Slashdot Mirror
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.
Its about time someone started selling music the way people want it... one song at a time. Even better that its from a cool company like Apple.
Reality has a liberal bias
I love singles and think paying $20 for an album with just one good single is silly.
If I owned a mac I would support Apple just to show the RIAA what consumers really want. DRM will not help but more modest pricing.
I do wonder how many record labels are signing up with this service though? They make money ripping people off and this may cut into their profits.
http://saveie6.com/
At $0.99 (US) a song, this is still expensive, considering you still don't get original quality of the song (yeah yeah, sounds the exact same, blah blah; but there are times it's better to have the hi-quality original then a compressed format when doing editings, etc...), or a physical media, or the physical cover/lyrics, all in a jewel case...
Considering I'd have to add another $0.25 (I'm guessing here, I'm in Canada) for a CD-R, I still would be missing 2 things above at the same cost, especially considering some CDs have 'extras', which I do like. The 'convenience' factor doesn't make up for that either; I can still just drop by the retail shop next door when doing my grocery shopping (or the used store across the street).
If it was 2/3 that price, then I'd definitely say it's worth it. But for now, I think they missed their own mark.
I'll pass for now.
AC comments get piped to
this is such a painfully obvious compromise, why has the music industry been such a grinch about it?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
some cd's have intro or little skit song throughout the cd. i don't wan to have to pay $1 for a 30 second intro or skit. of course i don't have to, but then again i will never have the entire cd. for a cd that is 60 mins but 20 tracks it is a bit much. still worth just ordering online and paying shipping.
a per mb or per song minute charge would take care of this. or at least special pricing if you want an entire cd. i guess this is more for people who are just d/l'ing a few songs not the entire cd.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Hackers announce breaking Apple DRM, details to follow.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Will artists be able to place their music on the iTunes Music Store on their own, independently of a recording company?
If so, then this could be absolutely huge for independent artists. :)
$0.99 USD Is too pricy. It is more than the cost of the average cd and the AAC encoding is a lossy format. Perhaps if they offer better deals on albums or bulk songs this is a good deal. As it stands, music is too expensive already.
This looks like a nice stand politically, but its really just a chance to gouge the consumer market as the first big dog in.
Besides, I'm of the, "Go to my concert, I'll give you the CD" philosophy.
Rob
play bought tunes on a non-iPod player such as Archos or Rio
stream bought tunes to a SliMP3 or Audiotron
play bought tunes on your Windows or Linux PC
burn bought tunes on an MP3-CD for use in the car or a DVD player
switch to another client other than iTunes (e.g. Audion) for your Mac music experience
broadcast bought tunes using Shoutcast
So, despite the convenience, I think it will not compare to either ripping CDs or downloading from less-than-legal services. Too bad.
sulli
RTFJ.
Quote from the website:
"The iTunes Music Store is only available in the U.S."
Interesting how they say "in the U.S.", and not "to U.S. customers". Does this mean it does some sort of IP check and won't allow you to enter based on that?
Either way, Canadians are shut out yet again. Shit... first Tivo, now this.
Anybody remember this? Seems like he knew exactly what he was talking about.
How long before someone comes out with an ACC to MP3 or ACC to OGG converter?
I can't find it in the article, I'll read it again, it was probably obvious....Does Apple get a cut of that buck?
So, where was Microsoft in all this? Or are they still waiting for Apple to succesfully implement DRM so they can copy it, too?
Seems strange to me that Apple can actually come up with a workable DRM while Microsoft is still sitting on their hands.
I think the time is coming when DRM will be a reality for every computer user, whether we like it or not. However, it's good to see that at least one company is using DRM in such a manner that protects the artists without diminishing our fair use rights. I don't mind DRM as much as I mind giving up my freedoms. Hopefully, Apple will continue to strike the correct balance between protecting the artists and making content available.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Am I the only one who feels 99 per song is a rip-off? Yes, it is wonderful that you get full rights to the song, but it's AAC... 128k AAC I may add.
:)
Their marketing people now have two problems. 128k AAC is still better than 128k MP3, but how many people are going to believe that when most people assume that a 2ghz Pentium is faster than an AMD processor running at a lower clock speed? Second, who is going to pay 99 for something they can get for free on Gnutella?
Sure, some people will pay for the convenience of downloading very simply from the iTunes Music Store.
I will not be one of those people.
I *still* won't buy unless I know how much money is going to the artists, and how much everyone else gets. I've been boycotting the music industry for almost three years now, and this doesn't look compelling to me. Anyone else agree?
Oh, and before I hear a bunch of people calling me a cheapskate, I have a good collection of DVDs and an Apple Computer. I'd assume most cheapskates have a thriving collection of VCDs and a Windows PC... not to stereotype or anything...
Artists like Brittney, who have 1 hit and then poop out 12 extra tracks to fill a 11$ CD, will now only get 1$ income. :-)
If made-up artists want to sell as much as they do now, the overall quality will have to increase
Applemusic guarantees quality poop all the way
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Any word on pricing per album? .99 a song is cool if I only want a few songs but it becomes moot if an album is 15 songs. Also, I'd really like it if they would rapidly introduce the stuff you don't hear on radio. I'm tired of all the music I want being a special order.
-
if you don't have any CD's to rip...
Unlimited CD burning for personal use? In other words, it's pretty simple to turn an AAC into an mp3. At worst, you'll be able to burn to CD and then convert back from cda to mp3. Or ogg, or whatever your personal preference for non-DRM-restricted music is. Hopefully somebody can make a direct converter without the intermediate CD burning step.
This could be a huge boon for Gnutella. Just think, a check box that says "Go ahead, take this directory full of AAC files, transform them to mp3s, and share them." There would finally be a standardized high-quality mp3 version of any given song. No more downloading 5 different copies of a song and deleting the ones with hisses and clicks, or Madonna complaining about how evil I am.
I don't understand how DRM can coexist with the ability to burn music to a CD. To me, this is the reason that DRM will never be able to create a music-downloading service that everybody likes and that the big music companies make a lot of money off of. The only way for them to have a service that everybody uses is if it's so cheap it's not worth the extra hassle to do P2P.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
"The iTunes Music Store is only available in the U.S" (http://www.apple.com/music/store/)
Oh well. Back to P2P for me then.
(Note - The above is a joke. Well, both bit's are a joke really. When will US media companies learn that breaking the world into regions is a terrible idea?).
With a broadband connection and a decent speed burner...MOST people could have the song downloaded and burned to a CD BEFORE you get your keys in the ignition.
SO you say? Well, you could be listening to the song ON THE WAY to the grocery store.
Add to the fact that its likely that you would have to stand in line at the music store AND, oh yeah, you would still be paying $10 or up for that physical CD.
Oh, and you go to the grocery store EVERY day, too, right???
Really, this isn't more convenient???
(BTW, I am saying all this given the facts that I don't have ANY of the things mentioned-high speed ISP, burner, or an Apple. But IF I did, I would find this DAMN convenient)
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
According to the Apple web site, the cheapest iPod they are selling is the 10GB for $299.
They know that they can't get tightwad cheapskates like you to pay for music, you're not their target audience. The people they are targetting are those who have real, actual money to spend and happen to like the convenience of being able to buy just one song, instead of a whole album of questionable merit. What this means for you, in practical terms, is that you will no longer have to shell out for the whole "Gay Dance Beats Mix XVII" album, but rather just download "YMCA" and "In the Navy". If you weren't a tightwad, that is.
--sdem
Isn't that the whole thing with P2P? Each of us has unique friends that have unique friends that have unique friends...
If I stream a song to my friend, and he streams it to his friend, and so on we are just passing the song out to the whole net for the price of $1.
Someone will design a P2P software that only allows you to share your music to your select 'friends' and it will cause a network of P2P nodes that will become the Napster of the future. On the surface, it will look like a much more local version, but the big picture will show us that its just as big as the original.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
You can go ahead and say "Oh, but all my 128kbps MP3s sound just as good as the CDs", but chances are, you're wrong. Anybody with anything better than cheapo computer speakers or $5 headphones they got for free in a box of Cracker Jacks is able to hear an enormous difference.
And you can go ahead and RTFA. They're using 128kbps AAC encoding, which is by many accounts at least as good as 196kbps mp3, and by some accounts as good as 256kbps.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
"Check, check". "Is this thing on? Test test". "1-2-3-4. Check check". "Is tape rolling?" ("Rolling!"). "Inna Gadda Da" ("cut! You were flat."). "From the top? Check check". "Can someone adjust my monitor volume?" bwanggg! "Damn, I broke a string!" ...
www.richardsrealm.com
$1000 cables I bought for my Bose speakers aren't going to help that much when the source material is total shit.
:-)
True, since they aren't helping that much anyway.
Clue: If you spent $1000 for cables you aren't really in a position to be judging whether or not something is a rip-off.
The question I heard from yesterdays story was "What colour will the new music note be?" But we all know now, it's green!
I don't have to go to the mall. I don't have to buy an entire CD for one track. I see it, I click on it, and (with broadband and 99 cents later) it's mine a mere seconds later. I can burn it. I can stream it (albeit limitedly, with AAC.) There are significant advantages to this system - it's not just about reducing cost, although that too is a factor.
