Tonight I transfered a song I had bought for my wife, Kirsten, in the iTunes online store to her computer so she could play it. However, we quickly realized her computer was no longer authorized to play songs from my account because she had reformatted over the Christmas holiday break. No problem, right? You get five computers, just type in my account information again. Wrong. I had already authorized five computers. No problem, right? You can just go into your account profile and click the “deauthorize all” button and start over from scratch. Wrong. You can only use that feature once per year. ONCE PER FRIGGIN’ YEAR! That’s ridiculous. I bought the songs legitimately and I can’t play them on the five computers I want, unless the moon is right and the stars align and the Vorlons promise to aid in the assault!!??
As I look back on it, I’m sure my own laptop is authorized at least three times as I’ve reformatted that many times over the past few months trying to dodge degrading Windows XP installations (another rant for another time). I always operated under the assumption that I could deauthorize all the computers currently authorized to play music purchased from my account, at any time I wanted. After all, they don’t place any warning or note next to the “deauthorize all” button in iTunes. You would think that if clicking this button had such profound consequences as preventing me from doing it from another year, at least a minor bit of fine print would be in order. Oh no, not from Apple.
And what is the deal with this? I read about this last week but refrained from posting about it until I had seen the new “MiniStore” myself. I have. I don’t like it. It takes up room on the music store home page and seems to me that I didn’t agree to participate in this little arrangement. The notes I read on the upgrade to 6.0.2 didn’t say anything about installing this nice little feature.
I’ve never had reason to gripe about iTunes before (except for the occasional gripe that music purchased there won’t work on any mp3 player but their own). Now two things that have come in the past two weeks have me questioning my choice of online music. I have been investigating the Napster-to-Go service. I have to admit that the idea of being able to play as many songs on my computer as I want, or on up to something like three mp3 players, for one monthly fee seems pretty good to me. I would typically buy one CD a month and listen to it on my computer anyway. For the same price, I could now listen to as many CDs as I want from the Napster service. An interesting proposition to which I will devote more time and mental capacities.
I have written Apple an annoyed email asking them to tell me how to “deauthorize all” since I’ve reformatted my computer several times in the past month. I should know any minute how to do it as they promised to get back to me in 72 business hours. Slammin….
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11 responses so far ↓
Yeah that’s what sucks about iTunes. Well that and many many things. I just keep my trusty cd rw next to my computer all the time. On the rare occasion I actually buy a song from iTunes, I burn it to a disc and then rip it. I do both of these from within itunes. I then remove the shit encoded song from my computer and keep the loving mp3.
Moral of the story, buying music online is still not as easy as it should be.
I ran into this problem as well, I sent them an e-mail and within a couple of days I got an e-mail back saying they deauthorized all my computers for me. A bit of a hassle, but they were useful. Also, the new 6.0.2 installer now prompts users if they want to turn the MiniStore on and gives some information about it. Personally, I like actually owning the media and with Napster-To-Go, I don’t get that as easily. Also, as an owner of an iPod, iTunes does “just work” and with the potential of a new car stereo in the future with an iPod connector, I won’t be switching to any of that crap from Creative or iRiver, or whatever.
I hate the ministore as well, but luckily Mark figured out how to turn it off! It’s under View I think…
We have another issue that we haven’t decided how to manage all of our music once we live together. We’re thinking we just need a music server.
Disclaimer: we were in completely different buildings when we just did that! Neither of us knew the other was commenting. *creepy*
Lucky me, I got the 6.0.2 installer before they added the new language. Grrr…I loved the days where all my songs were downloaded from Napster and I used Winamp. Greatest Windows Jukebox program ever…
Well, I got the confirmation email that they will typically respond within 72 hours. The clock is tickting, they have about 60 hours left….Beep…beep…beep…beep…
Some of us still use winamp especially now that winamp has global hotkeys, “Yeah take that Horde, oh what’s that, can’t see me now! I’M A GNOME YOU oh hey i dont like that song *press hotkey* YEAH TAKE. IT. ALL!” Of course you don’t have a computer that can run WoW so….
Chris, that was a low blow. Low blow indeed…I’m working on it! Hopefully sometime soon I’ll have my money to build one! It was one of my new years technology resolutions after all…
Here’s what I want to know: why does itunes automatically install quicktime? Fine fine, yeah it’s a good program blah blah. I just like to have a little more control over what comes onto my computer. If i wanted quicktime, i’d download it when i was good and ready. Excuse me, I have to go run another spyware scan…
The reason that Quicktime is installed is that on Mac OS X, the Quicktime libraries are used to write some of the programs, such as iTunes. When ported over to Windows, to keep a similiar look and feel, they needed to use the QuickTime libraries that they already had available on the Windows side.
I just reformatted my HD, and re-installed iTunes. Copied the tracks I’ve bought from iTunes into my new iTunes folder, and… Must Authorize. Bugger.
I guess I should have de-athourized my computer before I reformatted, but, as you said, Apple didn’t tell me I needed to.
Last time I reformatted, I copied all my music to my iPod. Reformatted, reinstalled, plugged iPod in… Must reformat. WTF? Lost everything. Bastards.
I love the user-friendliness of Apple products. Trial and error is not user friendly.
I am interested to hear what Apple tell you.
Apple Australia aren’t really forthcoming with contact details.
grumble, grumble.
I did get a response from Apple late the next afternoon. They had deauthorized all computers associated with my account.
Although it was a pain, and a learning experience - they did come through in the end. However, I have started my 1 week free trial of Napster subscription service. If I find that by the end of that week’s trial, I like the service and the amount of songs they offer, I might stick with it.