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Apple Introduces iTunes Music Store, iTunes 4, new iPod
The store also offers exclusive music, music videos, and other multimedia, all in the main iTunes window. iTunes 4 will be available now (along with QuickTime 6.2), and the music store will be available today. It is Mac-only now, but will be available for Windows by the end of the year.
As a compromise to help prevent piracy, you must change your playlist every 10 CD burns, and you may share the music with only three other Macs (you may modify the list of computers that the music may be shared with at any time). There was no word on the technology used to handle this DRM.
The iTunes playlist sharing allows sharing of playlists, and the streaming of music from one machine to the other, though copying is not supported ("that would be verboten," Jobs added).
The new iPods will be $299 (10GB), $399 (15GB), and $499 (30GB). The dock holds the iPod upright, and has a line-out. The FireWire port is now on the bottom of the unit, and the buttons have been moved up higher, just below the screen, in a row. The improved screen features a backlight. The new units will be in Apple stores on Friday.
Apple continues its tradition of repackaging old technology in a proprietary wrapper and calling it "innovation". Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field(tm) is still operating at full power.
I applaud anyone brave (or foolish) enough to try the pay-for-content model. Anything that subverts the traditional entertainment monopoly distribution mafia is noble, but if you're going to charge someone for something, you have to make the product unique or better than what people can currently obtain for less. 128k is a joke. At least offer full 44.1 CD-quality tracks at the price you're charging - that's something worth buying. Re-assign some of your engineers which are busy working on the next proprietary peripheral plug, and have them focus on a way of delivering high quality audio with less bandwidth. Then you have something worth paying for.
Oh crap -- I hope I didn't just upset the Til Tuesday fans ...
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
You viral marketers need to be a little more surreptitious. Calling a two-year-old portable audio player with a larger hard drive "sexy hot hardware" gives you away.
As for the fundamental change in the business model for popular music... No more Kool-Aid for joo! Apple's efforts are nothing new. This style attempt to circumvent the traditional music business model has been tried many times over, especially on the Internet with efforts such as The Internet Underground Music Archive, Napster, Digital River, Open Market, AOL, Real Networks, MP3.COM and tons of others.
I wish anyone, including Apple, much luck in trying to foster an alternative content distribution medium, but if they are trying to claim this is new and innovative, or otherwise radically different than other efforts, it's obvious they aren't going to learn from the mistakes of others and are doomed to repeat them.
Cheapskate, no way. How could anyone who bought an overpriced computer like an Apple be a cheapskate? However, you are a music thief. Each song you download for free is money out of the poclet of the artist/writer/producer.
You tell me to get a job, where? Mc donalds?
.50 a song is what a college student whos poor can afford to pay, the poor college students are the majority of the people who use Kazaa, not you. If record companies complain that poor college students are becoming pirates, perhaps a solution is to offer music at a price EVERYONE can afford.
I guess it's easier for you to complain about not working, than it is to get a job doing something you may not necessarily like to pay the bills. Must be nice having parents that can support those decisions, eh?
You must be living in a fantasy world.
You don't need music. If you do, there are plenty of radio stations, both old-fashioned-over-the-air-waves and net radio stations. You don't need to steal. You don't need to buy any music. So don't, asshole. Don't complain you can't afford something you don't need. I can't afford to buy a Ferrari, but I'm not going to yell like a 5 year old kid who thinks they should price them so "EVERYONE" can afford.
If a bag of chips were $1, I wouldnt eat chips anymore, if a mc donalds hamburger were $50 (about the price of a resturant meal) I wouldnt be eating there anymore.
What the hell type of restaurants do you go for? $50 a meal? I go to some pretty damned nice restaurants and never pay $50 a meal. In fact, every 5-star restaurant I've been to has been in the range of $30 - $50 a meal, and do you know how rare a true 5-star restaurant is? If you can't afford to buy a $1.00 song, I doubt you will ever be able to afford to pay $50 for a meal. Grow the fuck up.
You aren't their target audience anyway, so shut your pie hole. You couldn't even afford a mac to begin with, so why do you care what prices they are? Of course, you probably think Macs should be a buck fifty five, don't you? That way it's fair-rights, so that everyone is equal. News flash, asshole, I work for my life-style and my toys. Maybe you should try it, too.
Or just move to a communist state, where music wants to be free.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
and what do we get for it down under? more tariffs than china and no apple music store! well, thats it, you yanks are on your own now!