However, you are correct regarding the purchasing of tracks by length: I think Apple should have released the service allowing individual tracks purchased at 99 cents, and entire albums at $7.99, because basically, music falls into two camps: one where I'd like the entire album, or where I'd like a single, or several tracks that pique my interest. This current offering addresses the latter; I imagine they'll introduce the former as soon as they can.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that previous versions were for one OS or the other. This new iPod version seems to be for both OSes. Does anyone read it this way as well?
$1000 for cables? For Bose speakers? After paying that much, no wonder you consider yourself an audio snob. Buy some cheaper cables and better speakers.
Not hard. Burn the file to a CDRW and then rip it off the CDRW you just burned. Easy as pie.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Wow, there sure a lot of whining flamers around here today. What apple has done is really tremendous. They have introduced sexy hot hardware, and at the sametime produced a service which fundamentally changes the business model for popular music. Big labels will no longer be able to charge $18 for a Britney Spears CD with, at most, one listenable song on it. If that song really is any good, they will get $1. If not they will get $0. This has the potential to change the entire basis of how artists are signed, produced, and promoted. We should be excited!
You are naive enough to buy 'special' cables...errr.... snake oil cables - yet call .99/song a rip-off! Oh that's just too much!!
And if you don't believe me, please visit RAP and see what the pro engineers say.
This is exactly what people have been waiting for. Too bad the industry couldn't have come up with this rather simple (and unrestrictive) process back in 1998 when mp3's started gaining popularity.
I fear that this new venture is doomed to failure now that people are so accustomed to getting their stuff for free. Too bad the industry didn't come up with this sooner.
www.lonseidman.com
Also, it will be a major hassle, and then you have all those burnt CDs that you'll use very infrequently, which will be a cost and a pain as well. Which, I suspect, is the point.
sulli
RTFJ.
too bad they obviously didn't manage to secure international rights. how can i get a credit card with a billing address in the U.S.? Any ideas? No, I'm not moving there. Not for at least another year... :)
Well, this isn't exactly the unfuckAAC program you're talking about, but it's close: On Windows I use a program called TotalRecorder. This program records the sound that other programs plays. I use it to record DRM protected WMA files I buy from online music stores.
TotalRecorder quite good, and _very_ reasonably priced (around $11). You've got to do a little manual work, though. If you want to encode the music in MP3 you've got to download BladeEnc or LameEnc separately. And for each song you play, you manually have to save the file and add ID3 tags yourself.
I don't buy too much DRM protected music, though, so I can live with the somewhat manual process.
Now, not to troll or anything, but who is going to actually buy into this service? Even if Apple dropped the price to say, .25 a song for a higher quality format, would anyone still buy it? It's unfortunate... but I don't think it would do well either. Why buy when you can get it free? I guess it's a moral decision, but hopefully Apple will try to use this service to provide more money to the _artist_ and not the record companies. If that were the case, I would be impressed, and I know that I personally would pay per music download if I knew a large majority of the money was going to the artist. It may be a little too much to ask...
But, at least Apple is trying to go along with what some people want. I think that if there is some positive support, this service could grow and improve. I really hope it makes it.
take off every sig for great justice
What? The typical "new" cd that gets released on the market is about $15-18.00 and probably contains anywhere from 10-15 songs. That works out to about $1.00 a song when you average it out.
I mean, common... you spend $1.00 and have the song for good. In some places, you can't even buy a bottle of soda for that cheap anymore.
-brain
Anybody with anything better than cheapo computer speakers or $5 headphones they got for free in a box of Cracker Jacks is able to hear an enormous difference. It is especially bad if you have high fidelity audiophile gear. For example, the vibration dampers and $1000 cables I bought for my Bose speakers aren't going to help that much when the source material is total shit.
If you have that much money to throw into listening to music, then Apple's download service is not for you, because you a) probably enjoy going to the music store rather than downloading music and b) can afford to buy an entire album at a time in case you happen to like it.
I thought we had decided that Apple wasn't going to do DRM? It sure looked like it, but then here we are, looking at Apple supporting and using DRM in one of its premiere applications. Do you feel betrayed yet?
You formed this idea in your mind that Apple wasn't going to get involved in DRM, and then "felt betrayed" by Apple when your fantasy didn't come true? Can't help you there, Sparky.
The only way that Apple could even begin to make this all acceptable would be to offer the music for $0.25US/track at 320kbps quality. Sure, it still won't really approach CD quality, but at least you won't be charged an arm and a leg for substandard music.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. You make it sound like Apple bought out and closed down all the record stores.
Apple has released a service for people who like downloading single MP3 tracks to listen to on their computer. There's no point in banging on your high chair like Apple just took away your zweiback. You're not the target customer, so just keep doing whatever you're doing now and don't worry about Apple.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
If I'm confronted by two choices:
1) buy a full CD (on average 12-15 songs per CD) at $10 or more when I really just one this one song,
2) buy this one song I want for a buck
Give me option number 2 any day.
You can get the firmware update to add AAC and iTunes 4 support right now at: http://www.apple.com/ipod/download/
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
You got ripped off. Plain and simple. Those 1000 dollar cables will do jack shit to the sound-quality, and whatever benefit you might get (due to placebo-effect), will be compensated by those "average at best" Bose-speakers
Why don't you just install green LED's in your CD-player? Or color your CD's with green magic-marked. It's alot cheaper, it's also popular among audiophiles and it gives you just as much benefit as those 1000 dollar cables do (read: none).
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
And where the fuck did you come up with this $0.50 number? "A bag of chips"?? Why aren't new Fords priced around $300? After all, that's about the price of my pair of speakers - it's a fair price.
--sdem
$0.99US for one song?! Shit, these are going to be crappy 128kbit/s tracks, even! That's an awfully high price to pay for substandard music quality.
They're not 128k MP3s, they're 128k AACs. Apple claims it's better than MP3. Now, I haven't done any listening tests, but I'm sure someone out there has. Anyone? But yeah, I'd prefer a higher bitrate too. Let's bug them. Of course, I'm in the UK and don't have access yet. Bugger.
Not to mention the DRM restrictions that Apple is imposing. I thought we had decided that Apple wasn't going to do DRM? It sure looked like it, but then here we are, looking at Apple supporting and using DRM in one of its premiere applications. Do you feel betrayed yet?
Not yet. They couldn't have gotten the record deals without the DRM. If it's got to be in there, I think they got the compromise about right. Easy local sharing between Macs on the same network. Copies of songs on three different Macs with movable licences. They're trying to do the right thing, to the degree that they realistically can. Commercially, it can't be a free-for-all with the RIAA involved.
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
Right?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I don't like Rock and/or Roll music, so the download thing doesn't really appeal. I can still go to the library and rip just about any music that interests me. What I can't get there, I can't imagine that the iTunes "Store" will have for me.
It's fairly laughable that many of the folks who complain about the price/crippling of the content are those who would never buy the content anyway. I personally, can't imagine that 80% of any "downloader"'s personal music library would ever be purchased.
I find it just as silly that Apple is crippling the content. There's a very available (albeit illegal) substitute good - one that strikes me as kiltering the economics of this undertaking towards the "failure" side.
That being said, I thought the new iPods had usable feature improvements. They are very expensive, but I think they seem to be feature/form factor competitive.
I thought the "rendevous" software side was somewhat interesting.
BTW - We made it how many posts before the predictable "I can build myself an AMD with Linux and Windows (just for games) for $1.99 and it will outrun a $3,000 Mac"?
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
If my band isn't signed by one of the big 5, how can I get my material posted for sale by Apple? I suspect that the answer is "I can't". I wish I could figure out what contact number or e-mail address to use from the apple site to find out...
Or, use Kazaa and save your money.
You act like you only have 2 choices. Even with 3 choices, CDs are currently way over priced. Music should be gettinng cheaper not more expensive.
I'm not going to buy music until its at a level I can afford, I'm in college and cannot afford $20 cds.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Or save yourself a disc and use an app like audio hijack to rip the iTunes file as it plays.
Ditto with the networked sharing, you stream to me...I rip as I listen.
Apple DRM, with a nod and a wink to what their customers really want.
True - except for the fact that Apple has committed to releasing a Windows client for this by the end of the year. If they succeed in this, then this service will be accessible to Windows users as well - the market becomes gargantuan.
1. Does iTunes 4 break iCommune?
2. What copy protection - if any - is used to protect tracks downloaded from AppleMusic.com?
3. Does the copy protection affect tracks burned to CD as well as tracks copied to iPods and Macs?
4. If the tracks burned to CD are copy-protected, will these CDs be playable in standard CD players?
-MAL
This article at MacCentral brought me to a conclusion:
The iPod may turn out to be the most useful piece of computer hardware ANY computer or electronic hardware company has ever developed.
That is a very general, seeming overly biased, statement coming from an Apple Computer Consultant; I'm sure.
Apple created a wonder in ease of use and portability with the iPod. Until the iPod was intrduced not only were Creative and Archos Jukebox series bulky, but 10, 15, and 20 gigs was impossibly slow to load to download to the units. They were also about as easy as a car stereo Mp3 player to navigate. Apple came out with a unit that essentially put a miniature iTunes (one of the easiest, most elegant MP3 players on any platform) on the iPod, made it a hard drive to boot, but added a firewire interface. This allowed the full 5, 10, and 20 gig transfer in minutes rather than the 3.3 hours it would take for the 20 gigs through USB.
The iPod is becoming a status symbol. Shaq uses one and CONSTANTLY talks about his in interviews. He made everyone on the team purchase one before they went to the playoffs last year.
