I finally get why peolple steal music off the internet. The companies that take your money punish you for the experience.
I am one of the few people I know left that routinely buys my music. I use music a lot for my mental well-being and for work, and I have no problem dropping .99 cents on a song from iTunes. I have multiple Apple products and have spent hundreds thousands of dollars on music in the past couple years. Maybe I am not a HEAVY user but I think I am more than a casual music fan.
iTunes however has DRM on many of the songs I bought. I can only play my music on my authorized computers of which I can only have 5 going at any one time. No worries. Until I hit my five and then got my hands on a new Mac Book for a work project. I went to play some of my music and the computer said that I had maxed out my 5 authorized computers. Dang it. OK, deauthorize all the old ones. One of the computers I have since put into long term storage because it is broken and the other is Boitano’s that I authorized to DJ on it one time last November.
Nope, I can only deauthorize all computer once a year! WTF? why? who cares if I want to deauthorize all computers all the time. My music, my computers, deauthorize please so that I may continue to buy iTunes music on my Mac computer!
On top of that, iTunes has since seen the error of their ways and dropped DRM (digital Rights management) on their music, so let me open up as many computers as I want to be authorized? or remove the DRM off my already lawfully purchased tracks. The bastards are “offering” to lift the DRM off my songs for like $300! O RLY, thank you iTunes. But how ’bout you keep the offer and just work. just work… that is all I want.
Or how about this Apple and music industry, I take back the Mac to the Apple store and download Limewire and cut all of you out my life? I tried finding an iTunes customer service number but good luck on that, had to leave an email. Not acceptable at 2AM when I NEED a laptop to work for my job.
God, I am the last man on earth that buys music and its a Byzantian ordeal.
Sorry for the cry baby rant, but I am upset that I have spent so much money and time doing the “right” thing and I am being punished, but if I’d just ripped off all the music, this would be a non-issue.
The Morning After 
Amen brother. Amazon doesn’t have DRM, I think. Also, a lot of bands now offer tracks from their own website. NIN and YYYs released their albums via their own website. Or, you can do the less painful thing and steal it like the other millions of people out there…
tell me about it. iTunes has “offered” to remove their DRM for .40 cents a track which works out to well over $300 for me. sadness. My friend told me a bout a computer program that costs $15 that will scrub the DRM off. that is better value.
Oooh, I’d be fuming right up there with you. Make some more noise about it! Seriously – this is a big stinkin’ issue for probably more people than you think.
it’s called bittorrent jeremy.
get with the times… music is free.
seriously… once you bittorrent, you’ll never go back.
and you can still play it all out of itunes if you want… and it costs you nothing… and it’s fast… and you can pretty much find absolutely everything you can imagine.
(also, this is why i hate apple. they try to force you to buy everything through them.)
[…] The worst part, this is not the first time that upgrading my iTunes has wiped my work clean or generally fucked me in some way. […]