Music CD Help

I'm having a problem playing my new music CD on my computer. It plays fine in a regular CD player, but not on my computer. Whether I put it into the CD drive or the DVD drive all I get when I open it is a picture of the band and a link that supposed to take me to their online site, but that also does not work. It does not open in any player, such as Winamp, Window Media Player, Creative or even VCL.

I can see them putting on some safeguards so that I won't somehow rip them off, but to not even be able to play it on my computer? I never listen to my CDs from my regular CD player so this makes this CD kind of useless because I can't even rip it to my Music folder to play in my Winamp or my mp3 player. Anyone know how to get around this? It's not like I'm stealing their music since I have already purchased it.

I've attached an image of what's inside the CD. Usually I see nothing but the song titles so I don't know what this is.

I would say it's probably DRM preventing you from playing it. It's stupid and restrictive and unnecessary, but that's the RIAA for you.

I don't know off the top of my head how to work around it. It's ridiculous that they'd keep you from listening to a CD that, y'know, you paid for.

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Originally Posted by Hsu

I don't know off the top of my head how to work around it. It's ridiculous that they'd keep you from listening to a CD that, y'know, you paid for.

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Bittorrent is the easiest way around the DRM to be honest, but the other way is to view it in Linux or via a CD burning program and figure out a way of copying it via that. I'd also see if WMP allows you to rip it from the rip tab as that sometimes works too.

have you tried something like cdex to rip the tracks? Although I dont' think that would work.

That's how one of my Aqua cds was; super annoying!

I got it to play after I updated my Windows Media Player to 11. Now it plays in all of the players and I ripped it as well. Why all this depended on me having the latest version of WMP is not something I can understand though.

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Originally Posted by Leeza

I got it to play after I updated my Windows Media Player to 11. Now it plays in all of the players and I ripped it as well. Why all this depended on me having the latest version of WMP is not something I can understand though.

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WMP11 probably had the latest anti-piracy crap in it, thus granting you permission to listen to the CD (for now). This is why I don't buy CDs. This kind of crap only hurts paying customers.

I try to buy the CD if it's a band that I really like in order to support them, but this sort of stuff is beyond annoying.

The CD is a CD Extra (enhanced CD). You can always prevent such CDs from doing that by holding down the Shift key on the keyboard while inserting the disc. Holding Shift causes Windows to bypass the "autorun" feature used by many discs. (make sure to hold Shift until the disc is fully recognized and loaded by your CD drive)

It is an Enhanced CD and this is the first that I have heard of them. Although, when I first saw that, preventing me from listening to the CD is not what I had in mind about what it meant .

I'll have to make a note about the Shift key. Do you have any other handy little hints, Sam? :)