The iPod is also versatile beyond it's intended uses:
iPod as a remote control The beauty linked here was ORIGINALLY planned for the iPod and is being redeveloped now
iPod as a mouse
iPod with FM radio and here
iPod as a gameboy and game controller
Some of the coolest accesories have popped up for the iPod too. Some are linked here. Check out the transpod and of course the cool iTrip and iFM availible from Griffin.
Here are two great resources for iPod info:
http://www.ipodlounge.com
http://www.ipodhacks.com
I have already seen future incarnations and "in development" iPods. Apple is planning for it to change the future direction of the company!
To answer a question common in the forums, there WILL be an update to allow 10 and 20 gig rev 2 iPods to work, it will be released sometime next month.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Come on, people, we can do better than this! iTunes 4 is downloading as fast as my DSL pipe can take it!
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
You can't afford the luxury of music, so you steal it. Nice.
Can't wait until someone steals your wallet because they felt that pizza was too expensive to pay with their money.
You, are a fuckwit.
I'm quite frankly surprised at all the negative comments here. A system that makes allowances for fair use and that is priced reasonably seems to be what folks here have been clamoring for since the shut down of Napster.
.mp3-savvy consumer.
Apple is stepping out on a very thin limb here, and as with every other product they've released in the past few years, they'll make adjustments to the feature set and pricing as feedback reaches them.
$1.00 a song isn't unreasonable given the convenience, flexibility and feature set they've built in to this product. They've removed the need for me to pay shipping charges opn music, to fight traffic on the way to the music store, and to find space for more jewel cases. I still retain the right to burn the song an unlimited number of times, albeit on different playlists every tenth burn. Sounds like fair use to me. It's an intelligent approach that is the FIRST one to consider the needs, rights, wishes and hopes of the
At least give them credit for doing something no other computer company or music company has done or even shown an interest in: further integrating the computers we use for 8-10 hours a day with the other devices and interests we all have.
Yeah, and their first ever CD would be
Best of Celin Dion (Don't play on a MAC)
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
So you hire live musicians to come play in front of you any time you want to hear music? You must be pretty damn rich!
With the Apple service, you can share your music with your 3 friends (or their computers, anyway), but it's streaming, not copying. Once they've listened to the song, it's not sitting there on their computer to then share with their friends. If they want to do that, they have to go buy the music themselves.
Unfortunately, they've chose AAC as the "music format of the future" - an unfinalized format with no tagging standard and no good gapless playback support...
Hmm, I wonder if this will include non-English/US music? I'd expect some Latin/Spanish music, but can I get Indian music? Can I get Quebec pop? Can I get Japanese?
Jim
The porn industry is one of the most lucrative on the surface of the planet, some claim it's the only way to make money, and a lot of it on the Internet.
Yet there are no organisations to protect the rights of the producers. No MPAA, no RIAA, ever heard of someone going to court for pirating porn? Didn't think so.
In this industry very big corporations are in competition with very small and innovative business and both are pirated like crazy both non seems to suffer.
There's a lesson to be learn here, maybe the pron industry is the way to go for the whole entertaiment industry: Less regulations, more diversity, very lax fair use and aggressive competition between big and small producers.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Just remember that people still pay not much less than $1 per song for songs on a jukebox, and those you get to listen to -once-, you can't copy them, you can't put them on your iPod.
But, I'd never be interested in BUYING a song in a lossy format.
like, say, a cd? (or do you really think a cd is a lossless format?)
And potentially waste your time. Over the weekend, I downloaded my first full album from Kazaa in awhile while I wait for my legally purchased copy to arrive (no, really). After an hour or so of searching, downloading, cancelling slow/incomplete downloads, finding that a song was mislabeled, re-downloading, etc. I finally had all 14 tracks that I was looking for. I listed to a few of the tunes that I was really interested in, and burned the entire list to CD for roadtrip listening. Turns out that 4 of the tracks were "looped", first 20 or so seconds just repeat for the duration of the track. When I returned home, I fired-up Kazaa to find the complete versions of those tracks. After trial-and-error with 25 downloads, I finally found full versions of 2 of those tracks, but not of the other 2 despite there being at least 50 available downloads of varying file size. In all, I probably wasted 3 hours of near-constant work just to get an almost-complete copy of the CD. Hard telling if I would've actually purchased these tracks via Apple's music store had it been available considering I had already purchased the actual CD (no, really), but I can definitely see me using the service for spur-of-moment purchases and single-track purchases.
So what format do you buy in? CD throws out high frequencies, and quantizes to 16 bits. Some people can hear the losses these cause (or they can hear the things that are done to try to make those losses less annoying).
Furthermore, the fact that you are willing to compress on your own shows that you DO value the compressed versions. What's wrong with buying something that has value to you?
You should learn about the format before jumping to conclusions.
AAC at 128 easily surpasses MP3 at 256kbit. The kbit is not a representation of quality when you are comparing between two different methods. It's a representation of size.
So basically with AAC people will be downloading files no larger than the ones they are accustomed to but the quality will be worlds better.
the audio on a CD is already lossy...
44,100 samples/sec is not analog, and any true audiophile would tell you that analog is much higher quality. it is near impossible to buy music in an uncompressed format - anything digital is technically compressed because of sampling.
i don't have a high quality reel to reel or turntable any more anyway... and couldn't afford the 2" tape to boot
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
-dunar
When did I say I steal it?
I just said I dont buy it.
Also music isnt a luxury its a commodity, supply and demand is not controlling the price of music, this is why people steal it.
Theres endless supply, and endless demand, but the supply out weighs the demand, what do music companies do? they illegally fix the price so music stays expensive, this keeps music as a luxury when its actually not.
Its equal to bread companies keeping breat at $10 a slice illegally and then trying to sell bread to poor Africans. Sure some people in the USA can afford bread at $10 a slice, people like you perhaps, but this is not the value of bread based on how much it costs to produce, or based on supply and demand. Its illegal to fix or control the price of something, the market is supposed to do that, so if the market says music is too expensive and decides to steal it, this is called capitalism.
Perhaps if the music followed the market instead of abusing it, people wouldnt steal it, the same can be said about Microsoft and Windows, and alot of other companies who try to treat their products like its a luxury product by inflating the price illegally.
Someone who steals my wallet is stealing somethinng I earned, someone who refuses to buy music is not stealing anything, they just arent buying.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Eh?
AAC is MPEG-4 standard. So it's a standard format.
The only restriction is that you can only burn a given playlist 10 times. So if you want to knock off 100 copies of the latest Hootie and the Blowfish album, you're SOL. Given that you probably won't be buying entire albums like this, the odds of you wanting to burn the exact same playlist more than 10 times is fairly low.
As to the price, well, enjoy your non-copy-protected $15 CDs with all the crap you didn't want to buy. You can burn and reburn the same shitty playlist over and over and over without restriction that way.
Really, this "It's not perfect therefore WAAAH" attitude needs some serious LARTing.
I think that what people are missing in all of this is how monumental it was that apple managed to talk the big 5 into this at all. Considering that, the amount fair use allowed is pretty incredible. Look at the competition (pressplay) for comparison.
Take your nice little to the proposal to the RIAA and see how hard they laugh at you as security escorts you out the back.
Oh, wait, no, you're just going to get artists the aren't on a major, you say? Well, I'll sign up. And maybe 5 or 6 of my indy-rock pals. But good luck getting your favorite artist out of their soul-crusing major label deal so they can get in on this....
spreer
read the apple site more carefully. they are selling whole CD's for just 60 cents a song. that's a hefty discount. and remember your not pating tax, etc on that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
A. I should be able to buy the songs I like, without having to buy the whole album.
B. I should be forced to buy the whole album.
Now, let me explain why I dislike both of these...
A. I think this approach will encourage less and less thought for artists. Everything would be "hit" driven, much like it is today. The days of "good albums" would be gone, it would all be song driven. Sometimes I find some of my favorite songs aren't the hits played 1000000 times on the radio. I like discovering other tracks. Not all goods songs are the popular ones. Artists would be less inclined to take risks, or put any thought into the layout of the album.
B. I may not want to buy the whole album. I have been burned many times in the past. I have heard a good song, bought the album, and it sucked ass. In that event, the good song was just an ad to get me to buy the whole album. I'll bet a lot of albums have been sold on this principle. Sometimes groups just get lucky with one song. For older music, I think the individual songs should be made available on a per-song basis. After 2 years (and some could argue even one) the album sales basically drop to nothing. In that case, release the individual songs, so people can make compilation CDs or whatever they want. At that point, the album is effectively dead anyway, you might as well reap the benefits of the hit songs.
But like I said, I bounce back and forth between these ideas. You might think that it doesn't matter what I want, that the RIAA will decide what I want. But I am just one of many. They could really make the music industry take off again, where everyone is really into music. Hell, the market is THERE, they just don't see it. I haven't bought a new CD for at least 2 years, simply because nothing out there interests me. I am sure that there is stuff out there I would like, but I am instead fed the tripe that the average teeny-bopper and idiot consumer will swallow. Instead, I am going over my 300+ CD collection and rediscovering music that I "own". Hey RIAA - up yours.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Wow, like I imagined, about 60% of the comments to this article are along the lines of "99 cents! What an amazingly large sum of money!" Come on geeks, here's your chance to put up or shut up. I can't count how many times I've heard someone say "if I could just buy two or three tracks instead of the whole album, I'd be there in a heartbeat." Well HERE IT IS! Go for it.
