Review of iTunes Music Store 757
First, the disclaimer: I'm an Apple supporter, having used them as my desktop system since my parents got a IIe back when they were new. I run several Unix servers, but my desktop of choice has always been Apple. Also, while I like listening to music, I'm no audiophile, and can't usually tell the difference between a 192kbps MP3 and the CD it is encoded from. My best speakers are on my computer, and they are Monsoon flat panel 3-piece set.
Ok, on to the review. iTunes Music Store requires the new version of iTunes of course, for which Apple has updated the brushed metal interface again (Apple, why do you come up with this great Aqua interface and then never use it?). My first stop on any new program is always the preferences, and Apple's added some new options for this version: "Sharing" and "Store." I don't have any other computers worth streaming music too, so that's off, and I turn off the one-click shopping. I like having a shopping cart.
The store itself is presented as a special playlist in iTunes, just click and it connects. It presumes a fairly wide iTunes window, wider than I usually use, but the stuff I wanted was all on the left side so I'm fine. The default store layout is obviously Amazon-inspired: new additions, up and coming, editor's picks, and most popular all being highlighted. Genre is a pull-down menu on the top left: all the picks change and the background color. Click on an album to view it in a two-pane view: info above and songs below. There are easy links back at any point, or up the hierarchy. Double click on a song to hear the preview (not just the first 30 seconds, they seem to actually choose them).
That's the basics. There are two levels of search: the search box in iTunes and a Power Search available from inside the store. The Power Search lets you search by song, artist, album, genre, and composer. Users of Limewire will find it familiar. Clicking Browse puts up three panes across the top: genre, artist, album. Once an album is selected the songs are available below.
On to the interesting stuff: actually buying songs. I select a song I've got a poor p2p copy of and click buy, and it asks me to sign in with my Apple ID, or create one if I don't have one. This is where I have my first problem. I have an Apple ID, but entering it puts up a message saying I've never used it with iTunes Music Store before (well, duh) and asks me to review the terms and conditions. Then it directs me to the account creation screen, with my info already filled in.
Of course, the account creation screen won't let you create a duplicate account, and asks me to log in. Can we say endless loop? How about bug that should be fixed?
I create a new email address, and make a new account. No problem. Log in, select the song and a couple others. Click "Buy Song," enter credit card info (which is then saved into the account, on Apple's server) and the songs download quickly. I had one more blip: one song had trouble downloading (I assume server load) and was told to try again later, with a menu option. It worked several hours later.
The selection is broad, but not yet very deep. Many albums I found are in partial status, with only one or two songs. Several artists I was looking for were not listed at all. Considering this is just roll-out that isn't a major issue (they weren't big artists, at least not in the U.S.). Everyone should be able to find at least some of their picks available.
Also, some albums are listed as "Explicit" or "Clean." Notice I said "albums": if one song in an album has a label they all seem to, though I didn't do an exhaustive search. Since this is structured as song-centric, I feel they should have labeled on a song-by-song basis.
Enough with the marketing stuff, this is /. The files, as was mentioned in the announcement, are in AAC format. Let's see what we can do with that, shall we?
First options: inside iTunes. iTunes can convert one format to another normally, trying it on a 'protected' AAC file returns an error. Also, trying to burn an MP3 CD with one on the playlist just skips burning the AAC files (or returns an error if they are the only files.) Fair enough, we didn't really expect the capability to circumvent all controls to be built in... (Though you can of course burn regular CDs.)
Next, let's see what can be done with the file itself. They are saved, just like any other iTunes music file, in the iTunes music folder. The icon has a little lock on it, to indicate its 'protected' status. A few clicks later and the file is owned by guest:nobody chmod 777 and in a world readable folder. (Assigned to guest.)
So much for one definition of protection. [Ed: I renamed the file to .m4a (not protected) and set the permissions to the same as my other tracks, and iTunes would still not let me convert it to MP3.]
