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Review of iTunes Music Store
First, the disclaimer: I'm an Apple supporter, having used them as my desktop system since my parents got a IIe back when they were new. I run several Unix servers, but my desktop of choice has always been Apple. Also, while I like listening to music, I'm no audiophile, and can't usually tell the difference between a 192kbps MP3 and the CD it is encoded from. My best speakers are on my computer, and they are Monsoon flat panel 3-piece set.
Ok, on to the review. iTunes Music Store requires the new version of iTunes of course, for which Apple has updated the brushed metal interface again (Apple, why do you come up with this great Aqua interface and then never use it?). My first stop on any new program is always the preferences, and Apple's added some new options for this version: "Sharing" and "Store." I don't have any other computers worth streaming music too, so that's off, and I turn off the one-click shopping. I like having a shopping cart.
The store itself is presented as a special playlist in iTunes, just click and it connects. It presumes a fairly wide iTunes window, wider than I usually use, but the stuff I wanted was all on the left side so I'm fine. The default store layout is obviously Amazon-inspired: new additions, up and coming, editor's picks, and most popular all being highlighted. Genre is a pull-down menu on the top left: all the picks change and the background color. Click on an album to view it in a two-pane view: info above and songs below. There are easy links back at any point, or up the hierarchy. Double click on a song to hear the preview (not just the first 30 seconds, they seem to actually choose them).
That's the basics. There are two levels of search: the search box in iTunes and a Power Search available from inside the store. The Power Search lets you search by song, artist, album, genre, and composer. Users of Limewire will find it familiar. Clicking Browse puts up three panes across the top: genre, artist, album. Once an album is selected the songs are available below.
On to the interesting stuff: actually buying songs. I select a song I've got a poor p2p copy of and click buy, and it asks me to sign in with my Apple ID, or create one if I don't have one. This is where I have my first problem. I have an Apple ID, but entering it puts up a message saying I've never used it with iTunes Music Store before (well, duh) and asks me to review the terms and conditions. Then it directs me to the account creation screen, with my info already filled in.
Of course, the account creation screen won't let you create a duplicate account, and asks me to log in. Can we say endless loop? How about bug that should be fixed?
I create a new email address, and make a new account. No problem. Log in, select the song and a couple others. Click "Buy Song," enter credit card info (which is then saved into the account, on Apple's server) and the songs download quickly. I had one more blip: one song had trouble downloading (I assume server load) and was told to try again later, with a menu option. It worked several hours later.
The selection is broad, but not yet very deep. Many albums I found are in partial status, with only one or two songs. Several artists I was looking for were not listed at all. Considering this is just roll-out that isn't a major issue (they weren't big artists, at least not in the U.S.). Everyone should be able to find at least some of their picks available.
Also, some albums are listed as "Explicit" or "Clean." Notice I said "albums": if one song in an album has a label they all seem to, though I didn't do an exhaustive search. Since this is structured as song-centric, I feel they should have labeled on a song-by-song basis.
Enough with the marketing stuff, this is /. The files, as was mentioned in the announcement, are in AAC format. Let's see what we can do with that, shall we?
First options: inside iTunes. iTunes can convert one format to another normally, trying it on a 'protected' AAC file returns an error. Also, trying to burn an MP3 CD with one on the playlist just skips burning the AAC files (or returns an error if they are the only files.) Fair enough, we didn't really expect the capability to circumvent all controls to be built in... (Though you can of course burn regular CDs.)
Next, let's see what can be done with the file itself. They are saved, just like any other iTunes music file, in the iTunes music folder. The icon has a little lock on it, to indicate its 'protected' status. A few clicks later and the file is owned by guest:nobody chmod 777 and in a world readable folder. (Assigned to guest.)
So much for one definition of protection. [Ed: I renamed the file to .m4a (not protected) and set the permissions to the same as my other tracks, and iTunes would still not let me convert it to MP3.]
I can also play that file as another user on the same machine. I would try other machines, but I only have the one Mac at the moment.
The only other Mac player I can find that claims to play AAC is only for Mac OS v9, and does not appear to recognize the bought file, so no help there. I do however have an app that hijacks the audio stream before the speakers and allows you to play with equalizers, balance, etc. Oh, and it lets you save the result as an MP3 as well as playing it through the speakers.
