Apple Releases Major iTunes Update

shunnicutt writes "Apple has released iTunes 4.5 (and iPod software 2.2 and QuickTime 6.5.1) and relaxed some iTunes Music Store restrictions: now tracks you purchased can be authorized to play on up to five other computers, instead of three. However, they reduced the number of times you can burn a playlist to an audio CD from ten to seven. Another new feature is iMix, which allows you to publish playlists on iTMS, including comments on each track. The iTMS also offers a weekly free single for download." crazney adds "This release also changes their network sharing protocol in a way that breaks the open source iTunes sharing applications that have been released (based on my work on iTunes 4.2's DRM)." kefoo writes "Among the new features is Apple Lossless Encoding, which claims to compress losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD quality audio." Hm, and I was about to re-rip all my CDs at 320 kbps MP3 ... Update: 04/28 14:56 GMT by P : I just tested, and I can listen to previously de-DRM'd AAC files from playfair, but I cannot use either playfair or FairTunes any longer. The former "Couldn't get DRM key for user," and the latter produces a blank file.

iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

When expanded to properly display the album art and the new large-format videos, iTunes balloons to a size that is far, far to large for any jukebox. It's almost to large to gracefully use on a PB12's display (thank god for exposé). I wonder if this application inflation is part of some nefarious Jobsian plot to make us buy those gigantic cinema displays...

Additionally, the app now also features a cool track melding feature not mentioned in the heading. This makes it a lot easy to make seamless listening possible for tracks that are supposed to proceed without pausing, So now I can finally listen to classical tracks the way they are supposed to sound. Seamless and lossless. Cool.

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

I have always been a Pager/Workspace fan, but a few months ago, after the release of Panther, I decided that I would give Expose a real fair shot as a replacement for the Pager. I uninstalled Codetek VirtualDesktop and forced myself to use Expose for two weeks, and at the end of that time I was going to "declare a victor".

After about a week of Expose, however, I decided that it was terribly better than the Pager solution and decided to never go back... Now I just wish I had some Expose equivalent on the other platforms I use...

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

its pretty neat, except for multi-display people. wish you could turn off its effects certain displays.

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

Do you normally keep iTunes expanded while listening to music? I agree that it takes up a lot of screen space, but the only time I keep it expanded is when I'm developing a playlist or importing songs. Once I get it playing, it gets shrunk down or hidden.

Granted, I have a 17" screen, so I don't know what it looks like on a twelve incher, but I've never had any complaints about the interface layout.

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

"nefarious Jobsian plot to make us buy those gigantic cinema displays"

As with many things in life (bigger budgets/more expenses, bigger houses/more junk), the bigger your screen gets, the more apps you will run... thus nullifying the larger screen's real-estate.
-m

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

. . .bigger budgets/more expenses, bigger houses/more junk. . .

May I humbly offer the suggestion that you acquire Self-Restraint 1.0?

It's free.

KFG

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

>May I humbly offer the suggestion that you acquire Self-Restraint 1.0?
>It's free.
>KFG

Free as in beer? Or Free as in speech?

Sorry, I couldn't RESIST.

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

It's free.

I've seen a demo of that, but.. I was unimpressed. There's no documentation, either. ;)

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

Self-Restraint Documentation Project [ufl.edu]

KFG

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

Additionally, the app now also features a cool track melding feature not mentioned in the heading. This makes it a lot easy to make seamless listening possible for tracks that are supposed to proceed without pausing, So now I can finally listen to classical tracks the way they are supposed to sound. Seamless and lossless. Cool.

If you're talking about the "Join Tracks" feature, this is not new to iTunes 4.5, it has been around for quite some time. If you're talking about a new feature for gapless output, then I'll be a very, very happy user.

Actually, that's my only real gripe with iTunes & my iPod: lack of gapless playback. iTunes has a crossfader, which, if you set it to 0 seconds, does a pretty good job of playing tracks as they should sound on a CD, but it's not perfect, and no such solution exists for the iPod. I know it's an often-requested feature for the iPod, I just hope we see it sometime this year.

Gapless "Join Tracks" feature

This is the same "Join Tracks" feature that iTunes has had for the past couple versions. It imports multiple tracks from a CD as one track. This results in one long track, in one file. This is not what is traditionally considered "gapless playback", which is taking multiple tracks/files and playing them all back without a gap in between the tracks.

"Join tracks" is an unacceptible solution, IMHO. I still use iTunes, though. I just live with the small gaps.

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

re: screen real estate.

check out space.sourceforge.net. Space.app is multiple desktops for the mac. been using it since like 10.1 :)

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

Another great app is the creatively named Desktop Manager [sourceforge.net]. You can set up as many desktops as you need (I think) and you can do the eye-delicious rotating cube effect to switch between desktops.