I can also play that file as another user on the same machine. I would try other machines, but I only have the one Mac at the moment.
The only other Mac player I can find that claims to play AAC is only for Mac OS v9, and does not appear to recognize the bought file, so no help there. I do however have an app that hijacks the audio stream before the speakers and allows you to play with equalizers, balance, etc. Oh, and it lets you save the result as an MP3 as well as playing it through the speakers.
I fire it up and a few minutes later I have an MP3 that I can't tell from the AAC. So much for that definition of protection.
Is this service for everyone? Probably not if you are a hard-core audiophile and can tell the difference between a 128kbps ACC and the original, but for most of us: it works. I can do what I want with the file, even get it to MP3 if I need it, though it is hard enough that I have to actually think about doing it (which means I won't do it unless I need to). I'd love it if it were cheaper, but I probably would not buy twice as many songs at half the price. Finding songs is easy, buying them is easy. (For reference: $0.99 per song does not include taxes, taxes will be listed in the invoice you are emailed.)
I'll probably spend too much money there.
Same price, fewer costs (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell? (Score:3, Insightful)
Any
agree- no depth but works well (Score:5, Insightful)
They clearly didn't have a huge content base yet but they did have a easy way to request songs, artists etc that they didn't have yet.
Definitely a big win for apple and consumer.
I've said it once and I'll say it again... (Score:-1, Insightful)
Hrm (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I still think apple has it right with this music service (Even if it is apple-only right now) - they've made it rather easy to mix-n-match the songs you want to make your own compilations. Still sucks that it takes a lot of extrs work to make an mp3 CD.
Then again, if you can fit 300+ mp3s on a CD, that's quite a bit of cash to spend downloading songs.
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If only I could afford a mac... (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a time when a 486 cost $3k, but today Macs, taking into account deflation, cost less than half that.
If you *wanted* a Mac, you can afford it. If you can't afford it, it isn't really the price that's stopping you.
Of course there are exceptions, but on the general, a Mac today is so affordable that to use the price of a Mac over that of a PC is hardly a hefty argument. A better argument would be, "But no one I know uses a Mac, so I'd have to figure out everything on my own," or "I've got $1,000 worth of software on my PC that I can't use on my Mac," or "All my games live on my PC, if I bought a Mac I can't play those games anymore," are all more valid reasons than "An iBook costs 15% more than a similar PC laptop," or "An iMac costs 20% more than a similar PC desktop."
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Right idea, wrong price (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Using a computer to buy music... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I've said it once and I'll say it again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Please.
I gave up on Kazaa and any other P2P music when I signed up for Emusic. It's a simular, but cheaper (and not as major-label heavy) service. Now that I get tons of properly-labeled, decent quality MP3's, with no DRM, flat monthly fee, and unlimited downloads I have no reason to ever p2p again; I'm willing to pay for trust and quality. But no one will probably read this, 'cause it's AC, and all the
Like Kazaa is such hot stuff. Please. Kazaa is crap for music!
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing I would change if it were me has to do with Rendezvous-streaming purchased music. I think you should be able to Rendezvous-share your purchased music just like your ripped music. That's not how it works. A Mac won't play an
But that's a minor nitpick. To get around it, burn your
Furthermore,
It would be nice if the music selection were a little bigger, but that will come in time. I didn't find any Daft Punk or Midnight Oil, but I did find "Mais Que Nada" by Brazil '66, and I consider that to be a great start.
Buying a song is as easy as falling off a log. Click "Music Store." Type something in the search box, say "Cibo Matto." Scroll through the list of songs and find one you want, say "Sci-Fi Wasabi." Click "Buy Song." Type your password. (That's optional; you can have it remember your password.) Click "Buy" to confirm. (That's optional too; you can tell it not to ask you to confirm purchases.) Go get a cup of coffee or something. When you come back, the song is in your "Purchased Music" playlist, and already synched to your iPod. Ready to go.
