my downloads from woolworths won't play on my mps player. there is plenty of space for them. the name of the song and everything is on the mp3 but when i press play the whole thing freezes and i need to take the baterie out.

all my other songs play fine, just the woolworths ones won't

anyone know why??

Is it anything to do with DRM?

what that??

DRM (Digital Rights management) is a nasty scummy little piece of software that is embedded into a song. This is insited on by the gestapo of the British Music Industry. This allows it to only be copied/ripped a certain amount of times. Also it normally will not allow movement from one MP3 player to another.
But there are ways of circumventing it, but what they are i do not know.

Buy a CD.

Any digital download that uses DRM will not be in mp3 format.

on the woolworths web site it says i can burn the song 3 times, put it on mp3 3 times, unlimited plays on the computer.

No it doesn't, it says you can transfer it to a portable player 3 times. I haven't looked but I can say with almost 100% certainty that it will be using windows media and the accompanying playsforsure DRM. Does your player support playsforsure? What make and model is it?

mp3 does not support any sort of DRM mechanism so as such is not used for saleable music downloads - at least for the major publishers.

Most of my tracks are ripped from CD

The others I get from non-DRM sites.

sp is a mp3 player more for copying songs from cds rather than downloads?

is an ipod more for downloads?

im very confused

download your music from allofmp3.com and you won't have any problems. The shop you are currently buying your music from (and itunes, napster etc) all have whats called Digital Rights Management encoded onto them. This means you can only do what they say with the music and they stop you playing it on any player you want, using it so many times etc. If you buy from allofmp3.com you music will not have DRM on it and you can play it on any player.

Of course, the legality of allofmp3 is still open to debate. The service and more specifically its potential infringement of copyrights has not yet been challenged in the courts and as such has not specifically been shown to be legal or not.

DRM is not good but at the same time it is not (depending on the limitations) something that most people will ever face problems with. In terms of iTunes, you can do quite a lot with the music and most people won't even notice the restrictions. Unfortunately, the world is such that the few typically ruin it for the many. Some people will get hold of unrestricted content and give it to anyone and everyone else they can for free. Ultimately, the owners of material of any kind are free to impose whatever restrictions they want (within any law). If a publisher wants you to only play something on the device you bought it for, they are free to do so. If an artist doesn't want to go through a publisher because they don't agree with the restrictions then they are free to do so - at the expense of losing the benefits that a publisher provides.

That's a totally different conversation though.

What's sp?

mp3 as a format is literally just for music and as such any player that supports mp3 can play back that music (iPod included). Other formats for music may also include the option/facility of building in DRM (digital rights management) of some kind on top. That DRM will only play back on players that support that flavour of DRM.

In the case of iPods, they'll play back mp3 and various other unrestricted formats, plus they'll play back their own "Fairplay" DRM encoded music files. iPods are the only machine that can play back iTunes purchased files, in turn iTunes is the only (DRM based) store you can buy music for your iPod from.

The main other saleable DRM format is PlaysForSure from Microsoft, unlike Apple they license their technology to various other companies so that you can buy various players and buy music from various stores and in theory they should all work together in any combination you see fit. Both models have their own benefits, however most people seem to at the moment prefer the iPod method because it seems to work better and more consistently for the majority of people - perhaps as evidenced by your troubles.

Of course, if your player is an iPod it won't work with Woolworths music (or any other store) although you will be able to get your music off cd or from stores that don't use DRM on their tracks. The latter tend to be either smaller "indie" stores of places like allofmp3 which are of debatable legality.

If it's not an iPod then you won't be able to buy from iTunes but as long as it supports the appropriate DRM scheme(s) it should be able to buy from other stores.

If it doesn't support DRM at all then you can basically only transfer from CD or from DRM free stores as mentioned above.