Peter Hinchliffe wrote:
I've even seen one journalist refer to Apple's "Proprietary file format". Proprietary?? AAC is part of the MPEG4 standard. With which particular non-proprietary standard does WMP comply?
AFAIK, while the AAC encoding is standard the DRM wrapper and encryption used by Apple for iTunes are not. As such, it is a proprietary format.
What's wrong with just using MP3? WMP recognises it, and it actually works on MP3 players! All of them! And we wouldn't be stuffing around with all this platform rubbish.
The music companies are afraid of non-DRM formats and won't allow music stores to distribute their property in such formats. This problem will persist until we can finially persuade them that DRM DOES NOT WORK so MP3/Ogg/Flac are just as good. After all, the DRM schemes all get cracked - and if you use a standard format in the first place, you don't have to pay royalties on your DRM system.
I'd pay extra for non-encrypted MP3 over WMA or apple-AAC, just for the convenience of not having to battle stupid player programs and silly restrictions. I'd pay quite a bit extra to get copies in FLAC format sometimes, too. Wow - they could have _margins_. Alas, again the music industry prevents this.
Oh, and I could finially buy music that I could keep on both my desktop and my laptop, have restoreable after backups, and expect not to mysteriously not work after OS changes. Not having to reboot into windows to play it would be nice, too.
Craig Ringer
