Researching going legit with dubiously sourced music collection

June 20, 2008 3:55 AM

Legitimizing iTunes Library. I have *ahem* a friend. This friend has a reasonably large digital music collection being managed by iTunes on a Mac. He would like to understand the cost of ensuring this collection is 100% legal, having realized that the vast majority of it is not.

Purely out of curiosity, this *ahem* friend, has decided that maybe it would be a worthwhile thing to look into the cost of legitimately purchasing all the music in his digital collection. When this friend thinks about the fact that his largely ill-gotten music is being managed by iTunes, and that the iTunes Store probably 'stocks' a large proportion of this music, there might be a cool iTunes plugin that can do some amazing trick to give him a very good idea what the cost would be of purchasing all this music. Seems like a great opportunity for Apple to develop something like this.

Is there such a thing ? No matter whether it uses the iTunes Store, Amazon, etc.

It should be a plugin for iTunes or some other clever techy thing rather than manually doing an album count and then working it out from there.

Would also be ideal if it were OS X compatible.

posted by superfurry to technology (12 comments total)

He could use the iTunes Store shopping cart. Browse through the library and click the little arrow that takes you to the music store, add the album to the cart, return to the library and do the same for the next album. Then go to your shopping cart and look at the total.
posted by Science! at 4:21 AM on June 20, 2008

Depends on the work involved and what you mean by legal. There are Russian mp3 sellers who sell cheeaper than iTunes yet are operating within the laws of their nation. There's also the possibility of buying used CDs. 99 cents a track is what Apple charges, but is not necessarily what a song is worth.
posted by rikschell at 4:46 AM on June 20, 2008

Your friend might be best served by having a purge of his library. A lot of the music a friend of mine had wasn't stuff he listened to, but when it was free, he figured why not just download it?

Purge the crap, then carry out this exercise, would be my recommendation.

(My friend was in a similar situation to your friend)
posted by djgh at 5:01 AM on June 20, 2008

If your friend is looking for 100% legal, in the eyes of everyone involved, the used CD route is a no-go. (link) In summary, the RIAA continues to hold the position that ripping your own CDs to your own computer is illegal. Although this is speculation, I imagine they're even less keen on the idea of ripping used CDs to your computer.

With that in mind, I second djgh's idea. Super-large music collections tend to have much more to do with hoarding than any actual desire to listen to all of the music. If you want to be 100% legal, separate the wheat from the chaff, then buy legal wheat. It'll be cheaper and much more useful down the road. (If only I could practice what I preach. Legalizing my music collection, even ignoring the RIAA's ridiculous CD ripping position, would probably be a five-figure expense.)
posted by SpiffyRob at 6:47 AM on June 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

How is this hypothetical plugin going to know which albums are legit? Or do you just want a price for all your music, including the stuff you already legally own?
posted by tomcooke at 7:09 AM on June 20, 2008

If your friend is looking for 100% legal, in the eyes of everyone involved, the used CD route is a no-go. (link) In summary, the RIAA continues to hold the position that ripping your own CDs to your own computer is illegal.

No. The RIAA may have tried to fuzzily make that claim at one point in a court filing, but even they haven't had the balls to come out at say it directly. The law is clear that ripping your own CD's is 100% legal. Used or new has nothing to do with it.

RIAA FAQ for Students Doing Reports:

Record companies have never objected to someone making a copy of a CD for their own personal use. We want fans to enjoy the music they bought legally.

Music United: (an "alliance of various music industry organizations advocating against distributing copyrighted music"):

What is your position on MP3s?
We think MP3 technology is a great thing—as long as it’s used legally and properly.

Copying CDs
…burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:

• The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own.
• The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.

posted by designbot at 8:55 AM on June 20, 2008

IMostpeople'sHO, the RIAA's position on ripping your own CD's to your own computer is a load of bent hockey sticks. I believe that backup & archival copies are still considered Fair Use by everyone on the planet except the archest of RIAA lawyers. The used CD option sounds like the most feasible to me. What are they going to do, seize your collection of discs and demand that you provide proof of first-purchase provenance? Not likely.
posted by Aquaman at 9:00 AM on June 20, 2008

It should be a plugin for iTunes or some other clever techy thing rather than manually doing an album count and then working it out from there.

Look at the number of songs you have and put a dollar sign in front of it. It's not that hard.
posted by designbot at 9:00 AM on June 20, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I -think- that iTunes will export a list of what's in your library. You could probably move that into a spreadsheet and cook up a formula or two to help you out.


Export a complete list of your music and keep it as a checklist. Whenever you feel the urge to buy music, consult the list and begin filling in the blanks in your collection.

I think you'll be better off nuking the illegals and buying what you really want, rather than just paying for stuff because it's in your library regardless of whether or not you'll listen to it.
posted by DWRoelands at 10:49 AM on June 20, 2008

I've never bought from amazon, emusic, etc, but I'm sure that they put some kind of ID3 somewhere in the file saying where you bought it from. If not, you could always look up your previous purchases, and possibly redownload.

So what I would do is back everything up, reimport the M4P's, and check your online purchases for any mp3's, etc. Rerip your CDs. The rest should be deleted as you have no proof that they are legal.
posted by wongcorgi at 11:08 AM on June 20, 2008

I've seen a number of websites that seem to feature automatically searching for a song on Amazon's MP3 site so it's got to be doable (Muxtapes seems to feature an automatic search to Amazon, for example).

There is an Apple Script here that appears to search for an iTunes playlist on Amazon, so you could throw all the questionable content into a playlist and maybe do it that way? Personal perspective, I'd stick with Amazon rather than deal with Apple's DRM on the majority of its product.
posted by nanojath at 1:20 PM on June 20, 2008

Wait for the flat fee all-you-can-eat plans to come out.

Voluntary Collective Licensing is on the way, you're just ahead of the curve. It's a good deal for all the music you'll ever want, and it has the nice benefit of legitimizing your collection once you're in.

Pretty sure this is why the RIAA is fighting VCLs so hard.
posted by SlyBevel at 7:39 PM on June 22, 2008