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

what I find a bigger issue is that iTunes can STILL not create playlists over the network. I have my G5 upstairs with all my music, but I would like to have the party shuffle (or an ordinary playlist) hold some tracks on my tiBook in the living room. Especially since the kids now also store their music on the G5 (since that machine is always turned on), but want to create lists locally without having to disturb me when I'm working.

I've submitted this feature request to apple each time they release a new iTunes version, but still nothing :-(

Hey slashdotters : help me convince apple of this feature ! click here [apple.com] and ask apple to provide networkable playlists (so NOT copying the tracks over the network, only their URL) Let's see if this can work !

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

You could just have the music stored on a network share on the machine, then drag the files into iTunes, and if you don't have it manage the library, they will stay on the network drive.

Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog

The logic is fairly easy to understand: Apple's leadership position in the downloadable music market hinges entirely on its ability to get the labels to license the tracks for download. If Apple doesn't go way out of their way to keep DRM irritatingly hard to work around, the labels yank the music and head over to Redmond which is more than happy to screw the consumer.

Apple is walking a fine line here... Without the tracks, it has nothing to sell. Without fairly liberal license terms, people just head back to the latest peer-to-peer client and nobody makes money.

So the logic in breaking backwards compatibility is that if there's no penalty to keeping a 4.2 or 4.0 version running, people will still be able to use Fairplay or stream to non-lan IP addresses while enjoying all of the benefits of the new 4.5 version.

What's going to end up happening is that everyone will maintain a full library of iTunes versions (like I do) and use the version that's most appropriate for their needs. Want to listen to your home library at work or on the road? Fire up 4.0 before you leave. Want to get rid of the DRM on your tracks? Run 4.2 and FairPlay, then switch back to 4.5 and enjoy the new features.

I'm sure these older versions will break with a system upgrade down the road, but by then, there might be an even cooler jukebox out there.

To me, the larger question is how long it's going to take the media industry to schedule a rectal craniotomy and figure out how to deal with the 21st century instead of hanging out in the 1990s.

Update shows iTMS needs more selection

One cool feature mentioned in 4.5 is "iMix", which publishes your playlists to the iTMS for all to see. So out of curiosity, I tried to publish my "top 25 most played [onlinehome.us]" playlist. Out of the 25 songs on the list, only seven were available [onlinehome.us] at iTMS.

Sure, one could argue that I have eclectic taste in music, but on the other hand, they are missing some pretty big names: Radiohead, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Chick Corea...

On an unrelated note, I wonder if iTMS is going to start offering lossless files. That would be cool.

Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection

You also have to remember maybe some bands don't want to be on iTunes. In the case of Radiohead I believe that they only wanted their albums sold as a whole and not individual tracks, because that's how they see their albums.

Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection

It's an easy option for artists now to have iTunes only sell their music in an album form. I've seen a number of albums on iTMS that you can't get the songs individually.

Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection

According to Apple's press release today [apple.com], Their library is the largest in the world - 700,000 songs.

One must remember that artists can choose not to distribute their music this way. Notables are easy to recall - Dave Matthews Band, Metallica, Radiohead, The Beatles, etc.

This is temporary. In a few years, no artist will keep their music from this medium, though they may not distribute through the big 5 either. The same press release shows Apple has 450 indy labels represented with iTMS!

Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection

Agreed, The ITMS is lacking a number of big artist. However, it's getting better. I stopped bitching when Apple placed nearly every single NinjaTune and MoWax artist on the store.

More artist will come. Apple now allows certain albums to be sold in their entirety (some artist didn't want their albums picked apart), and Apple now allows users to print cover art (some artist hated the lack of album packaging).

Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection

Actually, you could probably do that now - burn it to a CD and rip it into the 'lossless' format. Although you would still have the "original lossiness", you wouldn't lose anything during the re-ripping process. Whether or not they offer lossless tracks on the store really doesn't affect that.

Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection

Yes, but then you'd have the file-size of a loss-less codec, and the quality of a lossy codec -- The worst of both worlds.

Simple Concept

The more times an iTMS-available artist shows up on user-submitted playlists, the more sales for that artist are generated.

The more times an iTMS-unavailable artist shows up on user-submitted playlists, the more pressure Apple has to try to sign that artist.

I like where this is going.

Global Compression Format War

I asked my G5 to play itself at a game of "Global Compression Format War". It started by launching a powerful attack out of Germany, targetting every continent simultaneously. Then Washington fired back at Germany, and within a few months OSS bases around the world joined the fray. The record industry suffered heavy casualties, but just as things were looking really grim, a coordinated nerve gas attack on their behlf, out of California, neutralized their enemies... but only temporarily. Norway distributed a powerful antidote... the secret formula was banned in the US though, so manufacturing was moved to India. And on it went with this simulation... util after exhausting every possible scenario, it concluded:

"The only winning move is not to play."