This article reminds me of a post I made a week or so ago... this quote sums up the geek mentality concerning online music services quite nicely:
"Well, IF they make available every song they've ever published and IF they make the songs available in mutiple MP3 bitrates and in OGG and in uncompressed PCM audio and in every other esoteric compression format I can think of and IF they can guarantee a full 10Mbps connection to me I *MIGHT* consider paying two dollars per month for the service. Until then, I'll continue to download music that I enjoy listening to but do not enjoying paying for."
Yes but some people have more freetime than money (college students)
And other people have more money than free time (Guys like you)
I have free time, I just dont have money.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Battery life has gone from 10 hours to 8 hours, but battery capacity has gone from 1200 mAh to 630 mAh, so efficiency has actually gone way up.
What would they do? They'd make their own food and not go to resturants.
So you are going to make your own music now? Good for you. Remember if you make any quality music, you'd probably want people to pay $15 for your cds too.
$0.99 a track is a bit steep IMO even for a master track but for a DRM encumbered, non-standard compressed format it simply is not good value for my money. DRM with a crappy format moves the decimal point on what I'm willing to pay at least one digit to the left.
g 4aac/stan dard.html
Well, nobody said you had to listen or pay. But don't spread FUD, please.
1. The file itself is not DRM-encumbered. iTunes places the restrictions on burning, streaming, etc. They are not built into the file in any way. There are plenty of other tools you can use to manipulate the files, because...
2. AAC is a standard compressed format:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpe
Personally, I think Apple has gone a lot further than anyone else to put high quality music in people's hands at the right price and deserves some credit for that.
And one of your major beefs is a straight-up dream (at least for the foreseeable future): face it, no company wants to pay for the bandwidth of potentially hundreds of thousands of users making downloads of uncompressed audio.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
In the meantime, over to the right is an open mic night at a coffeehouse. You might be able to mooch and avoid a $4 coffee. Otherwise, there's that guy down the hall with the guitar.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Not even a little bit!! I've downloaded more than my share of music, apps, etc because I agree with you, prices for these things are outrageous. However, just because something is expensive doesn't mean a company shouldn't recieve compensation.
Sure people like you who always purchased music will spend this but for the people who use Kazaa and the napster users, and people who cannot afford to buy music, this service is worthless. So ultimately this service will sell to the same people who are currently buying music CDs in stores, it wont make any more money than the current online music stores who do this.
People who get all of their music for free will never pay for it. Whether it's $1 or $0.01, it makes no difference. Just because someone can't afford something, doesn't mean it should be free (or even priced down to your level).
People will buy it Ray, they will go to apple.com for reasons they can't fathom. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it's money they have and music they lack.
People who buy music will appreciate the convinience of this, as will the people who currently don't pay for the music because they don't want to spend $20 to hear the one good song on a CD.
If you're worried about AAC sound quality, listen to some professionally-encoded samples here:
http://www.epicrecords.com/mpeg4/?qt
What happened to the iPod being a portable hard drive? Do I have to carry around a cradle to make use of that feature? I gained a slimmer iPod but lost the portability afforded by the ability to pick it up and go. I can score a firewire cable away from home for unanticipated file back-up a lot easier than a cradle.
Is it safe to ASSuME that was planned to restrict serendipitous music swapping? Why would I want sound out on a stationary cradle vs. the head phone jack? I know having to support USB2 on the system hardware had to be taken into consideration but I rather have ubiquitous access to straight firewire than the added cradle connectivity to non-firewire wintels.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
You miss the definition of "luxury". i.e. something that which if you did not have, you could still survive. Music is a luxury item on most peoples budgets. Something that comes after food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
If you are too poor to afford food, and you steal some to survive, ok...you might get off in a court of law.
Music, OTOH, is not necessary to the essence of life. If you cannot afford to purchase it, then don't. But why do you think obtaining it without payment is OK?
Postulate this..you've finally graduated from school, and started a career as a writer. You get ALL of your icome from selling books.
I go down to the library, check out one of your fine writings, and proceed to make 100,000 copies of it. I then distribute these copies, for free, far and wide. Put up a website, letting any and all get a copy, either electronically, or an actual hardcopy.
I , according to your thought processes, have not 'stolen' anything, because you, the writer, still have it.
You, of course, get no proceeds from my efforts. Your actual book sales go waaaaay down, and your personal income suffers greatly. Eventually, you have to give up writing as a profession, because you get nothing back from it. You have to go get a regular job, and have no more time for writing.
What would you do? Say "Ah well...who needs to eat? I'll write anyway, and let my readers have it for free."
Yeah, right.
The new iPods no longer have a standard Firewire port. Instead there is a non-standard connector on the bottom. Check it out:
m l
http://www.apple.com/r/store/gallery/ipod3/6.ht
Apple says that only the 15 and 30 GB models come with a dock. So, I guess the 10 GB model must come with a special cable.
Depends on the album.
Dark Side of the Moon for instance goes for $15. "Aha!" you say, "I'll just buy the single tracks separately!"
No.
You can't. They deliberately prevent you from buying two tracks from the album, just to get you to pay an inflated price.
What does this mean? It means the camel's nose is already under the tent with respect to playing with the prices. Soon we'll see certain singles going for $1.50. Then we'll see certain singles you'll have to buy in combination with other singles. Then finally we'll see singles you have to buy the whole album before you get to listen, and we'll have come full circle.
No, the answer to the problem of music and computers is clear. Fuck the studios. The Internet has made them obsolete. We don't need them. The bands don't need them either. Let the bands sell their music direct on the Internet, let other web sites serve as portals to those band sites, and then let's do this dance again, this time without the fucking studios.
Charge a dime per song. The artist sees the whole dime, and not only that, more people would pay.
The artist wins. The listeners win.
And the rat fuck studio execs can go get themselves a real job.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
For what it's worth: I found a couple of albums in the iTunes music store that cost less than individual songs x 0.99. 'Veni Vidi Viscious' by The Hives has 12 tracks and is sold for $9.99; 'Stankonia' by Outkast is 9.99 for 21 tracks; 'Sea Change' by Beck: 9.99. It seems that Apple does not only offer single songs for those that only want that but they offer the whole album cheaper than in a store. For people who aren't buying anyway no deal will ever be good enough but for the rest of us it is great.
Hank! White!
Yes, and I think that BMW should lower the price of their cars as well. I mean, I can spend $15K on a car, $20K on a car, but not $40k. I barely have enough money to pay my mortgage and invest in my 401k and I'm supposed to be spending tens-of-thousands of dollars on a car?
I don't know why so many people think that pop music is a necessity is life. You're not "supposed" to be spending anything more than what you can afford on music.
IT IS A LUXURY, NOT A NECESSITY!
BMWs are too expensive for college students to be able to afford! They should be less expensive!
I barely have enough money to eat lunch everyday and I'm supposed to be spending a dollar on some 128bitrate low quality music file?
Why the fuck are you spending money on luxuries like music if you "barely have enough money to eat"??
--sdem
Excuse me but how poor are you that you own a computer and have a connection to the file trading networks? I thought so. Maybe if you weren't spending all that money on stealing music you could go out and buy yourself some used CDs.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
The new iPods still come with a firewire cable that has, on one end, an iPod connector, and on the other end, a firewire connection. So, yes, you can still use it as a FireWire portable harddrive. The dock is for your home use so you dont have to worry about reaching around to always plug in a cable. Keep the dock at home and take the connector cable with you on the road.
Yeah Baby! We don't need Windows anymore! Consider me switched!
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.
More info here.
I have free time, I just dont have money.
Get a job. No, really, I mean it. You cannot afford the things you want and have lots of free time. If you get a job, you'll be able to afford things like music, etc. You'll also gain valuable experience and meet new people.
t'nera semordnilap
You can record ANYTHING on OSX.
Thank God or actually Rogue Amoeba Audio Hijack
I can confirm that I the update does not have the advanced features of the new iPods. No new games, no on the fly playlisting. Just a new "backlight" button on the main menu, which, unsurprisingly, activates the backlight.
HTH
Chris
Keep in mind who the target audience is. Those of us who care a lot about the recording and mastering quality of the music we listen to (this includes early adopters of DVD-A and/or SACD) will NOT be using this service as our main source of music.
When I want a quality listening session, I pull my chair into the sweet spot, fire up the Pink Floyd DSotM SACD, and enter a realm of auditory bliss. When I'm more interested in variety than quality, then I'll hook the iPod up to the stereo and rock out. The flexibity of custom playlists comprised of legally-acquired, good-quality music far outweighs the downsides of any compression arftifacts that I may hear.
This service is not intended to replace buying your music on physical media. It's intended to replace hunting and downloading music of questionable quality and unknown content. (Who among us has not downloaded an incorrectly labeled MP3?) At the same time, it encourages music companies to transition to a new business model -- away from the album paradigm and toward a track-based paradigm. Imagine an artist's popularity being based on the number of tracks they sell as opposed to albums? There'd be far less fluff out there.
This service is absolutely the right thing at the right time. I downloaded iTunes 4 and started browsing the store as soon as the link appeared on Apple's home page (after clicking reload every few seconds like a well-seasoned FP troll). I took some willpower not to click buy. The free 30-second previews play instantly and are the same quality as the whole song. Where else can you get that?
Wow.
