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Apple Introduces iTunes Music Store, iTunes 4, new iPod
The store also offers exclusive music, music videos, and other multimedia, all in the main iTunes window. iTunes 4 will be available now (along with QuickTime 6.2), and the music store will be available today. It is Mac-only now, but will be available for Windows by the end of the year.
As a compromise to help prevent piracy, you must change your playlist every 10 CD burns, and you may share the music with only three other Macs (you may modify the list of computers that the music may be shared with at any time). There was no word on the technology used to handle this DRM.
The iTunes playlist sharing allows sharing of playlists, and the streaming of music from one machine to the other, though copying is not supported ("that would be verboten," Jobs added).
The new iPods will be $299 (10GB), $399 (15GB), and $499 (30GB). The dock holds the iPod upright, and has a line-out. The FireWire port is now on the bottom of the unit, and the buttons have been moved up higher, just below the screen, in a row. The improved screen features a backlight. The new units will be in Apple stores on Friday.
Hackers announce breaking Apple DRM, details to follow.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Will artists be able to place their music on the iTunes Music Store on their own, independently of a recording company?
If so, then this could be absolutely huge for independent artists. :)
Anybody remember this? Seems like he knew exactly what he was talking about.
Artists like Brittney, who have 1 hit and then poop out 12 extra tracks to fill a 11$ 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 ?
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?
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?
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!
Hey now, there's no reason to poke fun at Canadian math skills ...
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
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...
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.
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.
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.
Never heard of someone going to court for pirating porn?
Penthouse busts newsgroup user over copyright theft
A porn producer goes after violators...
Suze Randall hunting cyberthieves
And gets results...
$338,171 in damages awarded
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
It seems you might enjoy a service that offers songs for $0.25 in a lossless format, with no form of DRM, with a selection of every song ever made and nothing less.
Cluestick here for all and sundry.
If I was the pirating type, I'd get unrestricted songs for $0. Zip, nada, zilch. If I'm going to use this service, it's because I want to buy songs and be honest about it. Given that I have access to the free, better, but dishonest alternative, why the f*** would you put restrictions on how I can use what I buy that are only to prevent me from being dishonest? If I'm going to be dishonest, I'll fire up Kazaa, not buy AACs and copy them hither thither and yon.
If this service sold MP3s or unrestricted media, I'd have bought some already. They don't, so I won't.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.