Total cost: 99. Total time required: less than a minute, not counting the download, and if you're on even halfway decent broadband the download will only take a few seconds. Gratification: instant.
Burn the downloaded songs or albums to CD and stick 'em on your shelf. They're just like CD's you'd buy at the store, albeit without the liner notes and whatnot. That's okay. If I want the liner notes-- I don't-- I'll go to the store.
Let's review. This system is faster, easier and more convenient to use, and more reliable than Napster or Kazaa or whatever, and it's almost the same price. Damn straight.
I don't wanna get all hyperbolic, but I really think this might change the world.
Isn't this article a violation of the DMCA? (Score:2, Insightful)
Never mind that anyone with a good understanding of computers could have come up with the same thing, this is still a violation of the DMCA, isn't it? IANAL, but maybe /. ought to pull it to save the author from legal action.
God, I hate living in a country where free speech is outlawed.
Re:I love it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:2, Insightful)
Yea, If I'm buying an acient Bowie album or something. Take a look at something releaed in the past year or two. Your thought will then differ. Sure, if I want to buy The Eagles Greatest Hits CD from 77 or whenever that was, yea, it'll be dirt cheap. A newISH CD will not. [amazon.com]
Lower cost, lower quality (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really; the 128kb bit rate of these files doesn't approach the original in terms of quality. In fact, this is closer to FM radio than it is to CD quality.
So perhaps the reason there are less restrictions on this music is that the record companies are comfortable selling you FM quality music for a buck a pop?
If they double the bit rate (as an option), it will be more interesting. As it is now, I'll just listen to the radio.
Re:DRM *does* hinder the ``innocent'' (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true at all. I bought a track at work, but I can't play it at home because I'm unable to authorize my home computer(s) due to a proxy configuration.
I got around this by burning a CD and ripping the audio again. Of course, I had to rip it to mp3 because my slimp3 won't play AAC.
I think the store's a great idea and I intend to use it, but the DRM certainly does hinder the innocent.
Re:I've said it once and I'll say it again... (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate kazaa and most all p2p apps. I like the idea I just don't care for the hassle and time involved. Its like that linux expression, "Mp3 downloads on kazaa are only free if your time is worth nothing, and quality means nothing to you"
I had never looked into emusic, but if it is in fact flat fee, unlimited downloads, no DRM, I think I may take a look at it. Thanks AC.
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:2, Insightful)
Advertising/promotion costs and payola are the same either way.
Re:If only I could afford a mac... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but everytime I see the counter-argument about the price of an iMac being a little bit more, it makes me want to set the record straight.
<Disclaimer>Yes, I have owned an iProduct. I traded an old development desktop of mine for an old iBook, and I loved it, but then I won a Tablet PC at Microsoft's launch event, and haven't been able to go back</Disclaimer>
What you fail to realize about most enthusiast PC owners is that they almost never buy a new PC. It's more of a rolling investment whereby they trickle in cash as they have it to upgrade whatever part happens to be lagging. This is often done at the rate of ~$100-$300 a purchase, where $300 is definitely a very high end purchase. So, in order to switch to an iSomething, a typical enthusiast PC owner (who has a "very fast box"(TM)), will have to save up enough for five to twenty instances of their regular purchase cycle (that's a lot!) in order to get something that has a similar performance level to what they're used to. (And make no mistakes, an enthusiast won't put out a large sum of money for something that's going to be slower.)
That's not just expensive, that's an entirely different economy! Owning apple hardware is like buying a new car every time the speed limit is raised... Granted, it isn't often, but when it happens, it really sucks to have to replace your machine.
Apple won't go down the constant stream of revenue path because they aren't the only ones who sell upgrades, and they like being the only ones who sell Apple computers. Often it makes more sense for a business to work in the service/stream model (just look at how all of the software companies are trying to get us to switch to software under the service model), but Apple doesn't like the loss of control.
