iTunes 4.5: Some songs cannot be shared

[mrfett]

Please choose the appropriate forum for this topic. Thank you. I just noticed a strange issue. When trying to play songs in a shared playlist (both machines running iTunes 4.5), some would not play, and eventually showed a question mark next to their name. These songs were recognized fine on their home machine and played with no problems.

Upon further investigation, I realized that the "broken" songs were all originally iTMS .m4p files that had been stripped of their DRM with the now hard-to-find tool Playfair. Other songs that I had stripped of their DRM using VLC (instructions: <http://wiki.videolan.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=4>) played fine. The main difference between the two files (both are .m4a) seems to be their displayed bit rates. Files converted with Playfair range in bit rate from 117-127. The VLC converted files' bit rates are listed as "Unknown". iTunes will stream the latter VLC converted files, but not the Playfair ones. Have other people noticed this limitation? (For the RIAA zealots, I'm not a pirate but a DJ who uses the music I purchase in DJ software that can't read the DRM'ed AACs).

[MikeM]

iTunes 4.5 breaks the Playfair stripped files. That was one of the big reasons for the update. And the the firmware update for iPods- so they can't play the files either.

And Apple is offering free songs to encourage folks to upgrade quickly before the music label get too angry.

[mrfett]

it's very odd that you and others here have reported this. has this actually happened to you? NONE of the DRM stripped files have stopped playing for me, either in iTunes or on my iPod. They are not special files, just AACs with odd bit rates. To stop them from playing, Apple would have to disable AAC playback altogether. I don't understand why people say that these files no longer play. They do.

The only problem I'm reporting is that these files will not STREAM. I am unaware if they worked (streamed) before, since i just recently converted them, maybe a week or two before the update, and didn't try to stream them in that timeframe. But anyway, to re-iterate: the DRM stripped files continue to work in iTunes 4.5 and on an updated iPod, but they will not stream using the iTunes sharing function.

[mrfett]

i just performed some tests on two machines with iTunes 4.2 still installed. the same behavior is exhibited: files converted with playfair showing a 127 bit rate cannot be accessed remotely using the sharing feature, but all other AACs, including previous .m4p files stripped of the DRM by VLC and showing an "Unknown" bit rate, stream fine. So, this isn't an iTunes 4.5 issue as i previously thought. i guess no one cares because not too many people got a chance to check out playfair before it was shut down...