I can sell 10,000 Britney songs at a $.50 profit each or I can sell 10 of your songs $1 a shot. Not really a hard choice...
Ironically, a search for Britney Spears in the iTunes Music Store brings up nothing...
You can just take an iPod that was formatted for Windows (Fat) and go to a Mac and format it for Mac (HPFS(+?)). After formatting, you should be able to flash it to the newer firmware.
It is a lossless format. 44.1 Khz Stereo Sound, what you see is what you get, nothing taken out for compression. Just because something is downsampled from whatever the original is recorded at doesn't make it a 'lossy' format. There are definite definitions to follow.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
If you consider a CD to be in a lossy format, what music media do you consider to be not lossy? I think you are distorting the traditional meanings of lossy and lossless quite a bit. The way you are using the term, you could argue every form of music is lossy, including a live band (since your ears can't pick up all of the sonic frequencies being generated). Seems kind of silly to me.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Bose makes good stuff. I've worked directly with the engineers at Bose, some of the best physicists on the planet work in Bose labs. I've installed some of their commerical grade stuff in churches and other facilities, and it's pretty impressive. Unless you can tell me why Bose sucks, I have to believe you're just lashing out and can't think of anything better to say.
Less lashing out, more comments from friends who used to work at ADS/Orion who got good views of the stuff Bose put out. Then again, Bose is still around....
For the most part, the comments surrounded the need for Bose speakers to be connected to Bose amps to get the best performance, otherwise the frequency range gets screwed.
anyone notice the nice new PIM and game stuff that was added this time? looks like a new newton without the inkwell, or maybe it's time for the new newton???
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Yep, same deal here. It's a damn shame, because I actually want to BUY some music. Can you believe it? For once, I want to BUY music!
First Gore gets on Apple's board, now they're showing off Eminem on the front page. Says something doesn't it? Hello Cheney?
Am I the only one dismayed this is a U.S. only feature?
:)
-Nex
First iPhoto prints and hardback book ordering is U.S. only.
Then Sherlock is practically useless in non-U.S. countries.
Now this service IS useless. And there is no promise to bring it to international customers.
International users pay the same amount for our product, why do we lose out on some functionality? If you are an International (non-U.S.) Apple customer, then I invite you to sign the petition to promote more international-mindedness at Apple, which can be found here
Apple Features for International users petition
Please sign it if you are an international user frustrated by non being able to use this new service. (Moderators, if you have a mod or two to spare, I'm not below asking to mod this up if you feel Apple needs to spend more attention to the international community
This sig has been deprecated.
Ironically, a search for Britney Spears in the iTunes Music Store brings up nothing.
Where do I sign up?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Apple's pay-per-song system is ideal for times when you want to own a song now. This may happen for several reasons, some of which are pure marketing (ever wanted to buy a CD because of a song you heard on TV or on the radio?) while some others are more subtle: you feel such song would perfectly fit your current mood. It's close to the jukebox idea "and you get to keep a copy"...
OTOH, those for whom music is important likely want more than just "Instant Gratification(tm)". For this, there will always be free concerts, CD swapping, actual record stores with dedicated personnel, used CD stores, and garages to rehearse in. My point is, the iTunes Music Store isn't an end-all solution, but it might just work for some situations.
Alexandre http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
That's only a function of the file format, which is no more restricted than MP3 is.
That's a fair point. But only if the DRM Apple is using allows copying to new devices when/if those devices support AAC. I guess I don't know if it will.
I guess the fundamental question is this: Does fair use necessarily require that you be able to copy the song to any device that supports the format, and how open does that format need to be?
I'm just comparing the freedoms in any new system to what we already have the freedom to do with CDs. It seems to me that any system that reduces that freedom represents an erosion of rights.
Right now you can play any CD in any player. That's a function of the fact that the spec for audio CDs is very open. If the spec for AAC is similarly open, and by simply making a playback device that conforms to that spec you can make that device compatible with Apple's AAC files, then I'll stop complaining right now.
I as an independent musician and I am sure there are others would like to get in on this Apple Music store too. Is there any news if they will have an mp3.com-esque section to this thing? I think this would be the best way for artists to begin to sell to the end users directly.
ohlssonvox
http://ohlssonvox.8k.com
http://www.ohlssonvox.com
Go figure.
1. The file itself is not DRM-encumbered. iTunes places the restrictions on burning, streaming, etc. They are not built into the file in any way. There are plenty of other tools you can use to manipulate the files, because...
Cool. Glad to hear it but the service is still encumbered. I'd rather not waste my time working around any restrictions Apple imposes. $0.99 for anything less than CD quality is a rip off as far as I'm concerned. (note, that's my opinion, yours may vary) Not to mention that the amount of music offered is, shall we say sparce?
2. AAC is a standard compressed format:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpe
There are plenty of so called "standards". Doesn't mean anyone uses them or that they are relevant. Apparently I should have said "widely used industry standard" so people would get my point instead of pedantically pointing out that this is a codefied standard. So is DVD-Audio but it also isn't relevant for most of us.
So,yes I'm aware that it's a part of mpeg4. So what? There are almost no portable players, most of the audio out there (including my entire *legal* music library) is in MP3, and there is currently little software to manipulate these files. Could that be changed? Sure. Should it? Can't think of a reason to bother. There aren't any benefits to the format that make me want to rush out and convert all my MP3s or deal with another format.
I'm also well aware that record labels are unwilling to release their stuff in CD-Audio quality. That doesn't mean I should just say "oh what the heck" and cave in. When they provide what I want for the price I want, then I might buy. If this service provides what you want, then great, please use it. But I know I'm not the only one who feels the way I do.
Oh, and of course the company isn't going to pay for the bandwidth. Why do you think they charge us in the first place? Not altruism. Part of the cost is the cost of the service. That cost would be passed to us. Simple economics 101. However not all the costs are variable costs so as the service scales up, the cost per unit delivered should fall in time.
Rock and Roll will never die. A digital recording is forever. I still listen to music that is over ten or twenty years old because I can come back to it and it rocks out. For instance, Led Zepplin III is still a great way to get laid.
Your problem is that you're listening to the Backstreet Boys. Stop that.
You know, at the very least, this is a really convenient way to preview entire albums before you buy them.
Woot!
-/-
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
The point I am making is not that they should serve Windows market rather than Mac. What I am saying is that if they are able to let Windows users sample their catalog (even when the final interface will get done by the end of the year), it will create more and more interest in Apple products. Right now, there is absolutely no way to sample unless you own a Mac...
Seriously. AAC was chosen as the sound track of choice for HD-DVDs (ok there are lots of standards. Some of them). While it's not quite there with Ogg Vorbis at bitrates as low as 64k, at 128k it's right up there with Ogg Vorbis, Mp3pro, WMA and the rest, far ahead of MP3.
Also, repeat after me: The big music companies will never ever release in a format that you can share freely. If they did, those files would be all over every P2P net as the "original" files. The fact that you can burn and reencode ensures one thing - that there'll be ten thousand ways to rip it to mp3/ogg, some good, some bad, but different.
As for value, picking songs at $1 is a damn lot cheaper than buying CD singles, which is what you could compare it against. For a full album, well doh they offer "quantity" discounts like everybody else.
So will I be a customer? Nope. No Mac. But if they can get their IBM PowerPC chip in there soon, maybe I'll reconsider and make my next PC, uh computer, a Mac instead of an AMD Opteron.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
According to MacCentral's coverage, Jobs said Windows will be supported by the end of the year. So does this imply that Apple will make iTunes for Windows, or does it mean that Music Match (or some other product) will be upgrade by its developer to support the music store or that there will be an web page version by the end of year? Who knows.
--- What?
The goal of a musician is to make fans, and then sell stuff like tshirts and hats, and go on tour, ...
Funny, I thought the goal of a musician is to express themselves through music.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
AAC formatted files, converted from MP3, are actually larger than MP3 files. Unless Apple is saying freshly ripped CD files to AAC wind up smaller than ripped to MP3, I have not seen where AAC files are actually smaller, at 128.
The great thing about Napster and other file sharing programs to me was that I could find old songs that were virtually unavailable anywhere else. I found old old very obscure blues ("How Come My Dog Don't Bark... by Prince Partridge and others),show tunes and songs from the soundtracks of french films like (Shoot the Piano Player & Jules and Jim), old comedy stuff like Lord Buckley - the list could go on for pages. Anyway, Apples' new store may generate revenue on popular music but it still does not address my problems and I will continue to use file sharing programs for these older unavailable songs.
I don't see how the RIAA can stop file sharing for songs that are not available or in print at the current time. This should be a minimum requirement in my opinion.
I would willingly pay a reasonable fee for what I seek but the fact is much of what I search for is not available anywhere else.
In mulling over the new Apple service, I came to realize that there is another major aspect to this - it's the first major networked shopping app (that I know of) that has a dedicated interface, not just a browser interface!
People have been using iTunes for a while now, so using it to search for music is very natural - not that web shopping is hard, but it's just not as integrated an experience. I think that will make impulse purchases even easier, and really drive a lot of sales vs. just having a classic web storefront. If you're just sitting there listening to an old CD you have, you can say "I wonder if this person has anything new out?" and buy it with just a moments effort, expanding your playlist.