Can't way to see how Apple tried to lock people in to a lossless format... best of luck to you guys, and have fun pissing away your resources on this stupid game.

This whole limit of computers...

This whole limit of computers is kind of redundant if they let you burn audio cd's. Aren't most people burning an audio cd, and then ripping to MP3 from there?

Re:This whole limit of computers...

Token gesture to the RIAA to apease their fears of the pirates.

Re:This whole limit of computers...

Yeah but the itunes files are at 128k, so a burn then rip is going to result in noticeable sound degradation at this point.

Re:This whole limit of computers...

"Jitter" is one of the more annoying audiophile myths floating around.

If you are recording from one digital device to another; as long as the data stays in the digital domain, jitter is not recorded. The only thing actually captured is a sequence of amplitude values; digital media simply have no provisions for storing information about individual sample timing. The timing is based implicitly on the sampling rate and is freshly re-created by the digital-to-analog converter's clock every time the audio is played back.

Even digital-audio tape systems don't play audio directly from the tape. Instead, they pass the data through a RAM buffer from which a clock pulls individual samples and sends them to the outputs. As a result, variations in tape speed or data spacing aren't reflected in the output data.

Although jitter causes distortion on playback -- and can certainly generate unalterable distortion during the A/D process when recording from an analog source -- it is not recorded when making a digital dub or when recording between digital devices.

Re:This whole limit of computers...

There is no noticeable sound degradation reripping at 160k MP3.

At least not to me, a mere mortal. Perhaps an audio god could detect a difference. But they wouldn't recompress anyway - they'd store them all as uncompressed raw audio after hand-ripping them from the original masters they borrowed from the publisher.

Re:This whole limit of computers...

I've done iTMS AAC ->CD PCM -> 128kbps unemcumbered AAC conversions in the past and there was no noticable sound degradation. Now, iTMS AAC ->CD PCM -> 128-192kbps unemcumbered MP3 conversions did show obvious artifacts, so obviously a lot of this depends on the format you want to convert to, but it does make sense. MP3 will throw away a different part of the content than AAC would, so in an AAC to AAC conversion, the second AAC is throwing very little away (because it's already gotten rid of in the original pass.)

Re:This whole limit of computers...

This whole limit of computers is kind of redundant if they let you burn audio cd's. Aren't most people burning an audio cd, and then ripping to MP3 from there?

Why would you do that? Take your protected AAC, open up iMovie, import the AAC, the save it again as an AIFF.

OK...

Apple Lossless Encoding

So let's bring out the ALE and get drunk celebrating. ;)

Re:But it's not in software update yet?!?!?

It will be as soon as Apple announces it later today. You can still download it off the web.

iTMS now accessible through firewalls!

My work PC is behind an authenticating firewall, so I was never able to log into iTMS and consequently was not able to authorize my work PC to play my purchased music. When I launched 4.5, it brought up the IE dialog box for entering my firewall password, and voila... I could enter the iTMS and log into my account!

I love the addition of two more authorized computers as well. I'm getting a new PB this spring to give my four Macs/PCs that I would have iTunes on and now I can keep them all authorized!

Re:iTMS now accessible through firewalls!

I wish you people would get it through your heads! You (say it with me) ARE NOT breaking the law.

Yes I am. I live in the UK, which is in the EU which recently passed a law, not unlike the ones in the USA, which prohibit ripping from media that you already own for personal use. It's been discussed here before.

It's only a matter of time and sods law before someone is sent to jail for it.

Missing: Basic Features

Sadly, instead of using this update opportunity to add in basic functionality that would increase iTunes' value to avid music listeners, Apple went the route of throwing in some glitzy features for kids to rave over: "OMG the shufflez is teh party!! THE DJ IS ME!!1" They missed out on a lot of items that get requested on their forums.

