... or just use Amazon's MP3 store. No DRM, no problems with synching multiple devices, and no "authorization" of devices/computers.

There isn’t any DRM protected music in the iTunes Store, either.

This is only about the previews.

So if I purchase some songs from this store (e.g. someone gives me iTunes credit as a gift) I can still play them without iTunes? I don't need iTunes installed anywhere?

You need iTunes to buy (i.e. you can only access the Store using the iTunes app, not a web browser), but what you get is a completely standard AAC-encoded file without any DRM. I think pretty much any audio player available today can play that (as well as any mobile OS). Just drag the files in your library to your desktop or browse your iTunes folder to find them. After that you can uninstall iTunes and never need to see it again.

iTunes does embed your Apple ID (you need to sign up and get one to redeem your gift card, though you do not need to enter any credit card info or the like) and purchase date as well as time as metadata in the file, but that information is easily removed. There are no watermarks.

So if I understand correctly, the answer is no.

Is there some sort of iTunes kiosk, a publicly accessible device with iTunes installed where a customer could purchase songs, download them to removable media and then move the songs from the media to whereever they need to have them?

Or maybe you can use a friend's device with iTunes installed?

You can use a friend’s machine. Either create your own Apple ID there or redeem your gift card using your friend’s Apple ID and buy music from their account. After that you can just copy your music to an USB stick or to Dropbox or whatever.

Yes, you need iTunes to buy – but once you have the music, you do not need it anymore. They are just standard audio files that work with any (somewhat current) player.

Nice explanation. Thanks for this.

Correct.

I didn't know Amazon mp3 store had mp3 previews in their API. They are literally a UNIX stack company. Maybe iTunes can still be used if the Android and iOS ports should use the same database.

The article says

> Although downloading iTunes previews are illegal and restricted by Apple

What does the author mean by this? If downloading the files are illegal, why is there an API for it? And why do Apple products have features for consumers to do it? Is he trying to make a distinction between downloading and streaming?

Yeah, if the file is being transferred from a remote machine to a local machine in any way (INCLUDING STREAMING), it's being downloaded.

Hi there I am the author. iTunes API terms state that:

> ...music video previews; (iv) is streamed only, and not downloaded, saved, cached, or synchronized with video

http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentati...

If this becomes widely used, it'll only kickstart an arms race between Apple and the people trying to access the iTunes previews. Remember what happened with the Palm Pre and iTunes syncing? Apple doesn't like unapproved devices accessing its content ecosystem.

I am not sure Apple can differentiate Apple devices over HTTP except UA header. Maybe they can develop a proprietary streaming protocol but is it worth?

There are probably a bunch of ways of checking with javascript that are much harder to spoof than the UA.

yes, for example with device fingerprinting. the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a nice test page online: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ however apple could apply a much simpler filter by checking whether the screen size fits the exact specs of their iphones / ipods and ban any other devices.

then again, you might always access the source directly, circumventing the need for js entirely.

I am not sure related native iOS streaming libraries integrate JavaScript security just to protect iTunes previews.

That could be easily updated if necessary. Moreover, it's entirely possible that there are dormant APIs precisely in case this sort of thing happened.

> Remember what happened with the Palm Pre and iTunes syncing?

Palm Pre exploited security holes that would have allowed any rogue USB device falsely reporting itself as an iPhone to access e.g. your address book, and Apple patched the security holes. Quibble all you want over Apple's motivations, but there wasn't any other responsible thing for them to do.

Sorry for the tangent, but svbtle knockoffs like the http://wp-svbtle.themeskult.com/ used here are annoying.

I don't want the whole internet to look like svbtle. Heck, I don't even want svbtle to look like svbtle.

I think he's using Obtvse: https://github.com/NateW/obtvse

Who cares? It's clean and it's readable, it already beat several other front page HN articles on those two alone.

I am not sure m4a format can be played on Android devices.

Why wouldn't it? It's an open standard. Even if AAC decoding isn't built in, you could easily provide your own decoder for it.

Of course it can. m4p files are right out but those should be nearly extinct by now.

The player app on my phone plays just about every audio format available, including ogg and flac.