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[JorgeFabregas]

The record labels, aided by the government, want people to shift from buying things to leasing their use (essentially renting content)

Similar deal with cell phones. They make your cell phone which is yours (you have to pay for repairing it, etc.). user unfriendly so that it's extremely hard and possibly illegal to manage the content yourself. It really bugs me, although that's not the reason I no longer have a cell phone.

[Lister]

I basically agree with Paul here - as long as the music industry continues to give me poor options, I will continue to ignore them.  I buy CDs (and they get stolen, sob) and that's about it.  I download songs that I have no intention of paying for (First one: Trio - Da Da Da) and songs from new albums I haven't heard yet, and then I buy the music that I really like.  Before most of them were stolen, sob, I had roughly 300 CDs, with a much smaller subset of that library in the mp3 format.  From now on, they all get ripped first thing, for archives if nothing else.

Oh, actually, that brings up a good point.  If you are actually paying for the license to listen to "your" music, and you get it in one of these industry-approved ways, do any of them provide for free re-downloading of content you licensed and lost somehow?  I would tend to doubt it, and this is because the music industry is a collection of dicks.

Player-wise, I chose the iRiver hard drive based method.  Costs less than the iPod, plays more formats (not that I actually use Ogg, but I could if I wanted to), and doesn't install a service on my PC.  Of course, it isn't slick and white, and the interface is somewhat cryptic, and there aren't any accessories for it, and it takes for freaking ever to start up.  So.

Oh, and if you don't like paying to access the memory you bought on your phone, consider getting a model with USB cable that is supported by BitPim.  It's the reason I can have whatever I choose for my ringtone for totally free.

[jough]

If you are actually paying for the license to listen to "your" music, and you get it in one of these industry-approved ways, do any of them provide for free re-downloading of content you licensed and lost somehow?

Nope.  In fact, if your download fails in the middle of downloading a track from iTunes, you have to repurchase it if you still want it.  Yeah.  They suck hind tit.

Player-wise, I chose the iRiver hard drive based method.

Yeah, I had one of those, and found it convoluted and the font hard to read.  It had a lot of nice features, though.  I miss being able to record most of all (although there are decent recording optional accessories for the nano now).

Oh, and if you don't like paying to access the memory you bought on your phone, consider getting a model with USB cable that is supported by BitPim.  It's the reason I can have whatever I choose for my ringtone for totally free.

My Motorola v360 came with a USB cable that lets you load MP3s, ringtones, photos, java games, etc., onto a tiny TransFlash card that comes with the phone. I connect it to my PC and it shows up as a USB Mass Storage device.  No more messing with stupid SEEMS software and other things not meant for consumers like my old phone (moto i730) had.

It doesn't have the mobile iTunes player, but it also launches iTunes on my PC whenever I plug in the phone (I haven't really spent any time to figure out how to stop this behaviour) as it's easier for me just to drag and drop files in Explorer.

So yeah, fuck the music stores, especially the new ones for some cell phones that charge $4 for a song you can't play anywhere but on your phone.  Fuck those stores and everyone who actually pays for songs there. 

The real problem with online music stores (and spam) is that idiots buy things from them.  If they launched and everyone was such as "Um, no." then they'd have to change their evil ways.  But no, people are fuck*ng stupid, so there are no viable options outside of these Russian sites (which are quite awesome and work pretty much exactly right.

[JorgeFabregas]

Oh, and if you don't like paying to access the memory you bought on your phone, consider getting a model with USB cable that is supported by BitPim.  It's the reason I can have whatever I choose for my ringtone for totally free.

That or just use smash the tones. I just don't like that cell phone companies make it intentionally difficult to manage your own content.

[JorgeFabregas]

(although there are decent recording optional accessories for the nano now).

Uh? There are? I thought that this was a feature disabled on the nano (like the mini). I am in the market for an mp3 player that can record and is cheap....my criteria are something like...

1. Get a clear recording (either with a built-in mic or with one going through a line-in or some other input)--this means apple products that restrict recordings to 8kHz waves may not cut it. The recordings will be of class lectures.
2. Be able to record in mp3 format--ideally a choice between mp3 and wav
3. Have 2 GBs+ of storage (I'm easy in that department)
4. Relatively long battery life
5. Get the whole rig (including microphone and any other required accessories) for under $200...the cheaper, the better.

I'm kind of overwhelmed by the amount of choices. Anyone have any good recommendations?

I got a good deal on a used Ipod mini, but then found out that they don't support recording. Yeargh. It's going back to ebay, soon.