Visions of Shadow and Light

OK, I think I've had it.

A couple years ago I bought an album and a couple other songs through Best Buy's web site - from a service called Liquid Audio. A few weeks later, my license files quit working, and Liquid Audio was entirely unhelpful - unsympathetic even! I believe they've gone out of business though, so they got what they deserved.

About a year ago I bought some songs from the new Napster. A few weeks later I had a hard drive crash and lost my license files. Fortunately Napster was more helpful and I was able to get my license files restored (though I think it used up the second of my 3 machine licenses).

But today my Napster licenses are just gone. No system changes, nothing. They just quit working. And yes, I'm sure Napster's helpful service people can get them back for me, but that is no longer the point. The idea of downloading music and more importantly dealing with the DRM is unacceptable.

All I want to do is listen to music I purchased, and I can't do it. That sucks. And spending time calling around or emailing to get support to be able to use my own damn property isn't acceptable at all.

So I'm done buying music online. It will be a lot cheaper for me to just go buy the CDs at a store and rip them, and then never worry about this shit again. If I figure it based on my hourly billing rate it is a LOT cheaper to just avoid the DRM.

And when the CD's are DRM protected? Well then I guess I'm done with commercial music. Most of it sucks anyway, and if I can't listen to it on my PC while working then it has no value anyway, so it just doesn't matter.

Yes RIAA, you can protect your precious resource. But in the end you may be your only market, because the rest of us are getting fed up with all the bullshit...