I wonder if this is the start of an expansion of heavily customized interfaces for shopping that really take advantage of web services (I wonder if the Apple music store will have a web service interface?).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look: it would be nice if the whole world was run like a giant porn business, I agree. But you've got to give some thought to the pool of available talent, production costs, and the economics of distribution. Bottom line: it's somewhat easier to find a woman down on her luck who needs food and shelter and is willing to trade for them by laying in the center of a bunch of strangers who penetrate and ejaculate upon her, than it is to write, record, and sell a record.
From time immemorial, artists have been struggling with this very problem at the intersection where art and anonymous, for-pay sex meet. As Michelangelo once said, "Argh! If I don't get that Sistine Chapel commission, I'm going to have to do 'Venetian Orgy 4: My Tower of Pisa Leans to the Left'." Fortunately, he was spared that indignity and went on to paint one of the truly inspiring works of art of the ages featuring, but only by coincidence, God and Man in the nude.
So you see, while porn does appear to make the world seem more happily unidimensional, there are still nagging complexities that prevent our moving fully to a Porn-centric Economy. Besides, Alan Greenspan's ticker couldn't take it.
You get ALL of your income from selling books.
... the same middle man who forced you into a deal with the devil to sell your book because that middle man has grown so large that they can wipe out any competition that would give you a better deal?
Suppose using your analogy, you aren't really paid directly by the sale of your books. Suppose there's a huge middle man who takes 99% of the profit from your books and pays you the difference, which allows you to break even or even lose money after the middle man charges you for paper, binding, and marketing fees. Are they stealing from you, the author? Or are they stealing from the middle man?
Like most things in life, this isn't black or white. This is a shade of grey. I'm in the process of replacing, through peer to peer downloads, all of the music I listed to in high school. It was all on cassette tape. They're all long gone now, all destroyed or lost one way or another. I also lost a significant number of CDs in a move. If I replace all of them with peer to peer, is that theft? I paid for them all. How many times do I have to pay before it's not theft anymore?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
quoting from http://www.apple.com/ipod/:
"no more reaching around looking for the right port"
indeed...
And then you'd probably whine about the cost of bandwidth that you need in order to not spend 2 weeks downloading the CD.
dalamcd
moer liek CELtroid prime!!@1!
Say what you will about the whole file format debate and such, but the service works very nicely. To try it out I fired up my newly downloaded iTunes 4, set up my account, found something that interests me (Massive Attack's Blue Lines, cd I had meant to get but never got around to it) and bought it for $8.91 for the whole album.
The tracks where then downloaded to my library, after which I burned a copy of the disc, and had it transfered to my iPod. Sound quality is good so far, though I haven't gotten to listen to it on my good speakers at home yet. The album cover art and such is downloaded with the album and displayed with the tracks in iTunes. Not the same as the physical thing, but it's something.
The selection could definitely use some work (hopefully it will expand to include more indie lables and such over time), but as for the service in general it works very well. The protection is minimal when you think about it - unlimited cd burns means you can re-mp3 it easily if you desire. There's no way the big labels would've let them do something like this in a totally opened way, so this is not too bad.
My usual procedure when buying a cd is to bring it home, throw it in my cd-rom and wait for it to rip, then do the iPod transfer, and if it's a cd deemed worthy I put the disc in my car changer. This cuts out the whole ripping step (replaced with downloading though), and saves the trouble of having to go to a store, or wait for an online place to ship to me. I can't see myself using it too much right now honestly, but if the selection improves it will be a good way to grab songs.
ExInferus
If that's the price the market bore two decades ago, I don't see how it's too much now.
What would make you think that 4:29 x 128kbps would be different whether it was AAC or MP3? The claim about smaller file sizes come from the fact that a 128kbps AAC sounds as good as a 192-256kbps MP3. Thus smaller size for the same quality.
1) The interface is great, much better than working through the web (aka amazon) to buy, especially for sampling. However browsing can be tricky with so many bands, so searching is a must.
2) Like amazon, there should be the ability to post reviews, suggestions, and personal playlists (based on iTunes playlists, naturally, possibly automatically culled). Also it would be nice to have the option to buy the CD, although that would best be addressed with a tie in link. Oh yeah, links to official band/album websites would be nice.
3) $0.99 for a song is not unreasonable, if you're only going to buy a couple of songs off an album. $9.99 for an album is probably more than it could be. No doubt there are actuaries in the works. In fact, for $0.99 is probably too little for albums where the songs are all long, depressing the price of the album. This includes mainly Jazz and Classical works. Really, prices for individual songs and albums should be much more variable, based on the set album cost and the song length, with the popular songs boosted in price a bit over that number.
4) There isn't enough content. I couldn't find even half of what I was looking for. There ought to be a way for small labels and independents to get in on the action. Allowing them to host their own music and samples through the iTunes music store interface would be the most reasonable way.
5) There are way too many partial albums. I have no idea why you would only put up some songs off an album - did they not have all the source recordings for the entire album?
6) Once Apple has expanded the service outside of America, they should provide a way to buy music from overseas as well. Under the current distribution model, (true) international music is difficult to find and get.
7) I couldn't find the Fleetwood Mac "Peacekeeper" song that just came out, even though they were right on the front page. Bad Apple. I have a feeling the big 5 made them jump through more than a few hoops to get where they are now, and are still calling a lot of the shots with regard to what is actually offered.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Well, this will probably get buried because there are so many comments, but anyway...
I just downloaded a track off of the new site. In toying around I opened it up in the Quicktime player and saved the music file as a self-contained movie. Then I threw it back into iTunes to see what would happen.
It doesn't see the file as protected audio. If I get info for the purchased tracks it lists them as "Protected AAC Audio", but the track I ran through Quicktime is listed as a "Quicktime Movie File". It sounds exactly the same and iTunes treats it as just another music file. Interesting.
Anybody else have any luck? I love the new store and I plan on purchasing often, but it is odd that the DRM can be stripped out (possibly) by another Apple software product.
So I've just been checking this out, browsing around and looking at what there is to see in the iTunes Music Store. I've been really excited to see this, because I've been wanting a reasonable online music service for a while.
So I decide on a test. I like Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By", but I don't have the CD. That would be a pretty cool song to buy for a buck. So I browse on over to "Electronica" and look for the CD. I find it. Yay!
You can't buy the song "Days Go By".
You can buy any of the other songs on the CD individually, and you can buy the whole CD including "Days Go By" for a paltry $12. But you can't just by the one song that everyone might actually want by itself.
BOGUS! I had no idea they would do something like that. Surprised? Not really. But I am sorely disappointed.
Sarah
Yes but some people have more freetime than money (college students)
;)
Obviously you're not an engineering student.
0 time, zero $$
So how about offering discounts if you buy the whole album? That or they start discounting slow moving songs. I can see a number of ways that this business might go.
If I'm going to pay $15 for 15 tracks, I want glossy cover art and a pressed (aka UV resistant) CD.
Most albums are available from Apple's download service for $9.99. They include cover art.
If I offered you 1 million dollars you wouldnt accept it because you didnt earn it? I mean if I give you a million dollars, you would have STOLEN MONEY! OH NO!!
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 Car companies complained that you didnt buy enough cars, and complained that cars on the black market were taking their car sales, and too many people were car pooling hurting car sales, and public transportation should be outlawed etc, all the time on the news, you'd complain about the prices of cars.
I didnt complain about the price of music until the music industry complained about me not buying music, well if they are going to complain about how I'm not buying music, I get to complain about how they over price music, I mean how can you expect me to buy music when it is out of my price range and then say that I'm destroying the music industry, start passing all these ridiculous laws, I mean look at the whole situation, not just what I say on a msg board and then it begins to make sense.
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.
I'm in Boston, theres plenty of 5 star resturants here, I've spent over $100 on a meal for 2 before, $50 for a meal is reasonable
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.
No you dont work harder, you just have more clout, experience, and are lucky. Most people arent born at the top, most people have to work shitty jobs for years. Communism and Capitalism has nothing to do with it, if you want Capitalism well then the market should decide the price, and theres more people like me than people like you in the market, if there wasnt, we wouldnt have 100 million people using Kazaa and 4-5 million people using MAC. We wouldnt have 90 percent of the world running Windows if people wanted the highest quality most expensive OS and Hardware. People buy whats cheap because the average person is poor, or have a family to take care of, you are a single guy with a good job, you are rare unless you are in San Francisco or Boston and then you arent so rare.
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?
Its hard as hell to find a job in a depression, The economy has been losing jobs for the last few years, its hard to find a job and even if I somehow manage to find one, I can expect to make about $10 an hour tops, which is pennies. Getting a job gives me just enough money to the movies once per week, or buy a couple CDs a month, I did the calculation, I'd have around $20 a week of money I can actually spend on myself if I get an average part time job, after all my bills thats about all I'd have, and hey I'd even want that, I'm looking for a job right now and if it were easier to find a job than to complain about not having one, maybe everyone in the USA would have a job, its not easy to find a job.
Its hard as hell to find a job, even mc donalds stopped hiring, any job I attempt to get I have to compete with hundreds of other college students along with highschool students.
so yes I should complain, until our economy is good enough that I can find a job without having to dedicate my entire life for a month or two looking for a job.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Anyway, my first suspicion about the price is that it's higher than it will eventually be. And I'm right about that.
This is from http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58656-2
So those of you too cheap to pay up can sit back and wait for a while and stop griping. This service is going to cater to you as well.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
That's a little uninformed. This is AAC. 128kbps in AAC is equal to 256kbps in MP3 encoding.