Me, I'm in love with my tablet, and plan on selling it in order to buy a Centrino/Pentium-M tablet as soon as they're available (Hopefully, some company will come out with the enthusiast's model, and not just those dinky-900Mhz ULV models. Are you listening???) When Apple has their tablet available, I'll give it a shot, and maybe switch again, but then agian, I have a high paying job, and I'm not working within the confines of trickle purchasing...
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:5, Insightful)
I think and you are wrong, and that you are wrong for the same reason record companies are trying to get draconian with copy protection.
If this takes off and record companies enter the game in a big way, it will take off big - very big. So big that it has the potential to badly damage the classic distribution chains. Music is the optimal good for distribution over the net in the state it has today (average bandwidth for the end user).
Fast dsl/cable connections make the act of purchasing and downloading music in a compressed format unpremeditated buying.
After online sales getting a significant share of the total revenue, there's suddenly a very low barrier of entry for anyone for this business.
Why do musicians sign their soul to big music companies?
Because they are the only one offering the the things they need (or believe they need in case of the first):
- marketing power
- logistics (they can make an album appear in every shop on the planet)
It's clear the internet solves the logistics, and this is IMO the biggest hinderance for newcomers. It also could raise the absolute number of sales (unpremeditated buying etc.).
But also completely new competitors could emerge, or artists might consider handling their own sales, which all will eventually drive down prices.
The internet will hurt the record companies, that's why they hate it.
Re:My problem with signing up. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Siphoned from the cardreader
2) pulled from teh line leaving the store
3) pulled from transaction logs
4) Copied by attendant
5) Printed on your reciept which you then procede to discard on the floor or trash can (CompUSA prints your CC number on the reciept, I wouldn't put it past other stores to do the same)
Re:iTunes needs a Quicken plug in (Score:1, Insightful)
Also handy might be some kind of "iTuns Music Store Gift Certificate". Send $25 to a Mac-using friend to spend on music.
Re:What's the logic? (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Apple being a mac company
b) No iTunes for windows
c) Smaller userbase to work out the kinks on
d) Proof positive for the record companies (we already know mac users have money to spend, so they will be more likely to pay)
e) Trying to promote the mac platform by doing what the PCs have failed at so far
f) "It came out on mac first"
the aesthetics of impulse (Score:5, Insightful)
What I think will make this service sucessfull is that one merely has to click on the song for it to become part of one's collection. Songs can be attained just as simply as if they were already on one's harddrive and so the natural defense mechanisms we've all built up for traditional retail establishments and online retailers will be that much weaker. See a picture of a pretty pop star, click on it, and recieve instant gratification for not much money.
I mean, think about it. It really is kind of an ugly experience to log into amazon.com, their page is really quite ugly. And web browsers, if used to buy online mp3s, are not generally very well linked with your player (you tend to download to your default folder and then have to copy from there into iTunes.) Anyway this store makes spending money a really slick and easy thing to do. (cheaper and safer than sex) I just hope that some day it will offer some obscure music that I can't buy in music stores. Then I'll really get off on it.
Tutorial: Answers to covert art, credit cards (Score:5, Insightful)
First the one click sign up form has a small bug if you already have any apple account with a credit card. (e.g. mac.com, applestore, developer account, iphoto). The error messages they give are misleading as to the root cause of the problem but here is the trick to getting it to work. You must make sure that all of your apple accounts have identical info. when I say identical i mean exact. for example having a ten digit hyphenated phone number on one account and not on the music store record, or a different zip code will break it. Finally, counter intuitively, do not enter the security code number from the back of the credit card. the reason here is that the mac.com accounts dont have a place for it to be entered.
if all else fails, create a fresh account with a new e-mail address.
for cover art of all those tunes you did not buy from apple the best solution is clutter [sprote.com] a freeware app that works with itunes. it auto lookups the cover art using amazon.com. it has some other feeatures too. but mainly it works slightly better than the one built into itunes since it does a more successful job of recognizing when two songs belong to the same album and avoids storing the cover art twice.
