David was glad to see Dave Winer say that, in his opinion, the problems people were having with their iPods and iTunes are DRM-related. I was glad to see David get into the issue of what the "R" in DRM really means. It means restrictions.
Until CDs vanish, I continue to buy my albumns via amazon or BN. If I ever want a single track, I'll maybe use iTunes. The reason is simple - I want to own the music. Really own the music. David raises some fair questions related to this:
- Buy someone a specific song through an online music store the way you might buy someone a CD? You can't and pretty soon, once CDs are gone (and they will be), we won't be able to buy each other music (you can and will be able to buy gift certificates to online music stores…. but how impersonal is that?)
- Down the road, when there are no more CDs and all music is bought online, pass your life's music collection onto someone else when you die (the way you can LPs and CDs today)? You can't.
Something to think about as you drool all over that iPod Nano.