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.
Using a computer to buy music... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Using a computer to buy music... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Using a computer to buy music... (Score:3, Interesting)
probably quite some time.
as quickly as you can, name 5 viruses for windows. now name 5 viruses for the mac. what was the time difference? did you even finish?
sure, it can be done, but it's toward the bottom on the list of my concerns with this new service.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Using a computer to buy music... (Score:5, Funny)
An interesting way of putting it. Perhaps you should switch to some other abbreviation when talking about security!
Problems with service- Makes me feel dirty (Score:5, Funny)
total cost 99cents plus my soul....
Re:Problems with service- Makes me feel dirty (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Using a computer to buy music... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Using a computer to buy music... (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't this true for using a computer to buy anything, not just music? Of course not. How long until someone hijacks Amazon, Paypal, ebay, etc?
Re:Using a computer to buy music... (Score:5, Funny)
are you crazy? How long till someone writes a virus that hijacks iTunes and makes you purchase thousands of songs?
That's easy - as soon as they release the Windows version.
-mj
More (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Burning to CDs, then reconverting (Score:4, Informative)
This has been said by many people, but I don't understand why it would be any different from converting it directly from .AAC to .MP3. When you burn an .AAC to CD, presumably, it will be the highest quality you can possibly get from the .AAC. You then rip to .MP3, it should be the same as decoding from .AAC and encoding to .MP3 (indeed, that is exactly what you are doing, except the intermediate step of converting to CD, which shouldn't degrade the sound at all.)
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: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.
Re:More (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone want to help make an online sharing service? Aka, the file-sharing service Apple didn't know they made available...
I love it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I love it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love it. (Score:5, Funny)
iTunes needs a Quicken plug in (Score:5, Funny)
Same price, fewer costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they do not (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:5, Informative)
But yes, the record companies, not having their distribution costs do stand to make a pretty penny.
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:2)
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:5, Informative)
3 Doors Down - $9.99
Eminem Show - $9.99
50 Cent - $9.99
looks to me like plenty of recent albums are $9.99, and those are just the ones listed on the front page
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Same price, fewer costs (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Its cheaper than health insurance (Score:2)
In any case, Apple is shouldering the hosting costs, not the record company (unless Apple is passing this on, which I doubt).
What the hell? (Score:3, Insightful)
Any
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What the hell? (Score:3, Funny)
High brow downloading. (Score:5, Funny)
Via Apple: I'd like to download these songs please, here is my credit card number..
Via Kazaa: g1bb0r m3 j00r l337 t00nz f0r fr33, d000000ddzzz!!!
Question (Score:2)
The iTunes Music Store is fast and convenient for you, and fair to the artists and record companies. In a nutshell, you can play your music on up to three computers, enjoy unlimited synching with your iPods, burn unlimited CDs of individual songs, and burn unchanged playlists up to 10 times each.
What do they mean by an unchanged playlist?
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
Apple added this restriction to make it difficult to use iTunes to produce hundreds (or more) copies of a single playlist. You can burn a playlist to CD up to 10 times.. after the 10th copy, you have to make a change to the list- add or remove a song or two before the software will allow you to burn another CD. I have not tried this, but that's the way Steve Jobs described in during his presentation. I do not know if simply removing a song from the list and adding it again constitutes change, but I bet there is someone somewhere who has tried it out.
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
just make a new playlist with the same damn songs because iTunes counts the exact playlist file not the AAC files or other playlists with the same set up.
Re:Question (Score:2)
Re:Question (Score:2)
This is simply to prevent you from creating more than ten copies of the same CD. Personally, I think this is a great compromise. Burn a CD for home, a CD for work, and a CD for the car, and you can still burn the same CD 7 more times just in case the origionals get damaged.
Of course you can just copy the CD, but hey, these are things to keep the honest people honest in the first place anyway.
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
It means exactly that.
When you go to burn a cd, you make up a list of songs to go on the CD. That's called a "playlist". What they're saying is that you can burn *that particular playlist* to a cd ten times without having to change it. Change the playlists all you want, burn all the *different* cd's you want, just not the *same* cd ten times in a row.
Change it? Yeah, you know, remove a song from the list, add a song to the list. That sort of thing. The id
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.
Did you get charged twice ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you get charged twice for the song? Or is there some sort of mechanism that will only charge you for a successful download?
