Nora Jones new CD -- Copy Protection -- YIKES

Someone in a review at Amazon.com of the new album said the SACD was being released at the same time. Don't know if this is correct, but you might check into it.

Thanks Budrew. I talked with a gal at Barnes and Noble Monday, she heard a pre-release and said the same as you, more variety. Too bad it isn't released as a SACD/CD hybrid first; I don't have an SACD player, but I prefer to purchase hybrids if possible.

Off topic, but I greatly prefer the Peter Malick - New York CD with her over her first CD, just my preference.

Good question Brian. I do. It has more variety than her previous effort. It
does some different things, like there is one song with a Hammond
organ and there is more creative guitar work. It's more country-ish; even
has a bluegrass duet with Dolly Parton. Norah seems comfortable and in
control of things. I get the sense that she said, well now I'm a huge
success and can do pretty much what I want, and that's what she did.
She sounds unique IMO. And I like it. I like the style of the music. I
listened to it the first time on headphones and it sounded great.

What about the music, do you like the performance at any rate?

I'm very curious how this will work out because on one hand you have a
portion of the hardware industry including computer companies and
presumably consumers using hard drive-based systems for audio
playback while on the other hand you have record labels saying that's
never going to happen under our watch. If consumers continue to
demand it, and why won't they, the industry will have to provide a
solution. iTunes and other similar applications are a reality. People
storing music on their computers is a reality. It's a high-tech media
world with computers everywhere doing everything. There are high-end
DACs being released to meet this need. There appears to be a collision
course between millions of consumers and the music industry unless a
solution is found in the near future.

I emailed Blue Note and asked them if they have given any thought to
this issue. I doubt I'll hear a response, or at least it will be canned, but I
think they should be aware that honest, reasoned music lovers are
concerned about this. All of that music is stored on my computer but I
have it there because I bought the CD.

Well, I just tried to rip the CD using WMP9 and it failed. I will be on the phone first thing tomorrow to blue note demanding my refund. If I can't listen to it on my computer I don't want it.

On the MAC, you don't quite rip the CD to iTunes. You must first create a "playlist" in Tunes and then, copy the CD to the playlist. If the CD has copy protection, the MAC goes through the motions of copying, but when you play your playlist back, all you get is a few seconds of static and then, no sound at all. It does not crash the MAC. So, it is not a Windows thing ... it affects the MAC world, as well. I have an eMAC and I doubt that this would be much different with the Power Book. It is amazing how many discs are copy protected ... for instance, like Matthew Sweet's catalog.

Regards, Rich

So what happens if you want to rip it to iTunes because that IS your music system? I haven't tried it yet on my Mac, but I don't want to stick this album in the CD drive on my iBook and have it crash.

Anyway, the large record companies don't care about sonics. it's all about the money. What, you think they are in the music business because they like music?