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DRM Restrictions (continued)

Exporting to Portable Players

If you have a portable digital music player such as an IPod, Rio, Archos, Nomad etc, the applications allow some exporting to these devices. Most would have to support the protected format, in this case probably WMA or Apple's protected AAC files. ITunes only does IPods so it's really limited here.

Again, there must be a wink and a nod here from the companies, because how could they expect decent revenue unless they know people will find a way to put songs on their players that don't support DRM? This is especially true for ITunes, where they are going for an audience that is surely a low percentage of IPod users compared to all the other players out there.

Most people will likely burn a CD, and rip it again to the format they need. If your device does support DRM, it would be nice and convenient to just blast songs out to them without this burning ripping nonsense though!

Redownloading

If you switch to another computer and are allowed to play it, only one service right now lets you easily redownload, Napster2. Hopefully all the other services will see the real usefulness of this one and do it!

User Interface

Most of the interfaces are similar, you can search by artist, song title, album. Some will display tracks for things they don't have available for download, which is actually handy. At least you know you found the right one.

Also, they do the downloading, burning, exporting. Unless the interface really irks you, I think price and availability will steer you more than how the interface is. The main extra in the interfaces is the searching, previewing and browsing. Good browsing can let you discover music you may not have otherwise. The services with streaming also can give you this advantage by sampling things you otherwise might not.

Catalog

Ahh, here is the one indisputable decider. If a service doesn't carry the song you want, it's pretty much out! I haven't gotten so specific as to list out what labels are where. And it wouldn't matter since it's more than that. Some partial albums are missing songs because of the songwriter, not the artist. Or who knows why

All I know is this. When you use the services with streaming, you realize how tiny the catalogs they offer really are by how many songs stream to you without a buy button to click!

And if you find just some of an artists albums but not others, they likely aren't elsewhere. I've found a few exclusive offerings, but mostly there are voids for some big groups, like Zeppelin and The Beatles, just not anywhere yet.

With regard to streaming. This is mentioned because it's potentially a way to discover new songs to buy... or not (as mentioned above!).