!Sig
Re:Did you get charged twice ? (Score:5, Informative)
I was not charged twice.
Re:Did you get charged twice ? (Score:2)
Straight from the source... (Score:4, Informative)
ID Problem (Score:5, Informative)
1) Goto http://www.apple.com
2) Go into the apple store
3) Signin using your userid
4) Add your credit card info to you apple ID
5) (optional?) I turned on 1-click shopping too, not sure if it mattered
6) Go back into iTunes and go through the registration process. You should be able to use your existing ID now.
I can definitely tell you that this worked for me but your milage may vary depending on the gremlins living in your house.
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.
I love the service (Score:2, Interesting)
and the fact that you can burn a real audio cd that plays in cd players everywhere makes this so much better than other sevices.
I don't know if you can print up the cover art or the CD art for lable printing but if you can that would kick more ass.
My problem with signing up. (Score:2, Informative)
I gave up and from the reviews I won't bother again. I also can't say I feel very safe with Apple keeping my credit card numbers in their servers indefinately.
Does anyone happen to know if the transaction is even encrypted? What's to stop someone from snooping my account and or
Re:My problem with signing up. (Score:2, Informative)
It worries me slightly too. I'll be keeping a close watch on my balance on that card. (Hmm, maybe I should get a card just for this?)
It is listed as encryped, though I haven't a
Re:My problem with signing up. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My problem with signing up. (Score:3, Informative)
The security number typically on the *back* of your credit card. You'll see it on the signature line, next to the last 4 numbers of your CC#. So if your card number is:
1234 4321 4567 9876
You'll see something like:
9876 654
on the back of your card. Those last three number
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)
Trade-offs (Score:5, Interesting)
The selection of music, while not great initially, will be expanded. They don't want me to subscribe. It's $1.00 a song - easy impulse buy. I get to choose what to do with my music - I think the copy restrictions are pretty reasonable - of course they fit my usage pattern.
I get the convenience of buying music relatively easily and painlessly, at an acceptable quality level, and without wasteful and largely unnecessary packaging. In the vast majority of cases, I (the consumer, the one who SHOULD be dictating the rules) get to pick and choose within the selection of music offered.
At least Apple is trying to give people what they want. There are some downsides to this service, but even the most stringent fair-use advocates have to admit that the itunes store is the current high water mark for selling music on the internet without Draconian restrictions.
Bug or feature with sound effects preference? (Score:2)
There is a strange thing (perhaps somene could enlighten me on it as to why) - if you lis
iTunes Music Sharing (Score:5, Informative)
This lets you, for example, play back any of your MP3s or playlists stored on a central desktop server running iTunes from any of your other home machines, via whatever network setup you have. The music is streamed to your laptop via Airport, for example. That's pretty cool.
But there's more! You can also connect to any server, even those outside your subnet, using the Advanced>>Connect to Shared Music command, and then typing daap:// followed by the server you want to reach. Some browsers (I tested this with Camino) will even support passing such a URL on to iTunes. This is freakin' amazing. Commercial free radio, on demand. You choose what to play from each station's playlist! Now all we need is some sort of service to search/find running iTunes "hosts." Or, wait for the lawyers to kill it... it's too good to be true.
Caveat: to play an AAC purchased from the Apple Music Store in any case, you must be one of the 3 "authorized" machines.
Re:iTunes Music Sharing (Score:3, Funny)
Great for Mac users... (Score:2)
Also, a buck a song still seems a bit much to me. So, it looks like I don't have a choice but to wait until some large music company realizes it could make a killing selling MP3/OGG/[your favorite format here] (and why not host several formats to choose from---storage is cheap) tracks at a quarter a download.
Re:Great for Mac users... (Score:2)
Yes,
Re:Great for Mac users... (Score:2)
Ditto (Score:2)
Also some one-hit-wonders have protected their one hit by not letting it be purchased alone (Dirty Vegas - Days Go By). Sorta goes against the whole principle of downloadable music empowering the consumer.
iTunes Music Store is Fantastic (Score:2, Interesting)
iTunes 4 is very intuitive. Menu buttons change icons depending on context, windows navigate where they should with no delay, backwards/forwards works, etc. you don't even think about it. The experience reminded me of the first time I shopped at Amazon.com (logical layout, recommendations, appropriate links to other items, etc.)
