Compatibility Woes Dog Digital Music

PC World
Saturday, December 17, 2005; 12:10 AM


All the advances in digital music players, accessories, and services are bound to be music to the ears of any music lover. But tech journalist Dawn Chmielewski steps in to inject a sour note. It's a matter of compatibility. And it boils down to this: Not all hardware and music services play well together. Particularly when it comes to songs you buy over the Net.

The most popular player around--Apple Computer's IPod --only works with Apple's own music service. That means you can't use it to listen to any of those songs you bought from, say, Napster or Yahoo. And you can't use anything but an IPod to listen to songs you buy from Apple's ITunes Music Store.

Naturally, Apple doesn't see this as a problem. But for consumers, that's a hassle in the making. Say you just bought a new Sonos Digital Music System or a Roku SoundBridge so you can listen to your music throughout your house. Both manufacturers say their devices are compatible with ITunes. But in reality, you can't play any of the songs you bought through Apple's online store on your new digital stereo. The only songs you'll be able to listen to are from the CDs you've imported, or "ripped," onto your computer's hard drive. If you've purchased hundreds of songs through ITunes, that's a major disappointment.

Which brings us to another looming compatibility problem: copy-protected CDs. The record labels behind some of music's best-known acts have begun to release CDs whose songs can't be ripped into unprotected MP3 music files that will play in any portable device. The only way to get the songs off the CD and onto your computer is in the form of a locked Windows Media file. Which, needless to say, can't be stored in your ITunes music library or played on your IPod.

It's simply a mess. And it's happened before: When 45 rpm records came out back in the fifties, they initially played only on special phonographs. Same thing with 33 1/3s. It may have been a good way to sell hardware, but it left consumers angry and confused. But it didn't take long before the music industry got wise to the idea that it was better to have players that could handle both formats--and the old 78s, too. Within a few years, single-speed turntables were history, and every player could play every disc. Then stereo came in and the old players wouldn't work with the new records--but that problem got fixed pretty fast, too.

Let's hope the digital compatibility clash ends soon.

Last time I checked, it was the music cartel--greedy control freaks who discriminate against independent musicians--who have been dragging their feet (more so than the equipment industries) by throwing monkey wrenches into consumer rights that would otherwise allow fair use.

Anyone can make their own CDs. A new proprietary format must be created to eliminate non-cartel product from the marketplace.

Yep, that's what the cartel craves to have done.

Or, if they could have the force of law to require coordinating hardware with software in some strong protective way (to thwart infringement), they'd absolutely love that too.

Yep, be nice if it were still the Fifties when people listened to each other and acted in a timely matter. But then our country got involved in an unwinnable war and people stopped listening to each other, with the rich instead looking to make more money by causing inflation to go through the roof and then limiting our gas supply.

Hey, wait a minute, that sounds just like today. Gee how history repeats itself. Only we didn't have a version of the Fifties, unless you count the years Clinton was in office. And once he was out, it all hit the fan.

It was hitting the fan -while- he was in office. Don't forget that Clinton was the one that signed the DMCA. There are no friends in the government, only pigs.

Re: "Compatibility Woes Dog Digital Music" ---
What really has been dogging digital music is the RIAA and its infernal DRM crap.
If consumers were granted their fair rights of use, compatibility and portability would cease to be major issues. In other words, the cartel has created the problem by their craving for control (a truism that sounds like preaching to the choir, I know).