Be Excellent To Each Other

I bought a load of songs on iTunes.

My computer blew up.

I want the songs back.

Is there a painless, pirate-free method of doing this within iTunes? Just going to the album and trying to purchase it doesn't seem to work (like it does on the App Store).

No. You're supposed to back those files up. It quite explicitly says so in your iTunes agreement.

There are ways around this though. Go through the Apple support pages and email them and beg for help. Make up an excuse that's less lame than "I don't back up my shit". They usually re-queue the downloads for your account; then in iTunes you can do some menu option that tells it to look for any queued downloads.

Alternatively, do you have an iPod or iPhone somewhere with the files on?

why do people buy digital music? Isn't cheaper to buy the cds on play.com?

If you have another device with the songs on then you should use something like Sharepod or iDump to get the songs from the device to the computer. DO NOT LOAD UP iTunes on the new computer with the ipod connected.

or buy digital from play.com....

Convenience, for one; no need to wait for shipping time. But perhaps most of all, I am starting to hate having physical products lying around when I could just have 1s and 0s. It feels incredibly wasteful to have a CD made, shipped to me, and inserted into a computer for five minutes to rip it -- then never used again.

I see your point Doc, but don't you like having a physical product on your shelf? Occasionally picking things up just to look at them makes me happy.

I used to. Now I mostly just see clutter. I used to think the same thing about books, but now I have a Kindle that's changed too. I love old books, and lavish books, and really big hardbacks; but 90% of the books I own are just standard paperbacks with tatty corners and it turns out I'm really not that fussed on the physical object.

My CDs came to this house in Jan 2006 in a big box which went in the attic. I got it back down a few months back to re-rip them all, and throw in there the extra CDs I've bought in the last few years; when I'm done with that, realistically, it's just going back in the attic.

Common sense says you are right. Absolutely.

Deciding I want to listen to Album X by Artist Y NOW! Because I CAN! Through my iPhone (and £7 is only really two pints so who cares) proves this theory wrong on about 90% of albums I've purchased in the past 12 months.

Recently I've tried to not buy CDs and download them, then an impulse purchase of Slash's new CD made me realise that I love having something tangible in my hand. I've listened to it loads and I don't think I'd have appreciated it as much if I'd have downloaded it.

I realise that I'm fast becoming the minority on this, but I would still rather have a product than a digital download..

Give me a few years and granted, I'll probably change my mind.

Wait, someone in the world has actually read that?

[/quote]Alternatively, do you have an iPod or iPhone somewhere with the files on?[/quote]

I did until I connected it to my new iTunes. Doh!

Hmmm, I think Maria may have taken some of the music via Home Sharing onto her PC, so I can try to Home Share it back, though it only seems to work occasionally... stupid Home Sharing.

And I might have some of it on my old iPod.

The rest I guess I'll just have to YARR!

Well, no. You can still email Apple.

Spotify cures this for £10 a month.

Only if all the music you want is in there. Do they have any Pink Floyd yet?

Ew...

I'll give it a whirl, but I know what I'll be doing if it doesn't work!

And I'm still not totally sold on Spotify yet. I may cancel it, though 10 quid a month isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things. Despite that, I'm still buying albums...

Yeah, a huge four songs

(but you all knew that anyway) There's something soothing about looking through a collection of CDs/vinyl to find something to put on (even metul ones) Hunting through a pc/ipod somehow seems more of a faff in comparison, even though it puts things in order. (Obviously I rip/download most of it anyway as it'd be shite hauling a collection of records around to listen to on the train) That & when it's on it usually stays on, whereas if I'm listening to an ipod/pc I jump between things like a hyper kid full on crack.

Order's no fun, give me clutter & chaos anyday.

Digital DJing though? I'm sold on that. Fuck carting a load of records & gear around and fuck anyone who whines "There's no soul to it, you're just pushing buttons!"

Aye, physical products at home & digital stuff when I'm on the move please

On the other hand I usually prefer to download or rent films than own discs (there's a few rare exceptions mind). Probably because I only watch them once or twice & then never touch them again. I'm not a huge movie fan though.

I haven't looked back since rejoining Lovefilm. I watch almost all my films from Bluray now, and my monthly spend overall is way down.

I thought you could just re-download stuff you've bought on iTunes?

Nope. Never been true for music. It was a reasonable enough concept in 2001, but it's an anachronism in 2010. There are rumours that Apple are looking into cloud syncing for music; I think they should just buy Dropbox.

Really? Are you saying that on the basis that everyone should be doing backups? Because I'm pretty sure the percentage of iTunes users that don't back up their music is pretty damned high. And given that it won't even let you sync back to the desktop from the device, it's extra-annoying.

I honestly thought I had, like, five downloads of the music I'd bought before I wasn't allowed to download it anymore. I'm sure I read that somewhere way back when. So if I've spent £1000 on music from iTunes and my HDD dies, I'm fucked? I don't really have the time or the resources to safely store loads of MP3s somewhere. I mean, Apple know I've bought the music from them, so why can't I download it as and when I want to?

I'm sticking to piracy until they catch up with my needs.

No. You can play DRMd content on five computers at once, is what I think you are thinking of.

Yes, maybe, in theory. In practice Apple can manually intervene and give you another download, and generally do so.