I spent three hours playing with it
is total recorder available for the Mac? (Score:2)
Support RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course with copy-protected CD's and such, this option might be dying slowly.
Apple needs to get in tight with independent music labels and let bands choose what they want to charge for each song, minus some standard fee. For example, Apple can charge $.45 per song transaction fee, and if the band wants to each song to cost $.50, then the band would only get a $.05 return on each song.
They should really try to establish a legitimate community around this service. I'm thinking of something like AudioGalaxy, but with artists being fairly compensated.
Bringing the issue a little more down to earth (Score:5, Informative)
The main problem with $.50 songs is that the credit card companies charge a minimum flat fee per transaction, on top of the percent-of-transaction fee and the monthly account charge, so it's close to impossible to sell anything for less than a dollar or so.
Example: If you've got a $.35 flat fee plus a 2% transaction fee (and you ignore the monthly fee since you hopefully have lots of transactions to spread it out over), you're looking at having a maximum of $.12 to cover the expenses of the seller and recompense the composer and artists. Let's assume the seller can make back their expenses including bandwidth and web hosting fees, plus computer upgrades and a sysadmin to keep track of all the database issues and automation, with only $.04 per track. (This seems fairly optimistic to me unless you're a huge corporation subsidizing this sevice in some way.) That means that each person in the band will make $.02 every time a track is sold/downloaded. If we further assume that all four artists want to earn close to minimum wage (say low end of $5.00/hour, 40 hours/week), they need to sell 10000 songs per week to earn just over $10,000 a year each. That might be a little difficult for an independent musician without access to radio air time.
Alternate view (Score:5, Interesting)
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've signed up two accounts since the store opened and both went from the terms and conditions screen into the store once I had succesfully logged in with an existing apple id. I would say this is probably an isolated incidant. Or at least one of low occurance as it's the first place I've seen the error reported.
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.
It's a new service and Apple admits freely that they are adding music as quickly as possible and are only adding what the music labels have agreed to provide.
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.
This is most likely due to how the songs/albums are provided to Apple by the labels. When you go to a store and there are two copies of an album one is clean and the other is explicit it is because one or more songs on the album are considered to be that way. This very well may have to do with the voluntary labeling the record labels have been doing. This is hardly an issue, and for many parents letting their kids get music using iTunes is probably a good thing. So I don't see how this could possibly be an issue, nor do I see a reason for it to be changed.
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.)
Of course you can't burn MP3 cds, of course you can't convert the song directly to mp3 in iTunes. That would blatently break the copy limitations and the record companies wouldn't have allowed Apple to go through with it. However, the easiest way to beat the copy protection is either convert the AAC file with another app that ignores the protection or burn a regular cd from iTunes and then rerip the song into the format of your choice. Of course you are burning and ripping a reduced quality song and then encoding it into yet another lossy format (probably) which is only going to reduce the quality more so there isn't really a great reason to do so.
This service isn't for everyone. It's for people that primarily listen to thier songs on thier computer, ipod, or maybe the car. Anyone with a nice stereo isn't going to want to go this route due to the reduced quality of the songs. My experience with the system has been good so far. I don't see myself buying a lot of music because of a couple of reasons. First, the price per song is not low enough to justify the low quality of the reproduction. If I go to the store and buy a cd I'm getting several songs for around $1.00 - $1.50 each depending on the artist, label, and number of tracks on the cd. These are in high quality format on the cd and I can rip the entire cd to whatever quality format I want. I also get a jewel case and liner notes etc. When I get a song from the
Protection (Score:2)
(Note: I don't actually have a Mac, I'm just cracking this in my head.)
I love the service. (Score:5, Informative)
Last night I bought the CD Thrive by the Newsboys for $9.90. At my local Best Buy the CD is $14.99. I'm not much of one to shop around so maybe I could have found it a dollar cheaper here or there. In essence, I saved $5.00. Yeah I had to pay a quarter or so for the CD-R but whatever. From the time I clicked "Buy Album" to the time my computer ejected the burned disc it took a total of 12 minutes. A good 95% of the time that I listen to music I will buy a CD, bring it home, encode it (used to encode to MP3 160, now AAC 128), then burn a copy to keep in my car. Very rarely did I use the original CD as I have a Jeep Wrangler and things have disappeared before. So quality wise I haven't lost anything either.
