Gimme some $5 CDs:
You knew that it wouldn’t be long before someone would want to access/share their iTunes Music Store purchases with Windows machines. As Mike points out, there are already codecs and plugins floating around out there.
I don’t really see why so many people have been so eager to use Apple’s new service. Yes there’s the potential convenience of being able to find what you want quickly, knowing that it’s a decent version, and not having to worry about any thorny legal issues. Unfortunately, an album’s worth of songs is still going to cost you about the price of a CD (although you can now avoid those ‘filler’ tracks). You’re stuck with lousy 128k quality, and a proprietary format that shows no signs of being taken cross-platform by its purveryors. Worst of all, at the end of the day you’re helping a dinosaur of a business model maintain fat margins in an age of shrinking profits, and that persists in refusing to pass the cost-savings of digital on to the consumer.