I fire it up and a few minutes later I have an MP3 that I can't tell from the AAC. So much for that definition of protection.
Is this service for everyone? Probably not if you are a hard-core audiophile and can tell the difference between a 128kbps ACC and the original, but for most of us: it works. I can do what I want with the file, even get it to MP3 if I need it, though it is hard enough that I have to actually think about doing it (which means I won't do it unless I need to). I'd love it if it were cheaper, but I probably would not buy twice as many songs at half the price. Finding songs is easy, buying them is easy. (For reference: $0.99 per song does not include taxes, taxes will be listed in the invoice you are emailed.)
I'll probably spend too much money there.
are you crazy? How long till someone writes a virus that hijacks iTunes and makes you purchase thousands of songs?
Here are my own notes on problems with enabling my account, problems with (and benefits of) playlist sharing, and extracting cover art.
I've spent more money on music in the last two days then I have in the last two months thanks to the Apple Music Store.
The songs are about what you would pay in a store for a CD, actually probably more on average. Now subtract the pressing, shipping, stocking, labor, etc costs which normally are taken out of the price at retail, and you have record companies making a mint if this in fact takes off.
I hope this does well. I hope that this makes the RIAA pull their head out of their collective arse and learn how to actually listen to customer demand. I know it probably won't, but you have to be a bit optimistic.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
well, if you were to buy a mid range PC and not a sub 1k PC you would be able to affird a mac.
:-p lets just say I have had nothing but problems and am glad that I bought the extended service plan for it.
hey the EMac is $1000 and comes with a combo drive and 17 in monitor.
and laptops from apple are so much better than the PC counterparts. makes me sad that I listened to my wife and did not buy the powerook when I bought my laptop...she wanted a PC
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
This isn't a review, this is a story of one users problems and solutions. Reviews imply opinions on how easy it was to use, how quick it was, how easy it was to find.
/. reader have a real review of this? Maybe some opinions on what they did right and what they did wrong?
Any
I had the exact same ID problem and here is how I fixed it:
1) Goto http://www.apple.com
2) Go into the apple store
3) Signin using your userid
4) Add your credit card info to you apple ID
5) (optional?) I turned on 1-click shopping too, not sure if it mattered
6) Go back into iTunes and go through the registration process. You should be able to use your existing ID now.
I can definitely tell you that this worked for me but your milage may vary depending on the gremlins living in your house.
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck
Well, it didn't take that long to get past all the protection apple put in.
However, I still think apple has it right with this music service (Even if it is apple-only right now) - they've made it rather easy to mix-n-match the songs you want to make your own compilations. Still sucks that it takes a lot of extrs work to make an mp3 CD.
Then again, if you can fit 300+ mp3s on a CD, that's quite a bit of cash to spend downloading songs.
I am a filthy pirate.
if an album has more than 10 songs it costs 9.99 if it hase 10 songs you pay 9.90 and then less than that it is .99 x songs.
and the fact that you can burn a real audio cd that plays in cd players everywhere makes this so much better than other sevices.
I don't know if you can print up the cover art or the CD art for lable printing but if you can that would kick more ass.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
While I applaud the concept of finally rolling out digital music on a large scale, the price is obscene. The 99-cents per song comes about to about the same price as a CD (if you buy all the songs).
With the CD, however, you've got the cost of the physical materials (the CD, liner, case), the cost of manufacture, the cost of shipping, and then the profit margin for whomever you're buying it from.
With all the money you save by pirating music, you could buy a mac! But, you wouldn't need iTunes then.
... how AAC compression works? What would be involved in writing a filter to convert from AAC to MP3?
That review was bad bad bad.
This guy seems to be more of the inept variety. Perhaps this review is suitable for some random forums, but the front page of slashdot...? I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems the guy would struggle with basic daily functions.
Anyway, iTunes Music Store is inaccessible by me as i'm in the UK so the poor review is all academic anyway.
Tried to sign up for the service, it asked for the "security number" at the end of my credit card number. Everything was correct but it kept telling me that the security number was invalid (it's hard to mistype 3 digits... come on).
I gave up and from the reviews I won't bother again. I also can't say I feel very safe with Apple keeping my credit card numbers in their servers indefinately.