Are the record companies making a mint off me since they don't have to press the CD's or make the cover art. Possibly. But I saved $5.00 plus gas/time. They were already making money off me anyhow.
I was actually impressed with the number of artists they did have. I'd say they had a good 3/4ths of the artists I wanted to listen to and as this is just the beginning I'd anticipate more in the coming months.
I personally am going to be using this service as much as possible. It may not be for everybody... if you're so high strung on a "down with the RIAA" mission and you feel that you're giving them more money than before then I wouldn't recommend it. My thought is that even if they are getting more money I am losing less. Which is what I care about. If you don't have a cable modem speed connection then it's probably not the cat's pajamas either. Maybe you don't like the selection. Fair enough. If your favorite P2P network works for you that's fine too. As far as ease of use and reliability goes, I'm feeling that this is something I will definitely continue to use.
My impressions.. (Score:5, Interesting)
In general I think this is absolutely a Killer App, and there's a lot of money to be made by Apple, especially if they can get into the Windows marketplace. Clearly Microsoft has dropped the ball on this one as even a cursory look at the Apple set up has one wondering if there will even be any music stores in five years, or even any commercially pressed CDs.
Music is the perfect on-line purchase (even better than books
But it looks like there are still some obstacles to be overcome. Why is there so little music (relatively speaking) available at launch? Why are many popular artists (the Beatles for example) completely missing? Why are so many albums only half there??
Ok, maybe a lot of music is controlled by companies that haven't signed on with Apple yet, but I got the feeling that the record companies really don't trust this system yet and are still afraid that this is going to somehow increase the illegal distribution of their music (like people would buy music from Apple rather than rip it off an original CD).
Is it paranoid to think that perhaps the reason that there are so many albums with only half of their tracks available represents an attempt to see whether these tracks show up more often in song-sharing p2p netowrks than the tracks that haven't been offered?
So I wasn't as impressed as I was holping, only because probably 75-80% of the music I would want to buy isn't yet available on the service.
Assuming that the record companies eventually realize that they can make a hell of a lot of money this way with no distribution costs, and that it doesn't lead to any more theft than unprotectable CD sales already do, and if Apple can win the Windows market as well, then they might eventually make more money off this than computer sales.
One really obvious thing that's missing: the ability to search by song lyrics.
I'm guessing that the actual AAC files downloaded to the Mac are encrypted using a key that's tied to your
I assume that the CDs burned from iTunes are ordinary CDs and there would be nothing stopping someone from turning around and ripping them to mp3.
G.
Re:My impressions.. (Score:5, Interesting)
On some albums, some songs have different copyright owners. Depending on the licensing contracts, distribution contracts, relations between labels and rights owners, there might be some tracks or albums for which it was not practical to clear the rights required to make them available on Apple's music store.
I fully expect that if the mostly positive response to the service translates into sales, you'll see that everyone will want a piece of it and the catalog will grow very quickly.
Similarly, I'd love to see Apple offer a spot for independent musicians, but if they signed the five majors on the deal, I'd expect the labels' lawyers took care of that possibility already...
As for the Beatles, I think Michael Jackson owns the rights to most of their albums, but there also was that trademark lawsuit by Apple Records... I'd be curious to know if the settlement still that reportedly prevented Apple computers to get in the music business still stands.
Re:My impressions.. (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, if Apple does provide some method of de-authorizing your machine other than from within iTunes while your machine is still working [apple.com] then it opens up a can of authentication worms. Namely, what's to keep you from calling them up repeatedly to "deauthorize my machine" when what you're really doing is making a 4th, 5th and 6th machine to play your songs on... and how would they distinguish between the two cases of someone whose machine was stolen and someone who is trying to gain access for a 4th machine?
Re:My impressions.. (Score:5, Interesting)
More songs are coming.
Check out this quote from NYTimes article [nytimes.com]:
The Beatles and "new" technology (Score:3, Informative)
eMusic? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would guess the music selections are different, but on balance, I think I would prefer something like eMusic to Apple's $1/song.
backwater vs mainstream (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:eMusic? (Score:3, Informative)
Watch out for "DICK" (Score:5, Funny)
I am sure the rest of the naughty words are handled that way on the iTunes store. It must really suck to be a Richard at Apple.
