Nora Jones new CD -- Copy Protection -- YIKES

Budrew,

Something I learned in the computer business is that a software company makes no guarantee on the performace of their software. So, if it doesn't work on your PC, your SOL. The only thing that you can do is send it back to the manufacturer and hope for a refund. A publisher makes no guarantee on the quality of the writing in a book.

On the back of the CD it does say "insert the Cd into a CD-ROM drive and gain access to exclusive content". So, I'm assuming it should work in just about any CDROM drive. I tried it in all three of my computers with the same result; it would read the Table of Contents, but I could not get it to play. BTW - all three are running WinXP.

Recently, I've become tired of shuffling CD's. I do the majority of my listening while sitting at the computer. I only fire up the big rig when I'm in the mood for some serious listening. I decided to rip some of my favorite CD's to an external 200GB HD using lossless compression. It's so convenient to have about 500-600 CD's at your fingertips. I do beleive that the industry is heading this way. In a couple of years we'll have HD's measured in terabytes and all our music and video will be stored on them.

I have to agree with you about copyright law stifling creativity. Recently, it seams like whenever something is about to enter into the public domain, someone comes forward and gets an extension to the copyright. The way things are going, those old Disney cartoon copyrights should expire somtime in the 22nd century.

Later,

Spudco,

What impresses me the most about this is how quick Blue Note(EMI) stepped up to the plate and resolved the issue. Today, most companies take the "hurry up and wait" approach to customer service.

BTW - now that i've had a chance to listen to a few tracks I'm enjoying it. A definite step in the right direction after "come away with me".

Let me also appologize publicly to Blue Note.

Question. Is this 'bonus track' available to those of us who listen to this CD in a real CD player? Or just the computer listeners. I do very little computer CD listening.

The bonus track is only available on the computer.

FWIW and IMHO, it's not really a bonus track if the artist wrote and/or arranged the tune, recorded it and intended to release it along with the rest of the tunes on the album. Just a ploy by the marketing-heads at the labels to make the consumer think they are getting a "bonus". If a tune that's on a CD can't be played on my computer, I'm pissed off.

Off topic - When cassettes became popular, they would include bonus tracks, compared to the vinyl version. Later, you would get a bonus track(s) on a CD, as opposed to a cassette, when Sony and Philips were trying to get consumer acceptance for that new format. In turn, bonus enhanced material was included on CD's. When the maximum time that could be stored to a CD was discovered, some artists simply recorded as much as they could write. Some ECM recordings extend to 80+ minutes.