Does anyone happen to know if the transaction is even encrypted? What's to stop someone from snooping my account and ordering themself a ton of songs under my name?
I think I'll get my music the old fashioned way, go buy a CD in a store.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
I think the quality of and restrictions placed on the files are acceptable. From all the compaining in the last article on this service (1400 posts!), you'd think Apple had announced a listen-once for $1.00 service.
The selection of music, while not great initially, will be expanded. They don't want me to subscribe. It's $1.00 a song - easy impulse buy. I get to choose what to do with my music - I think the copy restrictions are pretty reasonable - of course they fit my usage pattern.
I get the convenience of buying music relatively easily and painlessly, at an acceptable quality level, and without wasteful and largely unnecessary packaging. In the vast majority of cases, I (the consumer, the one who SHOULD be dictating the rules) get to pick and choose within the selection of music offered.
At least Apple is trying to give people what they want. There are some downsides to this service, but even the most stringent fair-use advocates have to admit that the itunes store is the current high water mark for selling music on the internet without Draconian restrictions.
There is a strange thing (perhaps somene could enlighten me on it as to why) - if you listen to a track under headphones and a certain combination of "sound effect" and/or the equalizer is used, the volume seems to wax and wane. I am certain this has something to do with the sound effects preference, as it seems that when something really loud plays, when it stops, the other instruments are not as loud, and tehn they regain their original dynamic. Has anyone else noticed this?
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
But what about the rest of us? I haven't checked for a Windows version of iTunes, but I don't think one exists, and I'm certain there isn't a version for the Linux machines I'm running at the house.
Also, a buck a song still seems a bit much to me. So, it looks like I don't have a choice but to wait until some large music company realizes it could make a killing selling MP3/OGG/[your favorite format here] (and why not host several formats to choose from---storage is cheap) tracks at a quarter a download.
I'm guessing that is going to happen shortly after that AC guy looses his fixation on Natalie Portman and hot grits...
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
Right, that's always been an argument.
There was a time when a 486 cost $3k, but today Macs, taking into account deflation, cost less than half that.
If you *wanted* a Mac, you can afford it. If you can't afford it, it isn't really the price that's stopping you.
Of course there are exceptions, but on the general, a Mac today is so affordable that to use the price of a Mac over that of a PC is hardly a hefty argument. A better argument would be, "But no one I know uses a Mac, so I'd have to figure out everything on my own," or "I've got $1,000 worth of software on my PC that I can't use on my Mac," or "All my games live on my PC, if I bought a Mac I can't play those games anymore," are all more valid reasons than "An iBook costs 15% more than a similar PC laptop," or "An iMac costs 20% more than a similar PC desktop."
GPL Deconstructed
I have no intention of flaming, but that review was total shit. If you have only one Mac, and no i-pod, how the hell can you call yourself a "reviewer" of iTunes v4? You can't.
So far the only real complaint I'd have against the apple store is the light selection in comparison to amazon.com. I'm beginning to think this is the real reason they made safari and the browser was an after thought.
Also some one-hit-wonders have protected their one hit by not letting it be purchased alone (Dirty Vegas - Days Go By). Sorta goes against the whole principle of downloadable music empowering the consumer.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
In any case, Apple is shouldering the hosting costs, not the record company (unless Apple is passing this on, which I doubt).
I'll pay $1 a song when it's a 320kbs MP3 with NO DRM or restrictions
Sure you will.... More likely you'll "use Kazaa" and always manufacture some reason why you are morally and righteous in stealing.
The iTunes 4 software is quite possibly the best software I have ever seen (15 years in software development). The AAC song files sound great.
iTunes 4 is very intuitive. Menu buttons change icons depending on context, windows navigate where they should with no delay, backwards/forwards works, etc. you don't even think about it. The experience reminded me of the first time I shopped at Amazon.com (logical layout, recommendations, appropriate links to other items, etc.)
I spent three hours playing with it the first night (staying up way past bed time..) which flew by in what seemed to be 15 minutes. I spent $25 and bought some great music. Exclusive iTunes store-only tracks from U2 and Sting are now on my iPod.
When downloads failed, a pull down menu option (to resume interrupted downloads) worked seamlessly. In most instances there were no delays (on 30 sec previews, or downloads).
