Itunes, why encrypted mp3s?

Revised: May 27, 2005

Ok so I thought I would be a good boy and legally download some paid for mp3’s using the Itunes music download service. At 79p per mp3 I thought its cheaper than buying the single so why not give it a go. I downloaded Feel Good Ink by the gorillaz it sounded good, it even came with all the cover art and information encoded into the mp3 - I was thinking yes, this was worth the download. I was wrong - I copy all my music onto my mp3 player (its not an ipod) and the gorillaz song wasn’t playable, hell it wasn’t even viewable! Some shiz about encrypted mp3 format. I don’t want to just listen to the mp3’s on my laptop, I want to be able to take them out on ANY device that I choose. I should have just bought the single from HMV, it may not have been as cheap, but I would have had album art and what ever extras they include on the cd. I have no choice other than to rip the mp3 now so as to listen to it on a device I choose, not a device that itunes wants me to use! This is where audacity is probably the most useful piece of software I have comes to play. You can set it to use a stereo mix as the input, which means that it records the stereo output being sent to the speakers, so no need to use a loop back cable from the speaker port to the mic port because it captures it from the sound card itself. Only problem I have thou is that it refuses to record stereo, and only in mono - so I can now listen to the gorillaz song on my mp3 player, but only in mono and I can only convert one mp3 at a time, and only at 1x. It’s a pain in the arse, and I’m not going to be using itunes again.

Edit: I just found out how to get audacity to record in stereo.