New iTunes steals your ability to turn Apple music into iPod-friendly MP3s:
Cory Doctorow: If you’re thinking of downgrading to the new iTunes, stop! The new iTunes breaks the ability to convert the music you’ve bought — even “DRM-free” songs sold at a 30 percent premium — into MP3s that will play on your iPod.
I dunno. I just converted a track I converted from iTunes to iTunes Plus into an mp3 and I don’t see what I’m being warned about. For one thing, as reported elsewhere, the new files have your name encoded in their meta data (I expect there is a simple text replacement to be done there, to replace your name with “Steve Jobs” or “Edgar Bronfman.”) I see that just fine. Don’t like it all that much.
But the mp3 doesn’t have that information.
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Dukes of Stratosphear/Chips from the Chocolate Fireball paul$ strings 13\ Shiny\ Cage.mp3 | grep name
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Dukes of Stratosphear/Chips from the Chocolate Fireball paul$ strings 13\ Shiny\ Cage.m4a | grep name
namePaul Beard
I wonder if there is a clean way to transcode these files to remove any other identifying cruft.
And curiously, because I sometimes do things I don’t expect to work, I tried converting this week’s iTunes free single to mp3: it’s doing it right now, no warning, no problem.
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Kooks/Ooh La – Single of the Week paul$ file *
01 Ooh La.m4a: MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding file (AAC)
01 Ooh La.mp3: MP3 file with ID3 version 2.2.0 tag
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Kooks/Ooh La – Single of the Week paul$ strings * | grep name
namePaul Beard
Go figure. Looks like another arms race issue to me.