The only complaint I have is when I bought two tracks for 99 cents each, then decided I wanted the album for 9.99. Apple wouldn't give me a credit for the two tracks bought only a minute earlier "several tracks on this album have already been purchased. Proceed buying the album for $9.99?". I burned the album to CD and gave it to the wife. She said it sounded perfect.
I do however have an app that hijacks the audio stream before the speakers and allows you to play with equalizers, balance, etc. Oh, and it lets you save the result as an MP3 as well as playing it through the speakers.
I fire it up and a few minutes later I have an MP3 that I can't tell from the AAC. So much for that definition of protection.
You just broke the DMCA. See you in 20 years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been using Listen.com for a few months now, and really enjoy it. The content is initially streamed from their servers. It sounds as good to me as 128K MP3 audio at least, and I've only had one or two delays streaming at work where I have a fast connection or at home over my DSL connection.
You can't access the media as separate files; the songs get cached in this monster (around 1G) file that I have yet to play with. Definitely worth the money.
It would eliminate the protection problems any of these music download sales thingies impose.
This is slightly OT but it has been bugging me for a while now.
/.ers had some input...
The Radio Station playlists loaded into iTunes used to come from Kerbango.com, which went under.
Some of us who work with/for streaming stations and want to get OUR stations into the iTunes list found that Apple moved this station-list in house, as evinced by a little packet sniffing. Its just an an xml push.
The thing is _there's still no way_ to submit a station to get listed. I haven't checked out the new iTunes but was wondering if any
Dude, if you're not planning on sharing the music you buy with the whole world, the restrictions that they *do* put in will NEVER hinder you.
Do you burn a given playlist more than 10 times? Do you have more than three Macs you will use to listen to that music? You can put what you buy on an UNLIMITED number of iPods (ok, nobody has a ton of them, but still) and 128kbps AAC sounds better than an MP3 of the same bitrate. Not quite the 320kbps you "require" but still very good.
It's amazing how people always complain. People, it's not going to get better than this. Do you really think Apple could have struck a deal with the five record labels without some sort of DRM?
This service is obviously not for you then.
Well being that ive been buring cd's since 1X drives and was a beta tester for scour.net I thought I would never pay for an mp3. In fact I would say I have moral qualms about doing so. Well last night after installing itunes4 I figured that i might as well see what all the hubbub is about. What a wonderfull idea, there is no better place for a music store than in my music library. An hour, 15 song samples and two videos later I broke down, gave them my credit card and bought a Massive Attack track.
total cost 99cents plus my soul....
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
If I'm going be supporting the RIAA with my money, by god, I want CD quality and the ability to manipulate the files however I wish.
Of course with copy-protected CD's and such, this option might be dying slowly.
Apple needs to get in tight with independent music labels and let bands choose what they want to charge for each song, minus some standard fee. For example, Apple can charge $.45 per song transaction fee, and if the band wants to each song to cost $.50, then the band would only get a $.05 return on each song.
They should really try to establish a legitimate community around this service. I'm thinking of something like AudioGalaxy, but with artists being fairly compensated.
according to this document. "Other AAC files that you find on the Internet or elsewhere will not play in iTunes." There is also some question is other things that will play AAC will play these files also
It's not stealing or piracy. The first means I take something that you had, and no longer have. The second has something to do with ships on the high seas.
What it is, is unlicensed copying. There are no other names that fit the bill here.
Just like satellite signals, if you don't want me inspecting them, then don't beam them on my property.
If you want an MP3 of a song, why not burn the song to CD-RW, then RIP it using your favorite ripping software?
name the DRM that impeads you.
.wav
you can do what ever you want with these songs that any resonable person will do. and 320 kbps...are you frigen nuts why don't you just download a
don't use a lossy format if you think 128 is crap, not to mention they have to have a sain file size for everyone becasue not everyone have t1 access you maniac.
you are just looking for a reason to justify your piracy.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Oh yeah, 'cause we all know that Kazaa is just full of high-quality, properly labeled, 320kbs MP3's. Full the the brim. Yep. And anything you want is available.
/. wankers that endlessly scream about wanting a cheap MP3 non-DRM soultion 'or we'll just use Kazaa' but ignore Emusic or Apple's new services (which fit very well with the dream of a decent online music service) are just full of crap. they don't wanna pay for music and just wanna whine whine whine.