• Speed. Though I'm sure many can provide their own anecdotal evidence on how iTunes works fine on their machines, that doesn't invalidate the many, MANY claims of iTunes being a bloated, resource hog (at least on Windows.). Foobar and Winamp with a little tweaking [inthegray.com] open almost instantaenously, while iTunes lags behind on starting up. Even when minimized, iTunes is taking up far more CPU than a media player should (even more than WMP!).
• MPC/FLAC/SHN/APE/etc. support. If applications like Foobar, Winamp, and QCD can pull it off, why can't iTunes, with it's beefy 19.5 MB download, play simple file formats like these that've been around for years? Wouldn't it work in their favor to allow their users more choice, to let their users listen to their music in whatever format they've chosen to encode them in?
• Queueing. Once again, something included with XMMS, Winamp, and even MMJB. If your listening to a huge random playlist of songs in Winamp, but want to hear a particular song after the one your listening to, just select the song in the playlist and hit 'Q'. Winamp will finish the currently playing song, then play the song you selected, then return to randomly shuffling the tracks automatically. You can do this with multiple tracks, picking an order you want to hear those songs, and then shuffling the rest. Or you can hit 'J' to search the list of the songs in the playlist [nunzioweb.com], and select the song(s) you want to enqueue.
• Downloading Songs Off iPod Through The Media Player. Instead of assuming your user is doing something criminal and (flimsily) preventing them from easy access to the songs on their iPod, why not give them the freedom to move songs back and forth onto their hard drives. ml_ipod [winamp.com], a plug-in that lets you manage your iPod through Winamp's media library, not only allows you to transfer songs from your iPod, but lets you even "reverse-sync" them.
• Support for competing MP3 portables. I think I read somewhere that iTunes may support another mp3 player besides the iPod, but that really isn't enough. Once again, I think it'd be beneficial the popularity of the program if they supported other players. Have they released an SDK for their community to toy with? The Foobar and Nullsoft teams did this, and they got great results [winamp.com].
• Gapless playback [pretentiousname.com] on iPod. This is a big deal to audiophiles, and I'm really surprised by the iPod's lack of support on this. The Rio Karma does this. Why not iPod?

Though I'll admit that the join-tracks feature was much-welcomed, what else did iTunes users get? Instead of downloading songs with propietary DRM, now we can encode our songs with a new proprietary DRM--songs that won't play on anything else? I think I'll stick with FLAC. The ability to publish my important music playlists for the whole world to see? I think I'll stick with Audioscrobbler [audioscrobbler.com]. A free song from another bland RIAA-sponsored band? Epitonic [epitonic.com] has always provided a good sampling of independent artists and their music for you to try out. A wishlist to download those Top 40 songs later? Well, why don't I just download the songs now off allofmp3 [allofmp3.com] now with their ridiculously low prices, in whatever format I want, without DRM? Import unprotected WMA files? Winamp

Re:Missing: Basic Features

Support for competing MP3 portables. I think I read somewhere that iTunes may support another mp3 player besides the iPod, but that really isn't enough. Once again, I think it'd be beneficial the popularity of the program if they supported other players. Have they released an SDK for their community to toy with? The Foobar and Nullsoft teams did this, and they got great results

Yea, they should definitely sacrifice hardware sales to support this free program! Why didn't they think of that?

Hello? Apple makes money off iPods, not iTunes or the iTMS.

Re:Missing: Basic Features

Well, they call your Queueing "Party Shuffle": http://www.apple.com/itunes/playlists.html
>
> Now with Selective Listening
>
> Of course your party deserves a great soundtrack, and iTunes
> helps you jump-start your set list. The new Party Shuffle feature
> creates a dynamic playlist, similar to shuffle play, from either your
> entire library or a designated playlist. You can review upcoming songs
> to reorder or delete on the fly, taking charge like the DJ you always
> wanted to be. You or a guest can add songs to the mix at any time. If
> you like the random picks, you can always save them in a personal playlist.
> And of course, you can use Party Shuffle when listening to music alone,
> too. So your playlist is always full, and always full of good tunes.
>
And I think your "gapless playback" could have been helped with the preference for the gap between songs (though that nay only apply to burning CDs). In any case, I agree that it's a very important feature for stuff live albums and arty, no-break albums (of which I have a couple).

I minor nitpick...

Actually, iTunes does support several competing players, and has since well before the iPod's appearance. It's not something they advertise much, but it is there.

Re:I minor nitpick...

I've been using it with my crappy old Rio500 for a couple of years.

Re:I minor nitpick...

Yeah, I just checked to make sure it still works in 4.5, my rio600 still pops up in my sources list and works great. Does anyone know if other players work in windows?

Re:Missing: Basic Features

Is that real Queueing, or a workaround?

Ummm...does it matter? What constitutes "real Queueing" for you? It fuckin queues a track. Sounds real enough to me.

wine?

Has anyone gotten it to work under wine? I'd love to be able to use it under Linux, but since they don't seem to be forthcoming on a native client, at least it would be a way to let me give them money! ;-)

[TMB]

Re:wine?

I don't know about WINE, but I do know how to Install iPod Update v1.4/v2.2 in GNU/Linux [pclinuxonline.com].

Apple Lossless encoding

Some initial, unofficial reports [macrumors.com] are coming in that a 4mb AAC translates to about 30mb Apple Lossless.

Re:Apple Lossless encoding

Someone's unofficial report on that forum also indicates that it converts from WMA to AAC.

Umm...it's not unoffical. Apple touts it on their website [apple.com].

Re:Apple Lossless encoding

You can play uncompressed AIFF files on your iPod, and it's a pretty easy, lossless conversion between WAV and AIFF.

PlayFair'ed files not working?