if you want to drag the cover art from clutter into itunes here is a procedure I recomend--I wish I could automate it. 1) open itunes and create a smart playlist of all track=1 tunes to get one tune from every album. 2) click on cover art display where it says "selection" and it will change to "now playing", 3) in the finder open ~/Library/Images/com.sprote.clutter/CDs and sort it by date.
now iterate the following, start playing the first song in your smart playlist, clutter will fetch the album cover, the finder will show a folder containing a jpeg. drag this to the album art in itunes, press command -> to move to the next song in itunes. rinse lather repeat. the only proble I encoutered was as I said in some cases itunes cant figure out that two songs are from the same album.
if you need high res cover art go to walmart's web site.
ps I spent last night playing with the store and after i got it to accept my credit card (yep the credit company called me to see if this was fraud too--multiple charges in a row for the same small amount is a fraud flag not an apple bug). I bought five peices of music before i realized this was like eating potatoe chips. flawless instant downloads, pristine music. fairly easy to find what I wanted, and though some things I wanted are missing the breadth of their coverage in other musical forms is astonishing. I even bough some music form artists I had never heard before because I found it while browsing. I really enjoyed the ability to fill in my music collection with a few songs I used to have on vinyl but would never be willing to buy the whole album again just to get those favorites.
and my conclusion is this. I've spent hours on kazza trying to download just a few songs I wanted. it rarely works the fist time since the servers beomce un avalaible or some dickhead entered the album decriptor wrong or the connection stinks or you cant find a decent bit rate or just part of the album..yada yada yada.
after using the applse site I realized what steve jobs was saying when he pointed out on cnn that using Kazza is like paying yourself minimum wages since you can only get 5 songs (= 5 dollars) in a hours worth of work!!! hopefully in a few years the price will drop even more at which point it will be way better than free,
THe only thing I was not too happy about was that I cant get these in mp3 format so I cant send them to my freinds with plain jane mp3 players. (you cant convert acc that you purchesed to mp3 in itunes--it will let you convert acc songs that you ripped yourself). I could burn a cd and re-rip them but by then the quality will be down. But franky this is just me being a weasel. its not fair use for me to mail songs around the globe.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, I think this illustrates the point nicely. Out of the box iTunes 4 makes it just hard enough to make mp3s to discourage more casual use.
Users with a legitimate need for mp3s (in car, mp3 player that doesn't do AAC) can get them, which is good, but it isn't one-click piracy either.
Still, blank CDs are cheap but they're not free.
Re:No, they do not (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple Canada, are you listening???
I've seen a lot of non-U.S. people whining (not you, dadragon -- your post was almost constructive) about Apple deserting them or treating them as second-class customers, etc.
The reason behind this most likely has to do with what rights that the record companies they're dealing with have. Many contracts are structured such that a company has rights to sell each cut/album in certain countries.
Keeping that info straight, trying to (loosely) enforce it, and keeping the buying interface clean isn't easy.
No doubt Apple will get there, but I'm glad they rolled out the service now (but I live in the U.S. :-) instead of waiting until they had the rights nailed down so they could address the Burundian market as well as all the others.
Easy Preview (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If only I could afford a mac... (Score:2, Insightful)
I bill my time at $100 an hour (not as expensive as it sounds when you have your own business). A lot of shopping around, downloading drivers, assembling computers, and dealing with conflicts costs much more than the difference between a PC and a MAC.
There is a lot of hostility out there about which computer people use. Who gives a shit?
Re:Tutorial: Answers to covert art, credit cards (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point. It's like that quote about Linux - it's only free if your time isn't worth anything. And I think the majority of Slashdotters do not consider their time to be worth anything. Hence the fondness for Linux and complaints about Apple's service.
Great service for songs, but what about movies? (Score:2, Insightful)