Blog

When censorship goes wrong

Date Stamp:

15 February 2009

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Found on the iTunes music store for The Wiggles’ album, Go Bananas!

iTunes

An update to "Christian music and the law"

Date Stamp:

2 June 2007

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A follow-up to the post Christian music and the law. iTunes now has two Casting Crowns (iTunes link) albums and five from Third Day (iTunes link).

Christian music and the law

Date Stamp:

31 January 2006

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Nope, despite the title, this is not some significant theology discussion.

Last week, when I was still on holidays, I went chasing the distributors of contemporary Christian artists like Third Day and Casting Crowns to find out when their music would be in the iTunes Australia Music Store.

I started with the web-site of Provident-Integrity Distribution looking for Australian distributors. Of the two Australian distributors listed, one is no longer a distributor and I didn’t hear from the other.

So, I emailed the “international department” (email address on the FAQ page). I was pointed to Integrity Music Australasia, in particular the email address of the General Manager.

I sent the GM an email:

Can you please advise when Casting Crowns and Third Day will be in iTunes Australia?
I’d love to buy their new albums, but I’m not prepared to deal with the monopoly of Koorong. Further, I prefer to listen to music on my computer – as you know, it’s illegal in Australia to rip music from a CD.

Jim advised that I could buy the latest CDs direct from Integrity. He also noted that SonyBMG owns Provident, and as SonyBMG has only recently entered into a deal with iTunes, it may be some time till I see those artists in iTunes.

So, options? You can buy the CD (with no competition in the market, you’ll be paying $29.95 for a new release). But, under Australian law, you can’t copy that CD to your computer or iPod even for personal use.

Or, you can try one of the other online retailers, however, as you can see below, contemporary Christian artists don’t make much of an appearance.

Online Store	Casting Crowns	Third Day
iTunes	One song, by another artist	Two songs on compilation albums
ninemsn Music	Nil	Nil
Destra (run the online stores for Sanity and others)	Nil	Nil
Bigpond Music	First album, not new album	Three albums

So, my solution – don’t buy their music.

Updated 2 June 2007: So, now, I’ve finally been able to buy the latest Casting Crowns album, see the update post.

Don't use Bigpond Music

Date Stamp:

19 January 2006

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Most of you wouldn’t go near Bigpond, but just in case you are lured by the slightly cheaper prices than iTunes – don’t be.

I recently built a new computer. I transferred a hard drive with all my data (including music) from the old machine to the new.

For music purchased from the iTunes store, I simply de-authorized the old computer before decommissioning. Once the files were available to the new machine and iTunes installed, the first licensed track I played asked me to authorize the new machine. All done. You can have up to five authorized machines.

For music purchased from the Bigpond music store… completely different matter. Whilst I had a backup of the licenses, it seems that the license only allows for playback on the machine which originally downloaded the music. So, if you get a new machine, you’re stuck. Despite the Bigpond FAQ suggestion that you can transfer the license, you can’t.

The options are:

1. burn any purchased music onto CD before decommissioning the old machine. Then you would have to rip them onto the new machine. However this is illegal (see last two paragraphs).
2. call Bigpond. Wait on hold for the standard 20+ minutes (best to ring late at night). The “never-helpful-I’m-a-subcontractor-you’ll-have-to-talk-to-billing-I-can’t -do-that-I’m-not-authorised-to-do-that” tech support person will agree to re-issue the licenses. However, then you need to download each track again. Internet Explorer will prompt you with security notices about downloading files. There are several clicks before your file starts downloading, and you can’t do more than one at a time. (I didn’t buy whole albums from Bigpond, because for whatever reason they couldn’t add up and buying an album as single tracks was cheaper than buying the album.)

The tech support person saw the problem in this. As time goes on, more and more people, with larger and larger music collections are going to need a new PC. And they’re each going to have the same problem as me. Whether burning to CD is their solution, or downloading all the files again – the situation is very inconvenient.

Apart from this particular scenario, the Bigpond license is far more restrictive that Apple iTunes. I went looking for the licensing information on the Bigpond site, it’s actually hard to find, tucked away in a feature. Bigpond limits the number of times a file can be burnt to CD (twice) and you can only transfer twice to two different portable music players! You can start to see the limitations here. And, the Bigpond Music store interface just plain sucks.

PraiseCarols

Date Stamp:

8 December 2005

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The “carols band” at our church is, over this fortnight, spending many hours practising for Carols at Christmas. This year, we’re using a number of contemporary arrangements from a company called PraiseCharts, off an album called PraiseCarols. I’ve written more on The Mission West.