After much resistance from me and his mom, my nephew finally convinced his mom to let him purchase a MP3 player. So being the family tech geek, my services were called upon to help get the player working.

They seemed to be willing to pay for a subscription fee, so I was going to be a good internet user and go the “legal” route. So we open the box and start to install the software (Yahoo Music Manager and Player -I forget the exact name). After about 45 min of installing the software getting the updates, signing up for an account, we’re finally ready to start purchasing songs.

We search for a song and find the one he wants to add. We add it to our “Playlist” first then we have to drag it to our player. Extra step, but ok, I can deal with that. Do we start to transfer the song over to the player and nothing happens. It just sits there saying “Transfering files (1 of 1)” for about 15 min. But nothing gets transfered. So we try another song, then another and so on. Nothing worked!

At this point I had to get going as my 2 hour patience limit had expired, but this leads me to my point: It’s easier being a pirate.

We could have downloaded any torrent software, found the songs we wanted, and been listening to them in under 30 min. And best of all that music we got could have been transfered to any player and would ours to keep. (not to mention free, but that’s really not the point.)

I’ve used iTunes in the past and my experience was not as bad as this, but the simple fact that these songs can only be played on X number of players and PCs really turns me off. I know I can burn them to a CD and yady ya… but that’s such a waste of time and resources.

So until these companies get their business model fixed, I still think it’s easier to be a pirate. Arrggg!