And this does not cost the same or more as an album. It is $9.99 per album regardless of how many tracks it has. You find me one record store where you can buy any new, decent album for $9.99 (save the bargain bin). How the crap is even $.99/song too expensive when you have to pay nearly $4.00 just for a CD single in a store? The logic in this argument just ain't there.
I keep reading in these threads that $0.99 a song is great because CDs are $15-$20. Where are you people buying CDs?
Circuit City and Best Buy, among other stores, carry new releases and even a lot of catalog titles at $13.99 or less...am I the only one aware of this?
Go into system preferences -> general and select 8 as your minimum sized smoothed font. Then restart iTunes.
128kbps AAC is easily distinguishable from the CD is very many cases, especially anything with sharp transients. It is indeed significantly better than 128kbps MP3, but not by as much as you insinuate. I'd consider it more comparable to a 160-192 kbps MP3, which is not a range in which MP3 is reliably transparent.
Theoretically, 128kbps AAC should be transparent on nearly all samples, but that would require significantly more tuning than has been done thus far. Currently, the best-performing transparent codec is MPC (Muspack), which achieves its almost-always-transparent quality at 150-160kbps; AAC at these bitrates will be inferior (with current tunings) but still very good.
Note also that it depends heavily on the encoder. I sincerely hope Apple is using a better encoder than the currently available QuickTime AAC implementation, which is frankly horrible (the Nero AAC encoder is vastly better quality).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Apple did an amazing job implementing this.
First off, full albums cost $9.99 no matter how many tracks. All you $.99 winers, notice this price ceiling drops the average track cost for many albums.
Second, the usability of the itunes interface is striking. It acts like your regular song library. You can search, browse by genre and group, etc., and it lists all of the songs. Choosing a song plays 30 seconds of it, and it starts playing immediately. Sound quality is very high. The itunes threading is, as it's always been, rock solid. You can download an album, transfer stuff to your ipod, burn a dvd AND listen to another album.
Prediction: This will be a success. In spite of a somewhat guilty conscience, I've spent my share of time on Kazaa and LImewire. This is a MUCH nicer experience. It's immediate gratification at its best. I'd much rather use this than buy from a store, where I can't listen to tracks and have to walk around to find the stuff I want.
Actually, if you take a peak around the iPodlounge forums, the new firmware only adds AAC support. Many users were rather upset with this, as they had been clamoring for on-the-fly playlist support for sometime.
"Programming is like sex - one mistake and you'll have to support it for the rest of your life."
I love this... already pulled down 4 albums I have been meaning to buy for a while now, it only took me about 3 mins to sign on, find the albums, and buy them.
;-)
Downloading them as fast as my DSL line can go, I may spend myself into the red
Ok, lets just do the maths on that.
We'll do it first in US dollars, because the number is one that has been quoted (I'm an Aussie):
A song costs $US 0.99 A CD contains ~ 17 tracks, or $US 16.83
The current exchange rate is ~ 0.60
Thus a CD worth of songs costs: $AUD 28.05
Now in addition to this, you're also paying for bandwidth, because unlike purchasing the CD in the shop where the distribution network is paid for by the supplier, the electronic distribution is now paid for by you.
Lets assume for a moment you have a basic ADSL account, lets say 256K download, with a 2Gb cap. Cost is $AUD 60.00
A song is roughly 3.5Mb (based on looking at the songs on my HD, guestimating an average size), thus with your 2Gb cap you can download about 580 songs. Thus each song also costs $AUD 0.10 in download charge.
A 256K ADSL account has a throughput of about 25Kb per second. Thus each song will take just over 2 minutes to download.
You save on time going to the shop and you save on your bus fare getting there.
To download your CD would cost you around $AUD 29.75.
You end up with a CD worth of music, which takes up around 60Mb of space on your hard disk. A 20Gb HDD costs around $AUD 100, so you can store around 60 CD's worth, or around 5850 songs. Cost per song: $AUD 0.02.
So your CD has now cost:
$AUD 28.05 charge to purchase
$AUD 1.70 charge to download
$AUD 0.34 charge to store
Total: $AUD 30.09
For this $AUD 30.09 you get an electronic copy of a CD, with no media to use in your car (additional cost $AUD 0.50 for a Blank CD), no case to store it in (additional cost $AUD 1.00 for a case), no cover booklet (additional cost of $AUD 0.20), all for the convenience of electronic shopping.
To top it off, if you haven't burned a CD of your tracks, if your hard disk crashes, or your files get accidentally deleted, you have nothing and you can pay for your music again.
Contrast this with buying a CD in a store, which can cost you anywhere between $AUD 19.95 and $AUD 29.95, plus $AUD 1.50 for the bus.
And finally, for the audio purists among us. We're not talking about CD quality music here, we're talking compressed MPEG. A CD quality download is 650Mb, thus you can only download 3 CD's for your $AUD 60. Making the download cost $AUD 20 per CD. It would also take nearly 7.5 hours per CD on your 256K ADSL account.
As an aside, the electronic CD shop consists of an Internet connection, a server farm and software. The current method of distributing CDs involves printing CDs, booklets, boxes, posters. Shipping them across the globe, putting them into warehouses, shipping product to shops, stocking shelves and returning faulty CDs.
Are the record companies excited - I would be if I could make money for nothing!
So, perhaps it will go well. But at these prices I won't be a shopper.
Disclaimer:
All care has been taken to make these calculations accurate. All prices are Australian dollars - except the inital quote for $0.99 per track. One Australian dollar is calculated to buy 0.60 US dollars. 1Gb is 1024Mb, 1Mb is 1024Kb. A 256K download link is 25Kb/s effective throughput. A song size is guestimated at 3.5Mb. A CD is taken to have around 17 songs.
|>>?
I have to say the system is almost too easy to use. I planned to spend just $5 to see how it works and whether I thought it was useful, and had to force myself, multiple times to remember my self-imposed limit.
.Mac credit card to one, with a lower credit line :))
One of the things that I find absolutely beneficial about this service, is the ability to cater to a couple hobbies (obsessions) of mine. My friends think its kind of weird, but over the last few years, I've become hooked on a songs genealogy. Typically, a particular song will interest me, and then I try to collect MP3s of everyone who has song it, as well as other historical tidbits. I have a fantastic collection of "I Put A Spell On You" that ranges fromScreaming Jay Hawkins to Sonic, to a very starnge rendition by Credence Clearwater Revival. So far, I've collected 15 different variations, a few by the same artist.
I've recently been doing this for "Dream a Little Dream of Me". I went to iTunes, logged into the music service, typed in the title of the song, and walla, they return 21 songs--most are Louie & Ella renditions which I have already, but I'm now the proud owner of a version by the Beautiful South and Laura Fygi, both who had otherwise escaped my radar on this song. I get to add these to renditions by Doris Day, Diana Krall, KD Lang, Dean Martin, etc. ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC.
It would be nice to actual just set-up purchase accounts, where you could deposit money, this would guarentee not overspending your budget. For example, I don't like subscription services, because I don't always want $14 or $15 bucks taken out of my account monthly. But that said, some months, I may spend $50-$100 on music without much thought at all. It would be nice, if I could have Apple charge the money, when I can aford it, and then use it when I want it. Plus this would guarentee I only spend whats in my account, and then prompt me if I over use, to add more money.
The credit card method is direct and easy, but its way to tempting to get rid of the warning that your card is being charged, and far to easy to select way more songs than what you had planned to buy.
Other Comments...
I'm not liking the new font in iTunes, its kind of wimpy. Anyone know what font its using?
I like the browse, search, and history functions in the music store, as well as the ability to view album covers, and purchase older albums.
Overall a great first use experience, though I may have to change my
The same playlist 10 times sounds like a way to appease ignorant music execs.
Exactly. Unfortunately, they are still gatekeepers so if you want to play, you have to make them feel all warm and fuzzy. Would it were different, but it's not.
Later, when we digitize Hillary Rosen at the stake, we can dispense with the silliness, but for now...
I used Napster a lot when it was out, I've tried a few other file sharing apps since. This just makes those feel so obviously illegal.
Let's be realistic, this makes sense for me. I have an iPod, iMac, .Mac account, broadband, and an iSucker tatoo on my forehead. I also have almost zero free time, I don't have time to find the best ways to download music.
This will probably be something like eWorld. Remember that? It was clearly better than AOL for mac heads, but once AOL caught up service wise, eWorld folded. I wouldn't be suprised if it's AOL who launches a service that buries this one too.
OK, stop laughing. It *might* not have worked perfectly the first time, right?
Words fail me here. I think when this sinks in with other people, that Apple could sell a couple million Macs *just* for this one feature alone. Oh, I'm sure the new codec is nice, and I might even buy a track or three from the Music store, but transparent wireless music sharing is just so much more than that.
Babar
- Yes, but think about the b-sides. History is full of groups that only became popular after a radio DJ turned the record over and played a track from that side.
- If only one track were released at a time, there would be so much pressure to make every song radio friendly that they wouldn't "waste time and money" putting out tracks that truly meant something to them group. As an artist myself, I know that our little 6 track CD has about 2 radio friendly songs and the other four that were deeper and introspective. Do you think I get more compliments about the first two, or the last 4?
Just some thoughts...This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Apple,
Have you considered how to handle Independent artists? Many of us are struggling to be heard at all, and this could really help... a service with big promotion $$$, that will actually get used and explored. I can understand if you are worried about quality of the average indie release and don't want to be in the business of filtering the good from the bad but so many of the indie artists are so good there HAS to be a way to work it out. I would suggest it could be an isolated Independent artist category and if the database racks up a certain number of sales then they could be added to the general mix. or something to that effect.
