I'll admit, I was one of the first people I know to start using Napster. Yes, back in is pre-legal days. After joining the working world and actually having money to spend on music, I decided to go as legit as possible. I went back through my entire song database and either purchased each song or attempted to find a CD to purchase with the song on it. Needless to say, this was quite expensive for my 4,500+ songs.
After becoming legit as I could (there were a few songs by flash-in-the-pan bands from the 90's that were nowhere to be found), I became a loyal iTunes customer. This was back when iTunes purchases were only available in the A4P format (pre-fairplay, which was a HUGE misnomer). That really didn't bother me all that much because there were easy ways around the protection. Some utilities would simply remove the protection, others would mimic a CD Burner and allow you to "burn" to MP3. If all else failed, you could always burn an Audio CD and then use iTunes to import the audio back in to your collection as an unprotected format.
Now, even this technique is obsolete as Apple as started releasing many of their tracks in the standard MP3 format.
I only have 2 complaints about iTunes.
1) Using it with a non-apple device is a nightmare.
2) Their music purchasing selection does leave something to be desired.
I really can't fault Apple directly for the second complaint, they get what they can and most of the music I fail to find on iTunes, I have a difficult time finding elsewhere as well. But I can easily fault them for locking out other devices. I understand that the software is "free." What apple doesn't realize is that for many users, iTunes could be the foothold for creating one of their precious "switchers."
iTunes wins out but if I ever find a music organization system that works like iTunes, supports devices other than Apple's and isn't full of bugs, I would gladly pay for it.
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