25 September 2006

Lost On Your Motorway


Listening to: The Butterfly Effect - The End


Ok, so it's time for a long-overdue rant.

Ahem...

Earlier this year, one of my favourite Australian bands, The Butterfly Effect, released their highly anticipated second CD, Imago. Naturally, I was itching to get my hands on it. So I picked it up from the local CD shop the day it was release, rushed home, threw it on the CD player, listened to it a few times and started to love it oh so much.

Then I thought I'd copy it onto my PC so I could listen to it without having to have the CD with me. My MP3 collection is growing (about 8Gb at the moment, spread between work and home). I chuck it in the CD drive, only to see a built-in audio player pop up. Ok, so I can sorta deal with that. So I fire up iTunes to import the CD onto the hard drive. Oops! Sorry, can't do that. Seems The Butterfly Effect's record company, the all powerful Sony BMG, have decided that I can only copy the CD into either a copyright-protected WMA format, their proprietary SonicStage format, or directly onto an iPod. Ok, I'll go get my iPod Nano, and copy it straight over - maybe I can then copy it back onto the hard drive.

Ha! Err, no.

Ok, so at least I've got it on my iPod now. I devise a cunning plan at work, to record the tracks playing on an audio editing package I have, then convert them to MP3. Works a charm, even if the sound quality is a little lacking (I'm a snob when it comes to bit rates).

Ok, fast forward a few months. I've been having trouble connecting my iPod to my work PC, and have given up on it. Then I download iTunes V7, and fall into some sort of nerdy love with the album-flicking bit. I think "Hey why I don't I bring my iPod back in and see if it'll work?" iPod gets recognised, which is a step forward, but iTunes says I have to restore it to original factory settings, and lose all my songs. Sigh. Ok, well if it'll work, go for it.

Click the button, wipe the songs, lose the sounds. iPod resets and all seems to be groovy. Till iTunes says I need to restore the iPod to original factory settings. Oh look, there's a tail. CHASE IT CHASE IT CHASE IT!!

:-|

Ok, give up, pack up iPod, bring it home, concede that home PC will be home for iPod uploads from now on. Plug it in and start uploading again. I'd like to put The Butterfly Effect back on there, so I go grab the CD and chuck it in the CD drive again. Built-in audio player pops up as per normal. I go to the Import CD bit, and click on iPod.

BZZT! Sorry, can't do that. You can only copy this album onto an iPod once, and you've already done it. So you lose. HA!

Grrrr fuck shit bloody bitch cocksmoker.

So I spent $20-something on a CD that I can only copy once. What a fucking crock.


Sony BMG can suck my toes. :|

And to prove that I really do own the damn thing:




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah just found this out myself the hard way. Shits me to tears.

If I had known I wouldnt have bought the bloody thing and have just been content with seeing them live.

Anonymous said...

Found your post after experiencing the same thing. Just discovered a workaround - popped the disc into my PS3, which gladly imported the tracks (MP3, 256k in my case). Copy tracks to a USB then the laptop...voila.