Why is everyone dumping on AAC compression? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard a lot of claims (right here on Slashdot, no less) that DivX encoded video looks just as good as MPEG2 encoded DVD video (which is encoded at a significantly higher bitrate), so why do you guys find it so hard to believe that relatively low bitrate AAC audio could sound as good as MP3 audio of a higher bitrate?
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.
In Apple Stores soon? (Score:3, Interesting)
If I was Steve-o Jobbs, I'd allow and motivate people to use the Apple stores (or other stores, Best Buy, Circuit City, Ratty Shack, etc.) to access this service. Wouldn't it be great for the non-tech-savvy does-not-have-a-broadband-connection is-afraid-to-install-new-software customer to go into a store (with a nice fat broadband connection), pick the songs they want and walk out with a custom CD hot off the burner?
Of course, there might be snags (they wouldn't want the file you bought to be accessible by another anonymous walk in customer), but it's probably easy to work around.
Kudos to Apple anyway.
Audio Hijack Pro (Score:5, Informative)
This app is called Audio Hijack Pro [rogueamoeba.com].
Fantastic value for 30$ only.
Independent Labels (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If only I could afford a mac... (Score:2, Informative)
hey the EMac is $1000 and comes with a combo drive and 17 in monitor.
and laptops from apple are so much better than the PC counterparts. makes me sad that I listened to my wife and did not buy the powerook when I bought my laptop...she wanted a PC
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: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 m
Re:If only I could afford a mac... (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, look. Another Apple zealot helping to further spread FUD.
Let's see. Last year after a lot of shopping around I put together my current desktop box. It's a dual (yes, dual) PIII 1.0GHz with 1GB (yes, GB) of RAM, an nVidia GFx something card with 64MB or RAM, and two 40GB disks. All under $1,300.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain how I can get that type of rig from Apple within the same price range, hmmm?
If people are willing to pay premium
Re:Right idea, wrong price (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Right idea, wrong price (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Right idea, wrong price (Score:4, Interesting)
High quality versions would require more bandwidth to provide. They would also require more disk space, and probably be more expensive. However, the people that want that (like myself) would probably pay more for that (I would). For example, I'm already paying for a high speed unlimited bandwidth internet connection. I'm paying a small fortune for it each month, but based on that it could be expected that I would probably pay more for a higher quality service in other related areas as well. Besides, bandwidth is really the concern of the user and not Apple. They warn users right up front that you really need a higher speed internet connection to be able to download the music, previews, etc effectivly.
Two, the recording industry. What you see today is doubtlessly a compromise. The industry is leery of unprotected high quality tracks. Thus, Apple gives some protection, and lowers the quality somewhat. I expect that if Apple insisted on high quality, the industry would demand strong DRM, and if Apple insisted on zero DRM, the industry would only permit low quality downloads.
I think this is the real issue. The recording industry probably figures that if they released higher quality music online it would just end up being on one of the p2p networks. Even if it did have very restrictive DRM. In fact I think very restrictive DRM on the files would make it so that the files showed up more frequently on the p2p networks, but of course I don't have any evidence to support that claim so it's just my opinion. Apple isn't insisting on strong DRM, they are providing a system that is fairly flexible and fair the users as well as the record companies. However, I don't think the price is justified because of the lower quality. I think that maybe $.50 is a fair price for a limited quality song but not almost the full price of the song (based on cd prices).
Re:I've said it once and I'll say it again... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you burn a given playlist more than 10 times? Do you have more than three Macs you will use to listen to that music? You can put what you buy on an UNLIMITED number of iPods (ok, nobody has a ton of them, but still) and 128kbps AAC sounds better than an MP3 of the same bitrate. Not quite the 320kbps you "require" but still very good.
It's amazing how people always complain. People, it's not going to get better than this. Do you really think Apple could have struck a deal with the five record labels without some sort of DRM?
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
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
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.
Mechanical royalties (Score:5, Informative)
Fuck that, they need to charge a more reasonable price, like $0.05 a song or $1 an album.
That's not financially possible. Under U.S. copyright law, the songwriter's publisher gets about 8 cents per copy [nmpa.org] in addition to what the label gets.
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"
Re:I haven't heard this mentioned ... (Score:3, Informative)
Backing up Songs [apple.com]
Interrupted Downloads [apple.com]