Apple Releases Major iTunes Update 910
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
This whole limit of computers... (Score:4, Interesting)
But it's not in software update yet?!?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone explain why I can't install it through my preferred medium?
Cheers!
Missing: Basic Features (Score:3, Interesting)
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
wine? (Score:4, Interesting)
[TMB]
Apple Lossless encoding (Score:5, Interesting)
Slight change in the rules... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
My personal iTunes wish list (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
It makes sense to go up to 5 auth. systems (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:5, Interesting)
Goodbye DRM, Hello Lossless (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Lossless audio compression (Score:1, Interesting)
On its site is a comparision chart. MA is able to compress an album to about 53% of its size, while WinRAR does 61.9% and ZIP using WinRAR 2.7 goes all the way up to 91%.
MA is not available yet for Mac and Linux, though.
Lossless Encoding at Half the Size? (Score:4, Interesting)
Tivo (Score:3, Interesting)
Yay for WMA conversion (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Slight change in the rules... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody wants to be "managed".
If I buy a book, I have pretty clear rights. I can read it, lend it to others, quote from it etc but need the permission of the publisher to reproduce sections of it. My rights are pretty much fixed.
Now, if I purchase music from iTunes, the copyright holders may, through Apple, "manage" my rights. Yesterday I could burn to 10 CDs, today I can burn to 7, tomorrow who knows... it could be 50 or even zero.
The idea of phonograph records was that you no longer had to play an instrument or attend a concert to enjoy music... you could buy a record instead. Tapes, CDs and digital formats are refinements of that concept.
The problem that we run into today is that the cartels that sprung up around the centralized manufacture, distribution and promotion of vinyl records, tapes and other media with high overhead cost to duplicate. These cartels controlled the market by controlling distribution and promotion.
Digital media has a near-zero duplication cost. Buying pre-printed media is now a convenience and guarantee of quality rather than a necessity. History has proven that people are willing to accept inconsistent quality and inconvenience in exchange for lower prices. Enter the problem the copyright cartels face.
With DRM, something once very simple "lets go buy a CD/record/tape" has become more arcane and complex "lets buy a digital media license". Of course, the terms associated with digital licenses are subject to change by the copyright holder.
The portable music player (Score:3, Interesting)
- lock-in?
- not made here attitude?
- FLAC lacks a good integer based decoder?
- ALE has some yet unadvertised advantage of FLAC?
- something else?
I have no idea which it is, but time will give us the answer.
Rio works on iTunes (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This whole limit of computers... (Score:1, Interesting)
Apple lossless (Score:5, Interesting)
Josh
Re:Is this FLAC? No. (Score:2, Interesting)
From the FLAC's developer page [sourceforge.net]: (emph mine)I bet that's why.
searching from the arrow icons (Score:3, Interesting)
I think those little arrows were some marketer's idea to get people to buy more music on iTMS, and then they thought they'd better make them do something else so it wasn't so blatant, so they threw in the option/shift-click thing to zero in on stuff in the local collection. I guess if you just really don't want to use the keyboard, the little arrows would help, but for me, they just clutter up the screen. Thank goodness they made it an optional feature!
I might be interested in using them to find my music/artists in the iTMS, except that the iTMS really doesn't have pretty much anything I'd be interested in (or don't already have). I know that's more a reflection on me than the iTMS, but that's how it is.
Apple just plain keeps making everything better (Score:2, Interesting)
Ironic how 4.5 opens up WMA (Score:3, Interesting)
(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.
Re:I hear the cheers of Apple Fanboys now! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Seriously.)
CD-Text? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This whole limit of computers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would you do that? Take your protected AAC, open up iMovie, import the AAC, the save it again as an AIFF.
Re:By the numbers (Score:1, Interesting)
100,000,000 was the number of songs projected to be DOWNLOADED from iTMS - not sold. That projected number also included the Pepsi free-tunes promotion.
