iTunes and Amazon license agreement
 

What would happen if iTunes and Amazon lost their license agreements? Would this mean that we loose the content that we purchased from their respective digital stores? What about the cloud, could we loose that, too?
There is a reason why we all should have a physical copy of our music. Backup source!

Don't know if you're being serious or not but itunes and amazon won't lose their licences anytime soon. Even if they did I presume you downloaded the content you purchased onto your computer, so there is no way you will lose those unless an exec from itunes or amazon walked into your house, switched on your computer, deleted your files, slapped you in the face and then left.

Also how on earth could we lose the cloud when there are so many people and companies using it or in the process of moving over to it?

Yes physical copies are good and all but so are harddrives for storing backup copies of your music you know?

This visual is almost perfect. I just think the exec needs to kick the door down and yell 'FREEZE! MUSIC POLICE!'

As far as the question itself goes, Zer0 pretty much nailed it. I've never actually read the EULA for either Amazon or the iTunes store because I'm a filthy pirate, but I have a hard time believing that, even if they did lose rights, they would have any sort of claim on things that you paid for and are storing legally.

I can picture the music police dressed as hipsters for some strange reason :D

I've never used itunes or amazon to purchase music either but when you purchase your crummy little 128kbps files off them they become your property not itunes' or amazon's.

I see them in mod-style suits with fedoras and ipod earbuds around their necks.

If in doubt just think about money.

IF they did lose their licence why on earth would either Itunes or Amazon go to the expense of going after all those people who have bought stuff legally AFTER they've already lost huge amounts of revenue because of it.

Secondly why do you think they have one agreement that covers everybody?
You really think the agreement they have with say Sony is the same one that covers an independent label such as Beggars Banquet? What makes you think all these agreements are going to suddenly end on the same day at the same time?

Thirdly why would the record companies take away what is probably two of their biggest revenue streams away voluntarily? Even a chain of supermarkets taking an album off it's shelves hurts record companies and they've been known to bow under pressure to make changes to albums just from that. Record companies make & distribute albums, they don't sell them.

If you downloaded the music legally, you own that download. That's all there is too it. Nobody is ever gong to come and try to reclaim it.

You own it to a degree, I can't buy an album on iTunes and then put it on my Zune, but yeah the digital files are yours to keep. It's not like in the dark ages of digital distribution before iTunes, I remember there was this one service (can't for the life of me remember the name) but you paid a monthly fee to "download" songs, however the downloads would be gone by the end of the month. It was in the aftermath of Napster and record execs finally started to understand this confangled contraption called the Internet.

In what sense can you not put them on your Zune? Legally? My understanding is that you are legally free to do whatever you want with your download except distribute it.

You completely own it. I'm not that familiar with Zune, but your problem might be that it is not compatible with the format that Itunes downloads to by default (AAC Encoder), but if you go the Itunes menu>preferences>Import settings>Import using, you can choose whatever format you want: mp3, lossless, or whatever, and those are universal formats, so I would assume one of those formats would work with Zune. You can also convert anything already in your itunes to any equal or lower format. In other words, you can go fro lossless to mp3, but you can't go from mp3 and turn that into lossless. Good luck!

Itunes gets a lot of flack around here, but it is a very powerful program that will let you do pretty much whatever you want in whatever format you want with your music. Personally, I think listening to music (in lossless format) through my itunes (which is hooked up to a receiver and real speakers) is unparrelled.