According to comments in ipodlounge [ipodlounge.com], this new version won't allow playback of Playfair DRM stripped AAC files.

Re:PlayFair'ed files not working?

I've previously converted 19 iTMS songs to stripped AAC with Playfair 0.5 and iTunes 4.5 plays them just fine.

Re:PlayFair'ed files not working?

Good for Apple.

The whole reason they can get so many of the labels they do is that they protect their rights. I know it sucks for the little guy who wants to give music to all of their friends, but I find their version of DRM within acceptable limits, unlike most other DRM systems.

DRM Agreement Changed.

I hope to god this is redundant.. I'd be really scared if I was the only one who noticed.

This is exactly what the anti-DRM nazis were talking about.. they CHANGED the licensing agreement and nobody cares.

Do you realize what this means? They could simply one day revoke all but 1 of your machine licenses, put all your m4p's into one big encrypted image, and turn your genitals into scrambled eggs and there's nothing you can do about it because YOU agreed to it by buying DRM.

Sure, THIS time it's not a big deal, in fact most people will be happy with this new way of doing things.. but doesn't it bother you that they can take as well as give?

Seven burns down from Ten on tracks you already own.
Think about that..

And no, I'm not a stinkin pirate or anything like that. Just think if the implications

Re:DRM Agreement Changed.

Well sorta, but also largely wrong.

You're right about the DRM agreement changing, but only sorta. They EXPANDED what you could do, DRM wise.

They agreed to let you play on 3 computers, that's what I agreed to when I signed up and bought many many songs. Now they said I can use 5 computers, I'm happy.

The second change isn't to the DRM. I can still burn a song to a CD as many times as I'd like, as I agreed to. What they don't let me do, through software, is burn the same PLAYLIST more than 7 times. In other words, I can't make the exact same CD more than 7 times. Change a single song or (I believe) even reorder the songs and you can burn them another 7 times. It's not a DRM change, it's a tool change.

A flaw in your arguement

The music I purchased before under the 10 burn/3 computer DRM could remain under that DRM. All I have to do is NOT AGREE TO THE NEW DRM. This would keep me from buying new music with this user ID, as I have to agree to the DRM, but would not effect the old music.

So Apple is faced with an issue. They couldn't just cut something out, without giving people a reason to agree to it. I nthis case, to continue shopping at the store and gain the ability to use 2 extra computers, I have to give up 3 identical CD burns. Big deal. Th emost I have ever burned is 2.

I see your point, but I think that reasonable business desires will keep DRM in check because otherwise, people wouldn't buy it at all.

Multiple Downloads

Nice to release on the anniversary, and draw some attention.
My one complaint with the service is that you can't download the source file multiple times. So, I may have a license to listen to it, but I have to get the file from somewhere, if I lose it. They let you listen to your music on 5 machines, but you have to transport the file itself to those machines, by yourself. A real pain in the butt.
Beyond that, it's fantastic, and I recommend it to anyone shopping for a service.

Re:Multiple Downloads

Multiple downloads could present a somewhat large financial issue for apple... like when a person with 10,000 songs downloaded wipes their harddrive and then suddenly wants to just redownload them again.

Anyone who's spent $10k at iTMS deserves to be able to download load them again.

Apple happily lets everyone and their grandmother download all those huge movie trailers for free, I think they can spare some bandwidth for the guy who just gave them $10,000.

Slight change in the rules...

Notice that the DRM scheme has changed. You can now burn 7 playlists to CD when it used to be 10. However, the flip side is that you can now authorize 5 computers as opposed to the old scheme of 3.

Not a bad tradeoff in my opinion. I can't remember the last time I played a physical CD. Sure, there are going to be those that complain about not having the CD but really, the idea of digital music is so that you don't have to lug around a CD.

Re:Slight change in the rules...

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

Re:Slight change in the rules...

Actualy, your right to do with the file hasn't changed, it's the right you burn the playlist that has changed. You can still burn the file an unlimited number of times, just not without changing the playlist every 7 times. There is a slight difference.

iTunes campus goals

More important than this update is Apple's new push to provide music to college campuses. Their information is available here http://www.apple.com/education/itunesoncampus/. As a Penn State studnet whos money is being wasted by a garbage contract with Napster, I hope that iTunes begins to displace Napster all over the country. Napster is a shoddy, two bit service that offers a marginal utility at best. I'm rooting for iTunes and AAC in the battle for university contracts.

My personal iTunes wish list

And maybe this is available in other MP3 players - but this is my list after setting up some new Smart Lists this morning:

1. Nested lists: so I could have one list that says "if genre = rock", then a sublist that just has "if My Rating is > 3" or "if year published is 2" and the other "if My Rating is > 3" (which I use to differentiate between "Background work music" and "Driving kick ass music".