> 70,000,000 - Number of songs sold the first 365 days of the service
This number does not, AFAICT, include the Pepsi promotion.
So if 30% of the 100 million Pepsi promotional songs were redeemed then it's still possible that Apple has hit it's 100 million songs downloaded in the first year mark.
New features are not the point (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:DRM Agreement Changed. (Score:1, Interesting)
FLAC in iTunes (Score:2, Interesting)
iTunes can play any audio file that Quicktime can play, so we could very easily have FLAC in iTunes if someone with the relevant expertise could be found to make a Quicktime Component that plays back FLAC.
There's already one for Ogg-Vorbis, but it doesn't seem to do Ogg-FLAC.
Of course, this wouldn't be as good as native FLAC support in iTunes, because I doubt things like the track meta data tags would be recognized through Quicktime. Still, it would be cool...
Re:Missing: Basic Features (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, how hard is it to append a new audio stream to an existing stream without a gap? It's just a string of bits, right?
There is one pair of tracks that makes me want this feature: Parabol and Parabola from Tool's most recent album. Those tracks are essentially one song, and the god-damned quarter-second silence iTunes puts between them drives me CRAZY! it ruins the whole transition!
I'm just sayin'. I still use and love iTunes.
Here's a feature I wish it had, though: I wish I could drag around the interface elements. For me, what I really want is for the Artists to show up where the playlists show up, so that I have a whole window-height worth of space to browse my artists. Maybe the same for albums, so that you'd get four columns of data: playlists, artists, albums, and tracks. Perhaps columns could pop in and out of existence contextually.
Re:Encoding is free if your time is worth nothing. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do wish that the default settings for their encoder were more reasonable but they're easy enough to change.
I wish iTunes could tell you when it was having trouble reading a scratched CD, though. As I listen thru my music library every now and then I'll come across a messed-up MP3. I have a "re-encode" playlist for this purpose, so I can remember what tracks are junk and go back and try to re-rip them.
Holy Automotive Noise Floor Batman! (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, I'm a car audio snob as much as the next guy (sealed-box sub in the trunk, 5-channel amp, component door units with high-mounted tweeters, etc.), but I'm not about to suggest that true audiophile quality sound is possible in MY car (1997 Nissan Maxima). In my experience, there's simply too much ambient road noise, particularly in the sub50 Hz range and too many issues concerning accurate soundstage (misc reflections as well as dramatic phase issues related to my proximity to the driver's side speakers) to consider any car-audio system to be truly competitive with an above-average home system.
Tim
Re: Why is seamless playback so hard? (Score:3, Interesting)
Even in that case, though, it shouldn't be too hard for the software to see that the sound stops abruptly half-way through the last frame, and infer the endpoint?
iTunes phoning home to wcg.net? (Score:3, Interesting)
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) noc@wcg.net
Wiltel Communications
3180 Rider Trail South
Bridgeton, MO 63045
US
800-934-8434
Anyone have a clue why?
Re:This whole limit of computers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Chances are it sounds *different*, not necessarily much worse. You should try ABXing* with a lossless source and see when you stop being able to tell the difference. LAME is tuned to attempt to produce such a "transparent" file using --alt-preset standard, but obviously with such a limit format it can't work miracles (some music *really* needs more than 320kbps).
* ABX involves taking two tracks and distributing them randomly across (A,B) and (X,Y). You flick between them and try to match X,Y -> A,B. Thow in some stats, and you get a fairly scientific assessment as to whether you can tell any difference. On HydrogenAudio [hydrogenaudio.org], you can get banned for making a statement about quality without doing this
Re:iTMS now accessible through firewalls! (Score:2, Interesting)
Slashdot links are also appreciated.
cluestick (Score:3, Interesting)
For an interesting counter-example, one of Kyuss's albums has 4 tracks, with 3 tracks per song. Although a couple of them were later separated out on the 'best of' cd.
Re:Multiple Downloads (Score:2, Interesting)