Hi Linux users,

I am wondering, what program do most Linux desktop users make use of to buy and download music (mp3, wma, etc.) legally?

I know there are some mp3 "players" available for use with Linux, but what about actually buying and downloading the files? Since most of the vendors do not let you download using just a browser, they require you to get their own software, which only works on Windows. Only itunes works on Mac, but I have not seen anything that works on Linux so far.

Any advice and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

There is the Magnatune service with Amarok. They "are not evil".

Itunes runs in wine now, I think or you could just download music "illegally" with Frostwire or Limewire, but I don't think thats what you want

One option is to buy CDs and rip them to you computer music collection. I think this is legal in most countries.

It might be less convenient, but there are advantages: you'll end up with a backup in case you hard drive fails and you will also have a lossless format (CD quality is better then mp3), so if you grow to really love a song and want a perfect version in, say flac format, you can re-rip the CD at a higher quality (or just play the CD).

There are also more and more non-DRM stores popping up - some of the record labels are doing their own, and there are retailers like walmart starting to get into the business. I'm a CD person, so I'm afraid I don't know about their web-sites. I would hope that it would not be necessary to use anything but a browser.

It's been an annoying situation for a while - especially when iTunes was the only game in town, but things are getting better quite fast.

[mindlessspeculation]
I think the reasons why are two fold:

Firstly music buyers are telling the record business, "If you want me to buy your music, don't make me jump through hoops with stupid downloader programs and crappy DRM which gets in my way".

Secondly, I think the record companies are very nervous about being locked into a DRM scheme with one of the computer giants. I don't think thy like such an important part of their product delivery system to be totally controlled by the likes of Apple.
[/mindlessspeculation]

Here's a DRM-is-useless anecdote which I rather like.

A friend of mine went into a record shop in Germany, purchased a CD and went back to his car. He put the CD in the car CD player and it wouldn't play. He went back into the shop and asked for a replacement because it was faulty. The shop assistant said that this was probably because of the copy protection on the disk.

My friend asks what he should do, as he really wanted to hear the CD. The shop assistant asked if he had a PC at home with a CD burner. He answered yes and the assistant told him that he should take the CD home, make a copy in his PC and play that copy in his car. "But what about the copy protection?" he asked. The assistant said, "Oh that doesn't work".

He followed the advice and it worked. Go figure.

In the interests of fairness, the CD copy protection schemes are particularly useless because they are an attempt to retro-fit a copy protection scheme onto a system which was never designed for it.

I do believe that all DRM is basically broken by design, since you need to give decryption keys to the potential attacker of the system. Whether the keys are practical to retrieve is another matter. Somehow I doubt that this fact will prevent future silliness like that described above.

I had purchased a vhs tape "The Russia House". The macrovision protection caused the picture to fade light to dark every few seconds. I had to take it to work and run it through a TBC, making a dub before I could watch it on my TV at home.