2. Copy playlists: Another major issue with the above is that if I have 2 playlists that are 90% the same, I'd like to set the first one up, then just copy the list logic into a new one and only edit the 1 or 2 differences.

3. iSync iTunes I have a laptop, and so does my wife. Right now, all of our music sits on a Master hard drive on a Powermac, then synced to my iPod, which when I'm at work I plug into my laptop and place on "manual" (so it doesn't copy the laptop music files). This works out, but it's not what I'd like.

What I'd like is to go home, sit with my laptop and have it say "Oh, I see Playlists X, Y, and Z on your main computer have updated, and I've updated these MP3 tracks ratings/tags/etc. Let me sync up."

Then I could select the lists I want on my laptop from the main machine and only those files would be copied to my box. Since, if I buy music from the iTunes Music Store I can play it on 5 separate machines, it would be nice to have an "auto-sync" kind of system.

I think that's about it for now. I like the option of a new lossless recording (if I ever get my computer tied into a good sound system I can use it - I think there's some new devices that can stream from your Mac to from about $200 that might be worth a look).

Re:My personal iTunes wish list

Nested playlists are currently possible:

Create your playlist, "Rock List" as such:

• if genre == rock

Then create your second list, "Highly Rated Rock" as:

• if my rating > 3
• if playlist is "Rock List"

and you're done. Easy.

Also new

iTunes on Campus [apple.com], which lets academic institutions site license iTunes Music Store content for their users delivered by Akamai's distributed network, which now not only includes over 700,000 songs from all 5 major labels and 450 independent labels, but also thousands of audiobooks, periodicals, and journals.

Also new is the ability to import unprotected WMA into iTunes, and an iPod update [apple.com] to support Apple Lossless Encoder.

And last, iMovie 4.0.1 [apple.com] has been released.

Correct iTunes on Campus URL

http://www.apple.com/education/itunesoncampus/ [apple.com]

Re:Also new

iTunes on campus is not a site-license to the content. It merely allows institutions to redistribute the iTunes software.

It makes sense to go up to 5 auth. systems

A couple weeks ago there was a discussion on /. about iTMS. One of the points I made is that I haven't used iTunes in a while because I have 4 computers at home and it was a hassle to keep authorizing/deauthorizing them because you were limited to three authorized systems. Another point was made that Apple should expand the number of authorized computers to 5 because their OS X "family plan" lets you install OS X on up to 5 computers...therefore they should be consistent.

As for reducing the playlist burn amount from 10 to 7, I don't think anyone will notice. Although CDRs are dirt cheap, they are pretty wasteful for the small amount of music they hold. Flash and HD music players are the way to go.

Good work, Apple! Next step: Get the songs I buy on iTMS to work with TiVo's Home Media Option.

Goodbye DRM, Hello Lossless

what will be real interesting is if APPLE start selling lossless from the iTMS.

Previously the DRM limitations forced people to burn to cd then re-rip with out drm. the problem with this is

drm'ed mp3 > cd > mp3

the problem was that drm'ed mp3 !=mp3
because when the mp3 is ripped from the burned cd, it will not be indentical to the original mp3.

with lossless encoding this problem is fixed because

drm'ed lossless > cd > lossless

drm'ed lossless = lossless.

Obvioulsy APPLE is aware of this, they have effectively removed the DRM issue (at least for files that start as lossless)

New Party Shuffle feature the best part of 4.5

The Party Shuffle feature gets rave reviews from me.

In the past, I have used a playlist I call "now playing" to move music in and out of during a party. This can be a real pain when you really just want to play a few playlists back to back.

Party Shuffle changes all that. It allows you to easily DJ a party. You select how many "just played" songs and how many "upcoming songs to show. You then select a source, be it your music library or a playlist or a smart playlist (think Rock or Pop where 1979 year 1990). You then can easily manage what is coming up in the list and view what just got played. You can click the "refresh" (where Burn and Import are) and the list will be regenerated at random. You can also give preference to the higher ranked songs in your library.

Lastly, and this is a feature of the entire music library, not just playlists or Party Shuffle, the same "arrow" icons that show up in the iTMS when you search for a song are present in iTunes. This means you can click an arrow for a song name, album, or artist and it will launch a search on iTMS. But say you don't like that feature? Well you can of course turn it off in preferences, but you may also hodl down "option" and click it. The result? it searches only YOUR library, not the iTMS.

Encoding is free if your time is worth nothing.

Hm, and I was about to re-rip all my CDs at 320 kbps MP3 ...

You either have very few CDs or way too much time on your hands.

I was considering making higher bit rate versions of my library but would only hire my brother to do it for me (over 200 albums).

Crap crap crap

They don't warn you that once you upgrade, you can't access shared music on older versions of iTunes. Now I have to go upgrade all my systems.

Don't install it if you don't have time to upgrade all your computers, if that sort of thing matters to you.

