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Originally Posted by NRen2k5 Well, you'll be fucked up the ass when you eventually have to format your computer or transfer the music to a new computer, if you don't remember to manually backup and transfer the licenses. And whatever media you burn/transfer the songs to will eventually deteriorate or become completely unreadable (usually within five years). A factory-pressed audio-CD, on the other hand, will last the rest of your life.
Not only that, but you can phase an audio-CD however you want, be it to PC in MP3 format, to audio-cassette, to MiniDisc — and you're always getting high quality because your source is the best digital version of the music you can get aside from the studio masters. With WMA you already have a lossy copy, so when you transcode it to MP3 or MD for example, you lose even more quality. Or worse yet, you may not be able to transcode at all, since most sites that offer downloads in WMA format use "Digital Rights Management." |
I appreciate your passion for owning a "real" copy of the music. However, you're not totally correct in saying that digital copies will decay in only five years. It all depends on the quality of your hard drive, or if you are burning to disk, your medium. High quality CDs will last every bit as long as a store bought CD, assuming you burn at 4x or lower, and that you bought high quality disks. Personally, I like to use Kodak disks that were discontinued. (You have to buy them on
Ebay now). They will last virtually 100 years if you don't scratch them. (According to Kodak).
I own many CDs, and find that buying the album used over Ebay is usually superior to downloading a song because you can make a lossless WMA copy. But to me, the real issue is about ownership. If you download a song, then you ought to have the same rights to it as someone purchasing a CD. You ought to be able to burn it to whatever you want, whenever you want. Basically you get screwed for not buying a hard copy. When you download a song, you don’t get the full rights to the music, which isn’t fair.
The same applies to Audible.com (I download a lot of books). I convert those using Goldwave, but the principle is still the same. If you pay for it, you should get full usage.
It’s a shame that honest people like myself, who never pirate anything have to resort to these tactics to make our copy fully usable.