Please.
I gave up on Kazaa and any other P2P music when I signed up for Emusic. It's a simular, but cheaper (and not as major-label heavy) service. Now that I get tons of properly-labeled, decent quality MP3's, with no DRM, flat monthly fee, and unlimited downloads I have no reason to ever p2p again; I'm willing to pay for trust and quality. But no one will probably read this, 'cause it's AC, and all the
Like Kazaa is such hot stuff. Please. Kazaa is crap for music!
another lemming helping to further the apple myths... for the love of god, people. can't you realize that 90% of your arguments against apple either (a) are totally incorect (b) show blatant disregard for current information or (c) are based on your bias against anything the majority of society doesn't like, because of others like you? myths spread like a virus. and, unfortunately, the truth isn't strong enough to break them apart. sorry, but comments like those REALLY make me furious... kinda like when you get pissed off about how fast food workers never get your order right. BTW, this guy had a very well written review of the iTunes Music Store. I tried it today, but couldn't connect. Maybe it was just my ISP...
On to the interesting stuff: actually buying songs. I select a song I've got a poor p2p copy of and click buy, and it asks me to sign in with my Apple ID, or create one if I don't have one. This is where I have my first problem. I have an Apple ID, but entering it puts up a message saying I've never used it with iTunes Music Store before (well, duh) and asks me to review the terms and conditions. Then it directs me to the account creation screen, with my info already filled in.
Of course, the account creation screen won't let you create a duplicate account, and asks me to log in. Can we say endless loop? How about bug that should be fixed?
I've signed up two accounts since the store opened and both went from the terms and conditions screen into the store once I had succesfully logged in with an existing apple id. I would say this is probably an isolated incidant. Or at least one of low occurance as it's the first place I've seen the error reported.
The selection is broad, but not yet very deep. Many albums I found are in partial status, with only one or two songs. Several artists I was looking for were not listed at all.
It's a new service and Apple admits freely that they are adding music as quickly as possible and are only adding what the music labels have agreed to provide.
Also, some albums are listed as "Explicit" or "Clean." Notice I said "albums": if one song in an album has a label they all seem to, though I didn't do an exhaustive search. Since this is structured as song-centric, I feel they should have labeled on a song-by-song basis.
This is most likely due to how the songs/albums are provided to Apple by the labels. When you go to a store and there are two copies of an album one is clean and the other is explicit it is because one or more songs on the album are considered to be that way. This very well may have to do with the voluntary labeling the record labels have been doing. This is hardly an issue, and for many parents letting their kids get music using iTunes is probably a good thing. So I don't see how this could possibly be an issue, nor do I see a reason for it to be changed.
First options: inside iTunes. iTunes can convert one format to another normally, trying it on a 'protected' AAC file returns an error. Also, trying to burn an MP3 CD with one on the playlist just skips burning the AAC files (or returns an error if they are the only files.) Fair enough, we didn't really expect the capability to circumvent all controls to be built in... (Though you can of course burn regular CDs.)
Of course you can't burn MP3 cds, of course you can't convert the song directly to mp3 in iTunes. That would blatently break the copy limitations and the record companies wouldn't have allowed Apple to go through with it. However, the easiest way to beat the copy protection is either convert the AAC file with another app that ignores the protection or burn a regular cd from iTunes and then rerip the song into the format of your choice. Of course you are burning and ripping a reduced quality song and then encoding it into yet another lossy format (probably) which is only going to reduce the quality more so there isn't really a great reason to do so.
This service isn't for everyone. It's for people that primarily listen to thier songs on thier computer, ipod, or maybe the car. Anyone with a nice stereo isn't going to want to go this route due to the reduced quality of the songs. My experience with the system has been good so far. I don't see myself buying a lot of music because of a couple of reasons. First, the price per song is not low enough to justify the low quality of the reproduction. If I go to the store and buy a cd I'm getting several songs for around $1.00 - $1.50 each depending on the artist, label, and number of tracks on the cd. These are in high quality format on the cd and I can rip the entire cd to whatever quality format I want. I also get a jewel case and liner notes etc. When I get a song from the
So... you're saying that it will refuse to convert to an MP3 for you. Yet it will burn it on a CD? And I'm guessing that it will let you rip CDs to MP3s? Is there any Mac software that will allow burning and mounting virtual CDs?
