? Burn Rights are the encryption codes that allow a song to be compressed into various formats like CDA (for CD's) and also allow to be copied.

They were implemented With Windows Media Player Version 7 and the introduction of DRM, which stands for Digital Rights Management.

That's the illusion...it's yours, but it's NOT yours.

If you want to burn it on a CD or put it on your iPod or MP3 play...You gotta buy the Rights...so that's where the .99 cents comes to play.

The price to buy a track is different from the subscription service, which is why they also have Gift Cards worth 15 Downloads, etc, etc...

So they get ya with the subscription, and then get ya with the tracks...BUT fear not!, they're not THAT cold-hearted as to make you do both...YOU HAVE A CHOICE...

You can jus join and download, paying song per song with no subscription fee...or you can subscribe and LISTEN to all you want without being able to take it with you...

OR CAN YOU? (Hee, hee, hee...)

Time for a lil Seeeecret!...Shhhhhh....

C'mere lemme tell ya something...

Apparently, this new system of things didn't fare to well across the pond, and some hackers from Jolly ol' England found a way to bite Napster, iTunes and Rhapsody all in the ASS!

It's called Tunebite and brother, I tell ya...It's da SHIT!

Tunebite takes all those encrypted WMA music files and *poof*...makes them YOUR files...to do whatever you want!

It even works with AudioBooks from the library! You know those files that erase themselves after the due date!

And Tunebite doesn't stop at audio...it can even copy streamed video files that you "Rent" online!

It's so nice to see for every failsafe out there...there's something somewhere eventually made to beat it!

SO now, the music I download, is MINE! I jus need to find more!

Hmmm, maybe I SHOULD join iTunes and see what they have over there....

(Sinister Laughter)