UNINNOVATE / Engineering At Its Finest

Jarret is the music industry’s dream client: disposable income, an insatiable thirst for rare music and a music collection that he has already spent an estimated twenty thousand dollars building. He buys every reissue, EP, single, import or other obscure recording issued by his favorite artists. He is the kind of music fan who will buy a cd that has 12 songs he already has just to get the one extra rare track he doesn’t have.

Recently he tried to buy a fairly obscure Luna compilation online. When he searched for it, he found a link to download the mp3s for free, but instead he wanted to support the band and chose to buy the official release from Rhino records. But when he tried to import it into iTunes, it wouldn’t work. He is a music fan, not a computer expert, so he called Rhino records for help:

A little later that evening, I tried to move the .WMA files into iTunes, when I received an error message telling me that iTunes could not import them because they were copy protected. I downloaded the files again (which took another 12 minutes) and again, the same message.

So I called Rhino customer support and after an 8 minute wait spoke with a representative. She informed me that the files were indeed copy protected so that I could only play them on specific music players, most notably not iTunes

“You don’t understand,” I said, “These files were not copied or pirated, I actually purchased them.”

“Well” she responded, “You didn’t actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to.”

Now I was baffled. “Records never came with any such restrictions,” I said.

She replied, “Well they were supposed to, but we weren’t able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can”

Consumerist.com: How I Became A Music Pirate

According to his letter to The Consumerist, Jarrett has now sworn off of all legal music downloads due to his experience. In a misguided and ineffective attempt to keep people from copying music for free, Rhino records has lost one of it’s best customers.