fucking i-tunes!

[arguchik]

i bought a new i-pod yesterday. as i was setting it up and syncing it, i got this weird error message informing me that a bunch of songs were not going to be loaded to my i-pod because i was not authorized to play these songs on this computer. WTF? i investigated further and found that most of the disallowed songs are from a lead belly album i purchased (yes, legitimately) through i-tunes, and as far as i can remember i purchased it on this computer. it's possible i purchased it on my old computer and then firewired it over with the rest of my i-tunes library when i bought this computer last spring. in any case, i distinctly remember going through the steps to authorize this computer to play music that i've purchased through i-tunes; and i have definitely played the lead belly album on this computer before. so i went to the apple i-tunes help site and followed their instructions to (re-)authorize this computer* and it kept giving me an "unknown (-2)" error message. (incidentally, i also got an error message when i tried to register the i-pod through i-tunes, and it asks me to register the i-pod every time i plug it into my computer.) when i look at my account in i-tunes, and try to view the music i have purchased through that account, it erroneously tells me that i have not yet purchased music through that account.

now here's the really weird and infuriating part: not only will i-tunes not let me play the entire lead belly album, it also won't let me play, or import to my i-pod, covers of the lead belly song "jack hardy" that are recorded on two albums that i imported into i-tunes from owned CD's!!! (the gun club covered this song on their miami album; and uncle tupelo covered it on no depression.) oddly, the song "where did you sleep last night," which is on the both lead belly CD and nirvana's "MTV unplugged" CD, presents no problem...

i have written apple a very cool-headed message explaining the problem and requesting that they fix it ASAP, but i haven't heard back yet.

edited to add: i forgot to mention that i was prompted to download a new version of i-tunes when i first started to set up the i-pod. i had to disconnect the i-pod and install the software before i could finish setting up the i-pod.


*you're supposed to be able to simply select one of the "offending" songs, click play, and enter your i-tunes password when prompted. this didn't work for me.

Comments

[jennaxide.livejournal.com]

Gawd what a pain. Let me know how it all turns out.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

grrrrrrr. it is a pain.

i'll definitely post an update when i have one.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

That's fucked up.

Um... what's the lead belly album you're having trouble with?

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

it's called the tradition masters. it has the unsanitized version of "bourgeois blues" on it, which is why i bought this particular album.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

I have a few CDs, but not that one - thought maybe you could just get a fresh rip. Sounds like drjohn's advice below might be your best bet. I'm intrigued, though, now - I must have the sanitized version of "bourgeois blues", as I don't remember particularly unsanitary in the version I have.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

the main thing is that in the version i have, he uses the n-word in a few places, but the record company made him change it to "colored" in the sanitized version, which was released to a general audience.

[aquafemme.livejournal.com]

This sounds vaguely familiar so emailed my sig. other about it. I'll get back to you or have him comment if there's any helpful advice.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

thank you. so far the response from apple has been very unsatisfactory.

[aquafemme.livejournal.com]

well, unfortunately, I'm of no help either. It turns out my husband just had a corrupted file and he thinks your problem is related to DRM. He also said Apple support is notorious for being terrible. :( Good luck!

[aquafemme.livejournal.com]

Basically you burn the songs to CD from iTunes and then re-rip them. You lose a bit of quality, but you also lose the DRM. Unfortunately, iTunes may not allow you to burn them if you're having those problems, but I'm not sure.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

what's DRM?

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Digital Rights Management. Which sounds cool until you realize it's their "right" to not let you listen to your song that they are "managing". The song is encrypted, and iTunes has a secret key to decrypt the song if it feels you are worthy.

Sometimes you can get rid of DRM by decrypting it and leaving it as - same exact sound quality, but you can now freely listen to or copy the song.

Sometimes you can't do that, but you can do something almost as good - let iTunes decrypt and convert the song to an uncompressed sound file (audio CD format), and then compress that back into something an iPod can play (mp3). The trouble with that is that decompressing and recompressing a file loses a bit of data, so the sound quality won't be quite as good (though possibly not noticeably worse).

[drjohn.livejournal.com]

You need to strip off the protection. Use senuti on a Mac. Then no worries. It is way less painful than the "right" way to do it.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

strip off the protection on what? sorry, i don't understand...

[drjohn.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the file for those songs has play restrictions imposed by iTunes. You made a good faith effort to authorize a new computer to play them. No dice. Now it is time to "fix" the files so they can work on any computer. It is conceivable that you may have a new computer again in a few years, so IMHO it is best to liberate them from the shackles iTunes puts on them now.

I think Senuti (primary use is to pull stuff off of an iPod) will do it. It is nice software. For Windows, I am a little less clued: QTFairUse may do the trick.