To clarify that a bit: The iPod supports 3 formats - MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless. (mmm, it might support raw WAV too, I haven't tried it.) MP3 is the old standard, what you find on the net, what people usually rip to because there are cheap chipsets, so really low end players can play it. AAC is better quality-per-bit compression, but you don't find hardware support for it in as many places; under unix, "mplayer" can handle it. Apple Lossless is sort of a special case - like FLAC, it is more like gzip than mp3 - it produces the same bytestream that went in, but files are usually 3-5x larger than mp3s. Only interesting in that the Airport Express (combination 802.11 basestation, USB print server, and streaming audio player) *only* supports FLAC; you use itunes to feed it, and itunes goes from AAC or MP3 (or whatever) to FLAC on the fly.
Now, the itunes *store* sells AAC - but not "plain" AAC files, they're AAC files with DRM in them. iTunes and the ipod can open files with this drm, you have some number of computers+devices that can play at any given time (and you can register and deregister them.) The DRM is called Fairplay, and it's the only reason the RIAA and the record labels let apple sell music *at all*.
Of course, there have been a number of "reactions" to fairplay - playfair, hymn, etc. These would be DMCA violations if they were published in the US.
Oh yeah - about the "US" part. I haven't tried it, but there's a site called "allofmp3.com", which is based in russia, and sells stuff unprotected, any format you want, really cheap. It's apparently even legal... *in russia*. I have no idea what the legal status of buying from them over the net from the US is... or for that matter travelling, oh, hypothetically, scandinavia, and buying stuff from there...
no subject
Now, the itunes *store* sells AAC - but not "plain" AAC files, they're AAC files with DRM in them. iTunes and the ipod can open files with this drm, you have some number of computers+devices that can play at any given time (and you can register and deregister them.) The DRM is called Fairplay, and it's the only reason the RIAA and the record labels let apple sell music *at all*.
Of course, there have been a number of "reactions" to fairplay - playfair, hymn, etc. These would be DMCA violations if they were published in the US.
Oh yeah - about the "US" part. I haven't tried it, but there's a site called "allofmp3.com", which is based in russia, and sells stuff unprotected, any format you want, really cheap. It's apparently even legal... *in russia*. I have no idea what the legal status of buying from them over the net from the US is... or for that matter travelling, oh, hypothetically, scandinavia, and buying stuff from there...