Really? Do you not back anything up then? £1000 is about 10Gb of music. You can buy a 16Gb SD card for about £30.

I suspect it was bandwidth motivated -- as I said, this is a holdover from the first iTunes Music Store in 2001. Different world back then.

Wait, what? I was criticising Apple, not defending them. I think it's an anachronism that you pay money to download a file once and then have to be responsible for backing it up for all time.

Although I also think everyone should be doing backups, but that's a seperate issue.

Gotta get me one of them hard disk drives!

Out of interest, how do you backup? I mean, it'd be impractical for me to backup all of my goodies on SD cards, unless you can get 500GB ones for less than £50 now. Maybe a couple of external HDDs? Double backup style?

A WD 1TB external drive is what, 60 or 70 quid now?

We had a backup thread quite recently.

I use Mac OS X's Time Machine software to keep version-controlled copies of all the stuff on my Macbook on my HP MediaSmart server. That also has redundant disks to protect against physical failure.

I make a second set of backups to a USB HDD I keep in my desk drawer in work; that's my crude off-site backup. I'm not happy with that though so I need to buy a Dropbox account and do some scripting to get my photo archive backed up into it.

In the first instance, I'd evaluate Dropbox if I were you.

Ah, sorry - I thought you were saying that relying on the vendor to allow re-downloads was an anachronism.

Yes I thought that. All is claar.

Quite.

I shall search out the correct email address over lunch, and let you know how my plea of ignorance gets on!

Aye. If I get something digitally (There are a few rare albums I've done this with) I don't listen to it much at all. If I burn it to cd, it gets played more often, but still not as much as a bought cd.

There's also the faff factor. To listen to a cd, I get a cd out of a cd wallet sitting near the cd player*. If I want to listen to a digital download, I have to turn on computer, wait for boot (by now the cd would be playing) enter password, wait for login, open music, find what I want, and finally play it.
And I'm not leaving the computer running all the time, thanks.

* - Or just stick with whatever you listened to last time. The Ben Harper album I got for christmas has barely been removed from the cd player since it got put in, due to it being rather excellent. Interestingly before that, I could listen to it whenever I wanted over the internet, but didn't. I almost never got the album because I was so unenthused about it having previewed it in its entirity via t'internet.

Blimey. I just plug my iPhone into the stereo and hit play. At home, I load the Remote app on the iPhone, browse all the (lossless encoded) music on the server, select "kitchen" or "living room" speakers (or both), and hit play. That bit does involve leaving a computer on all the time though, albeit a low-powered and quiet server.

Mmm, and how much does all that cost? iPhones for a start aren't cheap.

They're FREE!

On expensive contracts.

Rather than the whole settup that Doc has described you could easily change it to MP3 player (even iPod nanos are reasonably priced) connected through aux to a stereo/car/cyberstoat/etc.

Cheapest you could assemble that is £152 for an iPod Touch (to run the remote) and £75 each for two Airport Expresses (which are what handles the other side of the streaming audio, I have one in the kitchen and one in the living room). Obviously not cheap unless you already had those things for other duties, which I did. I assume people already have a computer running iTunes for this scenario.

I agree about thef aff thing.

If I'm sat at home, I can get whatever music I want within minutes via digital stuff, but it takes several DAYS for a CD to reach me via Play.com or a similar site. I don't want that music in two days, I want it now!

Plus, keeping several thousand CDs next to a CD player would be a massive pain in the backside.

Your house sounds awesome Doc! I'm jealous!

I use an external drive to backup all my stuff through Windows.. It *should* do it on the last day of every month.

I would refer people to Microsofts way of downloading things.. That seems the right way to me.

I find I don't really listen to much music on the computer even though I have tons on there, maybe because I never bothered getting any decent speakers for it, or maybe because I went crazy and downloaded lots of stuff - more than I ever really would want, and a lot of crap (often poorly tagged) that I got just because it was there. I do like the convenience of having loads of music in one place, with quick searching and playlists and those nice features the computers allow for, even if I would probably end up dicking about on the internet or something rather than actually giving the music more attention.

However, there's something for me in the actual action of getting a CD out of the case and putting into the mechanical tray or pushing it into a slot... it just 'feels' satisfying. A CD box feels nice to pick up and open and handle the disc inside. I used to especially enjoy using discs in caddies for some reason, minidiscs in particular. Opening up cases, handling and inserting things(!) with a nice positive action seems to resonate.... Possibly things could be read into that, but it was a nice tactile experience.

That being said I find I don't really listen to much music anymore. I gave away my speakers and separates quite a while ago as they had lain unused for so long.

Patience is a virtue and all that. But again the disposability factor raises its head. If you wait for something, or go out of your way to obtain it (i.e. go to the shops) you're less likely to discard it (read: rarely play again) after a couple of plays the way a fair few people have commented they do when they download music.



Hello
\


It's how I do it at the moment. But when I had more space, I had furniture for the job.

Hi
\

Guten Morgen

Am I the only one disappointed that this isn't Grim...'s solution to music playback?

I emailed them last night. I will let you know what they do.

He cloned an army of Gaywoods!

Why do you think I look so tired all the time?

Shouting can be exhausting business!