Apple iTunes good-”wil” not just for Wil Wheaton
Apparently, there’s an Apple iTunes policy that not everyone knows about. Usually, these "under the covers" types of procedures are evil, but this one, not so much. In fact, it’s downright wonderful: if you fail in your backup responsibilities and lose your Apple iTunes purchased music, you get a "do-over". That’s right, you get a one-time, free-of-charge musical mulligan and you can download all of that music again.
Wil Wheaton just found this out (oh, Will: of all people, why you? Couldn’t you have just used the replicator??) and shared it on his blog. Nice to know and a good policy for Apple.
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why just the one time? If the music is locked to you via DRM, why the restriction?
Downright wonderful until you compare it to rhapsody or napster, which let you download and redownload as much as you want, just only on three authorized computers at a time.
The one-time repeat is to punish the slackers who don’t learn how to care for their data after the first screw up. I have all my iTunes purchased music backed up on DVD, in addition to my regular document backups. I’m covered in case of the usual forms of data loss, so this policy is my new “lost everything in a fire” backup plan. Very good to know.
I agree wholeheartedly with Cliff (and not just because we share the same name!) — one of the benefits of using these services should be the ability of redownloading your songs if you should lose them, your license gets corrupt, etc. Of course, if you just bought CDs and ripped them yourself (actually, a very simple and quick process), you wouldn’t have to worry…you’d have a backup. Allowing you to download your songs again (more than once) should be a basic service of all digital media companies.
My biggest complaint about ALL music services is that they don’t give you a PDF of the little booklet. It amazes me that this is still the case — doesn’t anyone care who wrote the music they buy, background performers, liner notes, etc? I’m a totally digital dude, but every time I buy a digital version of a favorite performers CD, I feel like I’m missing out and wished I’d gone old school and purchased the CD.
This is what Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) is for. ;)