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/
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.
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. :)
Anybody remember this? Seems like he knew exactly what he was talking about.
I thought an average CD was $16. That's 16 tracks. Not out of the ballpark. Plus, I thought the biggest complaint was having to buy a whole CD for just one to two good tracks. That's only $2. What's the problem with that?
-BrentArtists like Brittney, who have 1 hit and then poop out 12 extra tracks to fill a 11$ 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 ?
if you don't have any CD's to rip...
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?'"---
Maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't see anything that would keep people from:
So how is this any worse than having the CD?
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!
They MAY actually allow you to buy "an album" at a time for some discount at some future date...
They do right now. $9.99/album.
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
Obviously, it wouldn't make sense to charge for "filler" tracks that you probably wouldn't download if you wanted to buy the whole album track-by-track. Also, what about those techno albums that only have four 20 minute songs?
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.
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!
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
The problem is that people need to complain about something. If they were 25 cents a song, someone would chime in about how it was too expensive.
The problem is that a lot of the whiners who say that they'd buy more CDs if they were priced better, or that they'd buy more music if they could buy per track are just lying about it. What they really want is music for free, and they'll find fault with anything less.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
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
Hey now, there's no reason to poke fun at Canadian math skills ...
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
Uh, there are other players that support (or will soon support) the .aac format. It's only a matter of time. And that argument is not terribly useful. You can't play VHS tapes on a Beta machine either, and I don't see anyone bitching.
# stream bought tunes to a SliMP3 or Audiotron
How many people have those? Not all of us can afford all this new shit. Don't you have a regular audio CD player? You can burn these songs to audio CD (no DRM there)
# play bought tunes on your Windows or Linux PC
Uh, Apple has already released the iPod for Windows. If the service takes off, I imagine there will be Windows versions in the future. And does your computer have a CD-ROM drive? If so, (assuming you RTFA'd), you can use the unlimited cd burning feature and burn to a CD.
# burn bought tunes on an MP3-CD for use in the car or a DVD player
You can burn to audio CD. I have yet to see a DVD player which can play MP3 CDs but cannot play Audio CDs. If you know of such a brand, I'd like to hear about it. Ditto for the MP3-CD in the car thing. Many of us don't even have regular CD players in the car, let along MP3-CD ones. And also, find me an MP3-CD player that cannot play regular audio CDs.
# switch to another client other than iTunes (e.g. Audion) for your Mac music experience
Well, duh. Apple's not going to invest money in helping someone else's business. And really, iTunes is an excellent client, with or without this feature. And it's free. What more do you need?
# broadcast bought tunes using Shoutcast
You can broadcast them with iTunes. Is that so terrible? You can also burn a CD, rip it to MP3, and broadcast those.
Seems like you're going out of your way to find arguments against this, instead of realizing that this is a compromise, and if it takes off, there will be far less clamoring from the RIAA for Microsoft-style DRM and crippled CDs.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
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.
Heck, that's your perogative. I'd be willing to bet that most folks, though, would jump at the chance to download an album straight to their computer for less than the CD costs, without the added fun of having to drive/walk/metro to the record store and find it (or not) on their racks. You get album art with your download, and many people simply discard their jewel cases in favor of folders and other slim storage.
For example, consider The Eagles' Greatest Hits, 1971-1975. Music store: Probably $12, $10 or $8 if you get lucky and find it on sale or used in good condition. Time from "I want" to "I hear", an hour, best case scenario; more likely a day or two--gotta find time to go out and get it, Sam Goody is all out, etc. Online with Apple: $9.90. Time from "I want" to "I hear": a minute or two until iTunes starts playing your first downloaded track to maybe an hour if you're stuck on dialup.
I'd say they're dead-on the mark. Most people buy music to listen to the music; concerns such as highest CD quality vs. ACC, special features, and a physical cover really just don't matter to most folks once you get rid of the the marketing machine that tells them it does.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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.
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...
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
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?)
- Get music from artists,
- Offer tracks in an open format (ie ogg),
- Charge 50 cents per track,
- Keep 5 cents for your trouble,
- Give artist 45 cents,
- Shut up.
Right?Right. Now for the X-Prize checklist:
- Design rocket.
- Build rocket.
- Launch it into the upper atmosphere.
- Do it again within two weeks.
- Collect prize money.
- Go buy a keg.
Couldn't be easier, huh?Join me next week when I distill world peace into six easy steps!
(IHBT)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
For $1 a track I can see $100 being wasted REALLY quick.
and without this service, that same $100 will buy you 7 cd's (at 14.29 per cd)
everyone who thinks they'll be able to get their top 100 favorite tracks by buying only 7 cd's please raise your hands... anyone... anyone... bueller...
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."
$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
Their marketing people now have two problems.
Apple? Marketing problems? Hello?
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?
Lots. Even if the target-audience cared about bitrates, they're still the ones who bought (say) a 1GHz iMac vs. a 2.5GHz Dell.
Second, who is going to pay 99ï½ for something they can get for free on Gnutella?
The people who have no idea what Gnutella is, or where to get it, or how to use it, but really want to hear that one song...
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.
Nor do you need to be for this to be successful.
I've been boycotting the music industry for almost three years now, and this doesn't look compelling to me. Anyone else agree?
I agree that for someone who has been boycotting the music industry for 3 years, that this wouldn't be too exciting. Oddly enough, a lot of people haven't been boycotting the music industry, and will be quite excited by the proposition of getting the "1 or 2 good songs" that they want.
-dr.badass
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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
Bzzt. Wrong!
If there's an album with 14 good tracks on it available for $10, getting an account at the Apple Music store doesn't stop you from buying the CD and ripping it. If you see a CD and it has two good songs on it, the Apple store just saved you $7 off that $10 CD.
Then again, if you've been copying and not paying anything just move along, it's just another conspiracy by the man to suck money out from your too thin wallet.
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.
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 $$
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.
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.
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?