Today at lunch I bought the new <B>Iron Maiden</B> CD, "Dance of Death." After work I returned it, let me tell you why.
It seems that EMI Music group has decided to re-encode their CD's in some new format to deter pirates (yarrrr). That's fine, and I am not here to argue the ethics of pirate MP3's, that's been done to death.
The trouble is that this new format means that;
a)Windows Media Player won't play it.
b)Winamp won't play it.
c)Linux/Unix computers won't play it.
d)Realplayer won't play it (not that anyone cares)
But wait! EMI has a genius idea to solve all these problems. They embeded a NEW player that you have to install on your PC to hear the tracks. Here's the crappy part, the new player and/or compression-encoding format makes the music <B>sound like absolute garbage.</B> It was completely unbearable.
In my car it sounded just great, but goddamn it I payed $15 bucks for this CD I should be able play it anywhere.
Here's where it gets really crazy, <B>I could still copy the damn thing.</B> Just for giggles I tried to make a copy from the CD and it worked just fine, they sounded just as bad as it did thru their shite player, but I made a copy (which I have since destroyed)
So keep this in mind as you are buying new CD's from here on out. The music companies now want to control when and where you listen to your tunes.
BTW: the CD rocked! I wonder where else I could get these tunes....