Lossless Encoding at Half the Size?

I don't know about you, but to me half the size of uncompressed audio sounds like a lot. How do gzip, bzip2 and FLAC stack up?

Re:Lossless Encoding at Half the Size?

The folks at FLAC have a handy comparison page [sourceforge.net]. ALE obviously hasn't been tested yet.

Re:Lossless Encoding at Half the Size?

I don't know about you, but to me half the size of uncompressed audio sounds like a lot. How do gzip, bzip2 and FLAC stack up?

gzip and bzip2 are meant for text. Only with rare audio files will they achieve much of any compression whatsoever. FLAC achieves about 50% compression on average, depending on the source material. All other lossless audio schemes achieve similar compression, within about 5%. The big advantage FLAC has is that it uses only integer ops for decoding (making it very fast and non CPU intensive). That also means FLAC has a number of hardware decoders already on the market.

Is this FLAC? No.

I when I saw "Apple Lossless encoding" a part of me got really excited thinking that they had finally decided to start supporting FLAC [sourceforge.net] files, but just given it their own name.

That doesn't seem to be the case. These files are given the file extension '.m4a'. Attempting to decode them with the CLI flac program only produces errors.

It's a shame too, because FLAC is really starting to pick up as the lossless format of choice for internet distribution. In certain cirlces at least. If Apple had decided to throw their weight behind, it could have really taken off.

Re:I hear the cheers of Apple Fanboys now!

Don't be silly! If you wanted FLAC and Vorbis playback, 16 hours of battery life, and gapless or crossfaded playback, you'd just buy a Rio Karma.

(Seriously.)

Yay for WMA conversion

At the time iTunes for Windows was launched, I went to the suggestions page at apple.com and suggested a WMA importer for iTunes, and suggested on /. that others do the same, as a malrge number of users have ripped all their music to WMA and therefore couldn't play it in iTunes.

I am glad Apple were listening - it's really pleasing to see a major company release a tool which will reduce the number of Windows Media files in existence in the world.

Damnit, Steve!

Why can't iTunes share songs over the net? Tie it 5 MAC addresses or something, but at least let me listen to my songs sitting on my Mac at home while at work. No, I don't want to fill up my powerbook with AACs and mp3s. I could then play my tunes at a pals house or coffee shop or elsewhere.

It seems that Apple could do the same thing that they're doing with DRM, and authorize 5 computers to share via IP. (on different subnets) - I have no interest in P2Ping music with all the leaches out there, but the ability to share my Library over the net with a few others would be quite welcome. (iTunes 4.0.1?) It seems like iTunes is one program that really shows the limitations that the RIAA puts on Apple. Of course, I could get an iRaise, and go buy an iPod, but i'Ve got enough iCrap to carry around.

Apple lossless

If someone will host a clip in apple lossless format, preferably a one second sine wave, un-DRMed, along with the original input (WAV or AIFF) and the stream parameters (bps, sample rate, #channels, exact length in time or #samples) I can take a look to see if it's FLAC or FLAC-like inside (I developed FLAC).

Josh

Re:Apple lossless

The extension for the lossless codec is .m4a (yes I checked), these are two short sample files (440 Hz, 1s).

• Original, AIFF [stereo.lu]
• Compressed, Apple Lossless [stereo.lu]

They're right, it's lossless, I can't tell the difference between the two! :p

Still no proper" join"

The "join" feature still only works during CD ripping, there's not way to join tracks that you've purchased from the store or already imported. This is SO annoying. The systems have more than enough computing power to merge these songs without having to start over.

I'm guessing I will have to cave in and re-rip all my CDs that should not have gaps between the songs.

By the numbers

Well the results are in and between Apple's Press release [apple.com] and the Steve Jobs conference call [macminute.com] there are many numbers to consider.

140,000,000 - Annualized song sales at current rate
100,000,000 - Number of songs projected to be sold in 1st year
70,000,000 - Number of songs sold the first 365 days of the service
2,700,000 - Current rate of songs sold per week
1,000,000 - Number of songs available by the end of 2004
700,000 - Number of songs available now (5/04)
450 - Number of indy publishers with music on-line
10 - Previously allowable identical CD burns
7 - Currently allowable identical CD burns
5 - Current number of authorized PCs and/or Macs
3 - Previous number of authorized PCs and/or Macs
70% - Market share of iTMS digital music sales
5% - Market share of Apple desktop/laptop/server sales
0 - Number of more successful on-line music services

Ironic how 4.5 opens up WMA

It's interesting how Apple has chosen to enable two lossless codecs into 4.5. On the one hand, you can use iTunes to import your CD's into it's own Apple (potentially proprietary) lossless format, or you can now import losslessly encoded (or not) WMA files which iTunes converts to AAC.