Having content from the big 5 is great but try not to forget the little guys. We have be distributing our music online for years. If we are left behind when the cash starts to actually flow then April 28 2003 could go down as a real sad day for us... The day we could no longer compete with the big record companies, on any level.
Murdock Scott
www.paynesgrey.net
Oh yeah, and for everybody who's been bitching about what Apple introduced today, you're insane. I've spent the last few hours trying out the service and it rocks! I don't think 99 cents is too expensive when I can assemble the equivalent of a CD single for less than the price of buying one or when the full album price is less than or equal to what I'd pay for the physical copy. Add to that tracks that you CAN'T get on CD from bands like U2 and other popular acts and I'd say you have a winner. The service is easy to use and provides a good balance between fair use and content owner concerns. My guess is that Apple has a big hit on their hands. Just wait for Steve to announce the first week, month or whatever numbers.
Finally, everyone knows AAC is lossy, but if you can't hear what's lost (like with those --r3mix LAME MP3's) who cares? If you can't distinguish it from a CD in a double blind test then it's as good as the CD. So, like I asked in the beginning, any info on this? Here's some intelligent discussion on the topic, but no answers.
For the unenlightened, click here to find out about r3mix.
Thanks!
Once you lick the lollipop of mediocrity, you'll suck forever!
It seems like about 10% of the people on here have actually used the new iTunes Music Store before they posted and I'm just another one of them :) Here's what I thought:
- If you tried using the service anytime from the announcement until around 5 or 6 it was pretty useless. Everybody was hammering it from work and pretty much nothing would load. Now, however it's really speedy and works like it should.
- Signup is painless: (1) It explains the terms of the service in plain language, (2) you agree to the standard agreement that nobody reads, (3) you enter your credit card info....and you're ready to buy!
- To test out the service I wanted to download some White Stripes. (I've listenend to them before but seeing them on Conan all last week has got me more interested) To my dismay, however, The White Stripes aren't on the service at all.
- Lots of artists are on the service, but not necessarily with all of their albums. Some of the Michael Jackson albums are listed as "partial," meaning that there is about half of the actual tracks avaliable for download. (No word on if the rest will come down the pipe at a later date)
- I wanted my first track to be something distinctive...I picked "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes. It downloaded fast and sounds flawless.
Overall, I like the service and have downloaded a few more tracks since the first. I think they need to have some type of "Billboard top 200" chart showing what peopel are hearing on the radio with direct purchase links, because right now it can still be a bit tricky to find something if all you've heard is some lyrics on the radio.
4/5 stars
Okay, now this is my coolest discovery in iTunes 4 yet: the library sharing works seamlessly *outside of your local subnet!* Yes, you read that right: you can easily share your entire music library with your friend in another location! Rendezvous is cool, but music sharing is even cooler when the person you're sharing with is in across the country. (Broadband is probably a prerequisite here, as network congestion could be a buzz-killer.)
In order to activate this, turn on sharing in the iTunes preferences. Also be sure to open port 3689 in your router or firewall (this is iTunes' port for sharing). Then, tell your buddy across town to open iTunes 4 and choose "Connect to shared music" from the Advanced menu. Then he types in your public IP address.
Voila! S/he will have full interactive access to your music library, as well as any playlists you decided to share. (The collection shows up in the left column, the same way local machines would show up via Rendezvous.) Let me reiterate, this is *not* merely a stream of what you are playing... this is your full library, with full listening priveleges. They can pick any song, pause, play, etc.
I imagine that some folks with the largest MP3 collection and a nice fat broadband pipe will share their libraries with friends this way!
(For those not already trying this, the iTunes sharing preferences allows you to select any or all your playlists, as well as dictate a password.)
Note also that this only works with current MP3's, as any purchased (AAC) files are authorized to work on up to 3 machines with your account only.
Now, once you enable sharing in your iTunes 4 preferences, create a playlist, and control-click it. Select "Copy Sharing URL."
Paste this into an email, and change the part after "daap://" to your actual external IP address.
Now you can send this *particular* playlist with a friend. Instruct them to paste this into "Connect to Shared Music" and they'll have immediate and full interactivity with the songs in that playlist. This works with individual songs too. Basically it's like emailing a "bookmark" to a particular playlist or song or your Mac, so you don't have to direct them where the song that you want them to check out, is.
This is a very big paradigm shift. I can't believe how easy it is. Too good to be true?
I used to think $500 was a lot for an mp3 player (thinking that was the only expense because mp3's are free, right?).
Now that we are expected to pay $1 for each song, the $500 for the top of the line iPod is nothing compared to the $7500 you would have to put down just to fill the damned thing!
Seems like there's something wrong about this picture.
Yeah, I'm one of those freaks that actually used Napster to find rare or out-of-print (or never-printed) tracks, or to preview CDs before I bought them. My music tastes range all over the place, and so I can't necessarily find someone who has the exact CD I'm looking for, and I've never liked using Kazaa for that kind of thing, what with mislabeled or partial files floating all over the place. Unlike some people on here, I don't have all the time in the world to hunt down music on P2P networks.
I see the iTunes music store as a way to preview an album before I buy and make my own rips; free 30-second previews of any track, and buy a track or two to listen to the whole song to see if I like.
Or I can use it to pick up those one or two tracks off of a CD when I don't want whole whole disc; the first two I bought were "Friends" by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow for my wife, and Eminem's "Lose Yourself" off of the 8 Mile soundtrack for myself.
This may not be the cheapest solution for online music buying, and I wish they offered the choice of MP3s so I can save myself the hassle or ripping them myself (it does look like it's possible to burn the AAC files onto a CD, so I can rip them on my PC for use in my Nomad), but it's just convenient enough to make it worth my while. (Heck, 90% of my music listening is done through iTunes anyway...)
Jay
The Mac Observer has a list of Apple Knowledge Base articles which are essentially a fragmented FAQ for iTunes 4 and the new music download service. Have at it!
How to Keep Music Store From Appearing Don't want the Music Store to show up in your iTunes sidebar? Apple explains how to disable it.
How to View Purchase History If you're trying to remember what you purchased, here are instructions on how to browse your purchase history.
Issues Purchasing Songs From Music Store Apple offers troubleshooting tips if you are unable to complete a purchase at the Music Store.
About Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) What's this AAC stuff? Apple gives a definition.
AAC and MP3 Codecs Compared Apple explains the difference between MP3 and AAC.
About Authorization and Deauthorization Authorization, deauthorization, and what it all means in regards to Apple's new music service.
About Interrupted Downloads Dialup users take note: Worry not about your modem dropping out. Your song will be waiting for you when you return.
Burning Playlists with Purchased Songs Yes, you can burn your playlists to a CD. But the same playlist will only burn ten times.
How to Use The Shopping Cart Trying to keep your credit card statement short, or want to lump all of your downloads together? Check out the shopping cart.
How to View Album Artwork Miss taking a gander at the case of the CD you're currently listening to? You can now do so virtually.
About Apple ID and Password Apple explains what your Apple ID is and how it pertains to the Music Store.
Buying Music Requires U.S. Billing Address Unfortunately, you're out of luck for now if you live outside the United States.
Playing Purchased Songs on Your iPod Your 99-cent tunes are as mobile as you are, thanks to the iPod!
How to Purchase Songs With 1-Click Jeff Bezos may have patented it, but that doesn't mean you can't use it to get your music!
Some AAC Files Won't Play In some cases, iTunes 4 or an iPod won't play an AAC file. Here's why.
Music Store Connection Speed For best results, use the fastest internet connection you have.
How to Contact Music Store Billing Support Didn't buy it, but got charged for it? iTunes will help you work it out.
iTunes Music Store: All Sales Final Once you've bought it, it yours. No refunds.
System Requirements Sorry, that old Quadra isn't going to cut it. Here's what will.
About Music Store Parental Advisories Some %&*#!&@ music may not be $%*&@%# appropriate for children. Apple can help you decide.
About Third-Party MP3 Players and AA
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
The selection is good. However, the only album I could think to buy at the time was not there (Big Tymers - I Got That Work).
The interface is great, really simple, almost like a p2p interface.
However, I probably won't use it much. I downloaded one song (The "exclusive" Eminem & D-12 song) but was a little disappointed for a few reasons. My mac isn't hooked up to a good set of speakers like my PC, and there are no programs out there that will play Apple's implementation of AAC on Windows (or Linux for that matter). I am confined to my iPod and my Mac to listen to them, certainly not something I would be if they were mp3 (or hey Apple...HOW ABOUT SOME FREAKIN OGG SOMETIME?!). Beyond this, $9.99 is too pricey for an album. I recently picked up (hed)pe's latest for $7.99 at Best Buy. And you know what? I'd really rather pay the normal $12.99 at Best Buy ($3 more!) to have the higher quality CD sound, the liner notes, and the jewel case. Plus, I'm not confined to a little supported format on only a few machines. I can do whatever the hell I want with it, rip it to ogg, mp3, or hell, AAC if I REALLY wanted to (hah!).
do I still have to pay 9.99 for the album, or do I pay $9? .99, but pissed me off anyway)
you pay the full album price, even if you've bought individual tracks already. found it out the hard way (only lost