iTunes vouchers of course
Great value if you know when to buy them!
Digital music revenue has overtaken revenue hauled in from sales of plastic discs for the first time in the UK. British music industry trade group the BPI released figures showing that digital revenue – from downloads, subscriptions and advertising – had made up 55.5 per cent of income in the first three months of this year. …
Less great if you ever plan on owning a non-Apple device.
I once owned an iPod Touch and foolishly made a bunch of iTunes Store purchases which I now can't listen to on any other MP3-playing device. It's going to take me forever (and, if done legitimately, some repeated expenditure) to reacquire them all.
I installed iTunes for the first time in several years and redownloaded my entire purchase history - only about 35-40% of it is DRM-free. The rest is still m4p-encoded, which is easy-but-annoying to get around (Apple allows you to burn it to CD a limited number of times, so just burn it to CD and then rip it with a standard MP3 ripper).
Still worth it to avoid the hassle of re-purchasing, but honestly it's not surprising why piracy is so rife when the hurdles for genuine buyers are so perverse.
"Less great if you ever plan on owning a non-Apple device."
I've successfully avoided Apple completely, and thus don't fully appreciate the problem. AIUI it has to go through iTunes before it can be placed on an Apple device, OK, fine; is it not possible to copy from iTunes or an Apple device onto a PC/non Apple device? If so a free package like MP3 workshop, or an editor like Cool Edit Pro/Audacity will save the file to a new name/location and whatever DRM is in the file is no longer there.
I found this out because I was experimenting with stuff I stupidly ripped to WMA before I knew of the limitations. No honestly. I have thousands of CDs, which I rip onto my network drive, so that I can network the sound through my Onkyo amp. This protects the original discs and saves me the effort of getting up to change the music.
Lazy? Yes, but I do weights at least once a day. Such is the life of modern day geekism.
"Just don't do it if the intended recipient is an audiophile"
I think you meant to say "... if the intended recipient has ears"
Most CD players (and DVD players for that matter) made these days will play MP3 files. That doesn't mean that most CDs out there can play MP3. The number of albums you can stuff onto a CD depends on the length of the albums and the bit rate at which you encode them.
Anyway, the last CD I bought was also available for download in wave, flac, ogg vorbis, mp3 and probably a few more formats I've forgotten about.
Two ways:
Value method:
1: Go to Tesco
2: Buy Tesco music voucher
3: Buy envelope
4: Scribble recipients name onto said envelope
5: Stuff voucher into envelope
6: Seal and deliver
Upmarket method
1: Go to music store / supermarket
2: Buy iTunes music voucher
3: Buy Christmas card
4: Scribble message of goodwill in the card and recipients name on provided envelope
5: Stuff voucher into card
6: Stuff card into envelope
7: Seal and deliver..
Now it is raining out?
"Tell me again how piracy is destroying media industries?"
Ah, well, you see every illegal download represents a lost sale - that's a FACT® and not an insanely stupid assertion pulled out of someone's arse in order to justify controlling everything we see and do online.
Actually, now I write it down like that....
About a year ago (pre-Kobo), relatives tried to buy an ebook from WH Smith as a gift for my wife (she had a Sony e-reader).
At the end of the process (tick the "this is a gift" box, enter recipient's name/address), they had an ebook in *their* account.
Fscking numpties.
Now Kobo handle all WHSmith's ebackend, and you can buy gift vouchers. Phew.
(The Sony, since it struggled hideously if you actually tried using more than a fraction of its storage space, has been replaced by a Kobo Touch).
I have never quite grasped the idea of any gift vouchers.
They are basically the equivalent of giving cash/cheques (ie: some value representation), but with a vastly limited use. Being only able to use them in a certain store or even on a certain type of purchase (eg: a book).
PS: I also has a Kobo Touch and think it is an excellent device, particularly not being tied to one vender and having the microSD card option for loading pdf's and other document/book formats directly.