(Thinking aloud) Prior to reading about 4.5 this morning, I was encoding my CD collection into a FLAC [sourceforge.net] archive. Using foobar2000 [foobar2000.org] I could then encode my FLAC collection to just about any other format, including AAC. Up until iTunes 4.5 however, there was no direct method of importing losslessly encoded formats (other than wav files). Importing WMA vs FLAC now makes this process at least one step easier - Windows Media Player's WMA tagging is also extremely easy. Using foobar2000, one can also transcode WMA files into virtually any other format as well. WMA arguably has more overall support than FLAC - at least as far as portables are concerned. I'm not saying I'll switch away from FLAC, but it may be worth investigating.

I find it very odd how a new version of iTunes has me reconsidering WMA as an option for archiving my CD collection, especially as their own lossless codec was released on the same day.

CD-Text?

Does iTunes 4.5 support CD Text? I have yet to understand why iTunes hasn't had this support! Just about every burner on the planet supports it. Even factory car stereos support it now.

Tethered access?

When is Apple going to allow unlimited playing of iTMS songs (while connected through broadband) for a flat fee? That's what keeps me on Rhapsody [listen.com]. For a flat fee I can play just about anything through my computer. The drawbacks are that you can't play downloaded songs through its interface, and it's Windows-only. I would love to use iTunes but I've become addicted to infinite choice of music.

Smart Playlist Enhancement

You can now use other playlists as criteria for a Smart Playlist. Create one playlist that is a combination of several other playlists.

iTunes phoning home to wcg.net?

When I upgraded my iTunes and launched it for the first time, Little Snitch reported that it was trying to communicate to a server on wcg.net. Here is a "Whois" for wcg.net.

Registrant:
Williams Communications Group (WCG3-DOM)
111 E. 1st ST.
Tulsa, OK 74103-2808
US

Domain Name: WCG.NET

Administrative Contact:
Center, Network Operations (YDAAUAZAAI) [e-mail]
Wiltel Communications
3180 Rider Trail South
Bridgeton, MO 63045
US
800-934-8434

Anyone have a clue why?

quick and dirty Apple Lossless Encoding analysis

To quickly assess how well the new iTunes 4.5 lossless compression scheme works I picked 10 songs at random from my collection to convert to Apple Lossless Encoder format. The good news is that each song only took a few seconds to convert on my 1.0 GHz PowerBook. Noticeably faster than when I ripped them to WAV files. Unfortunately the compression ratio is not that good. The aggregate compression ratio of the ten songs was 1.5:1. The min, median and max were 1.3:1, 1.5:1 and 1.8:1. This is by no means a thorough evaluation, as my collection is heavily skewed to rock music and far more samples would be required. I would have expected far better however, given that the high correlation between the two stereo channels gives an almost brain dead 2:1 compression to start with, and other lossless projects on the web claim closer to 4:1.

Re: losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD

hmm, isn't that pretty bad actually? can't you get that kind of compression(get 40mb wav into 20mb file) with just zip&others on pretty easily anyways, fucking _ten_years_ago_.

Try playing a .zip file on your iPod...

Re: losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD

No. If you try to compress a wav file with zip, rar, etc., you will get very little compression. There is very little repeated data in a wav file. Looking at a wav file with the knowledge that it is audio, however, allows for decent lossless audio compression.

Re: losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD

can't you get that kind of compression(get 40mb wav into 20mb file) with just zip&others

Absolutely, for WAV files which are half silence.

Re: losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD

Actually, Zipping a wav file will do absolutely nothing. There's way too much entropy in a regular song to find similar patterns which it can compress. Also, FLAC only get's about a 60% compression ratio, meaning 100 MB of wav turns into 60 MB of flac

Re:They have Cradle of Filth albums!!!!!!!

I'll join when they get In Flames and Nightwish.

Re:Still not using it

Until they remove DRM. Don't let them control what you can do with your files

Unenlightened moderators or those that are crack dependent may mod you down.

I think the point needs to be made that as good as all the itunes seems to be, everybody is forgetting one critical fact;

You can not resale the music that you have purchased like with a regular LP, tape, or CD. Apple has purposefully left out first sale rights as it would erode the artificial value of the music. Even if there was a mechanism to erase all your copies and resale your itunes to someone else, Apple would not allow it, as this would put downward price pressure on the music Apple sells.

The music industry has controlled the price of CDs through illegal collusion, and probably are still managing to do so. Itunes is a natural extension of artificially controlling the price of music.

If normal economic forces were allowed to take over, there are quite a few industry executives that would no longer be able to afford their drug habit.

Re:Still not using it

You CAN sell you music. This was already argued and brought to a head by the eBay auction. Apple's response was "Yes, you can sell your tracks, but why bother?"
Granted, there is no mechanism to do it (yet), but you could indeed sell your entire library at once by simply transferring your account to someone else.