Yesterday, the new Dave Matthews Band CD, "Stand Up", came out, so I picked it up at Best Buy.  Unfortunately, I don't think it's as good as the CDs of the past, but that's actually an aside to this entry.

I rarely use my CD player anymore - in fact, I typically buy a CD, rip it into iTunes to play on my PC and go on the iPod (which is wired into my car), and then store the CD in a box with others in case I ever need to use it again for some reason or other.  I've thought about just purchasing albums directly from Apple off of iTunes, but I don't like the thought of it being locked away from other future formats that a CD can be ripped to.

So I get the DMB CD, put it in the computer, and it asks me to approve a DRM (digital rights management) license, which I do.  I then try to rip the CD into iTunes, but the music keeps skipping when it's played through the iTunes program off the CD or ripped to MP3.

It turns out that the CD is locked against used in any way on a PC other than listening to the music as DRM-protected WMA (Windows Media) files.  And the iPod and iTunes don't recognize WMA, which essentially cuts off their usage.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of the music companies wanting to protect their rights in the use of their music, but any method that cuts off usage with the worlds most popular MP3 player is ridiculous, especially given what I found out next.

Being unable to put the music on to my iPod and iTunes left the CD pretty much unusable for my purposes, so I sent an email to their support group.  A little later I got the following response (which I am posting in full in case someone with the same problem happens upon this blog posting via a Google search (skip the italic text below if you don't care about the specific response):

Thank you for contacting us, Jason. We appreciate your purchase of the Dave Matthews Band CD and are happy to assist you.

Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod: 

If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.

If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD.

Once the application has been launched and the End User License Agreement has been accepted, you can click the Copy Songs button on the top menu.

Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.

Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher. You may also play them in any compatible player that can play secure Windows Media files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp, but it will require that you obtain a license to do so. To obtain this license, from the Welcome Screen of the user interface, click on the link below the album art that says If your music does not play in your preferred player, click here. Follow the instructions to download the alternate license.

Using Windows Media Player only, you can then burn the songs to a CD.  Please note that in order to burn the files, you need to upgrade to or already have Windows Media Player 9 or greater.

Once the CD has been burned, place the copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would a normal CD.

Please note an easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above.  http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

Thank you.

Rob, SunnComm Tech Support

So, essentially, they're saying that if I burn a CD from Windows Media Player (which pretty much every Windows XP machine has on it for free), it bypasses the DRM anyway, making the music accessible in any way.  What's more, I had trouble getting the Media Player instructions to work right, so I just burned an audio CD using the WMA files in Roxio Easy CD Creator, and then turned around and imported that newly-burned CD into iTunes, and it worked fine.

What really gets me is that they make it so difficult to use the music in a legitimate device, but then make it so the same protection that is supposedly in place to protect their rights can be bypassed by a simple CD burning.  What is the point?

Music companies - if you're going to insist on DRM to protect your investment, at least find a way to make it work on all music players.  Heck, you could probably even work out a deal with Apple to allow free download of their protected version of the album for iPod users.  But do something, otherwise you give us a reason beyond even the "free music" aspect to go look for the album online through less legitimate sources.