(Note: I don't actually have a Mac, I'm just cracking this in my head.)
Unless you live in canada, or buy special 'music' CDs rather then regular Data CDs, you do not get taxed.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Columbia house and BMG do not stock Beatles albums probably because of some dude with the copyright doesn't want to let them.
Thanks!
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
It seems a lot of people have issues with the service... which is fine. For me personally, the service is great.
Last night I bought the CD Thrive by the Newsboys for $9.90. At my local Best Buy the CD is $14.99. I'm not much of one to shop around so maybe I could have found it a dollar cheaper here or there. In essence, I saved $5.00. Yeah I had to pay a quarter or so for the CD-R but whatever. From the time I clicked "Buy Album" to the time my computer ejected the burned disc it took a total of 12 minutes. A good 95% of the time that I listen to music I will buy a CD, bring it home, encode it (used to encode to MP3 160, now AAC 128), then burn a copy to keep in my car. Very rarely did I use the original CD as I have a Jeep Wrangler and things have disappeared before. So quality wise I haven't lost anything either.
Are the record companies making a mint off me since they don't have to press the CD's or make the cover art. Possibly. But I saved $5.00 plus gas/time. They were already making money off me anyhow.
I was actually impressed with the number of artists they did have. I'd say they had a good 3/4ths of the artists I wanted to listen to and as this is just the beginning I'd anticipate more in the coming months.
I personally am going to be using this service as much as possible. It may not be for everybody... if you're so high strung on a "down with the RIAA" mission and you feel that you're giving them more money than before then I wouldn't recommend it. My thought is that even if they are getting more money I am losing less. Which is what I care about. If you don't have a cable modem speed connection then it's probably not the cat's pajamas either. Maybe you don't like the selection. Fair enough. If your favorite P2P network works for you that's fine too. As far as ease of use and reliability goes, I'm feeling that this is something I will definitely continue to use.
I cannot believe how goddammed cheap someone of you genius's are! .99 cents is TOO much, meanwhile you probably have stuffed more than one chocolate bar down your throat pehaps while writing this.
seriously if you think 99 cents is too much for a song call your local welfare office and ask for a raise!
Never mind that anyone with a good understanding of computers could have come up with the same thing, this is still a violation of the DMCA, isn't it? IANAL, but maybe /. ought to pull it to save the author from legal action.
God, I hate living in a country where free speech is outlawed.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
We're fucked... but what are we supposed to do? It's not like we even voted for this president.
I watched Steve Jobs introduction of the apple music store now that its on the web. (look at macsurfer.com for a link) Apple did there homework, they researched other sellers as well as P2P. They tried to make there service better than both. Especially the p2p programs, they know they can't beat P2P on price so they worked hard on making the service much better.
I like many others tried itunes music shop..
It was very easy, and very quick. The AAC sounds good. Before I new it I had spent 10$ on songs. Burned to CD and listening at work the next day. I could see this getting expensive if they had more music on the service, although I found some older stuff I had wanted for a while.
One thing bothered me (almost all songs 99 cents, even those 1 minute), as primus tends to put short little songs between longer ones.
Hey everybody, let's all welcome Hillary Rosen to Slashdot! Glad you could make it Hillary, now please have a seat over there on that upside down barstool.
Got a chance to play with the store and the new iTunes on a friend's Mac yesterday.
:-) when compared with brick-and-mortar retailing or even traditional on-line sales. The ability to browse and listen to *all* the available tracks is just wonderful.
.mac account and that gets installed on the system when you "register" that system to be able to play your music. It will be interesting to see what the proccedure is if you have three "registered" systems and one of them is stolen or goes up in smoke. Do you permanently lose one of your three system registrations?
In general I think this is absolutely a Killer App, and there's a lot of money to be made by Apple, especially if they can get into the Windows marketplace. Clearly Microsoft has dropped the ball on this one as even a cursory look at the Apple set up has one wondering if there will even be any music stores in five years, or even any commercially pressed CDs.
Music is the perfect on-line purchase (even better than books
But it looks like there are still some obstacles to be overcome. Why is there so little music (relatively speaking) available at launch? Why are many popular artists (the Beatles for example) completely missing? Why are so many albums only half there??
Ok, maybe a lot of music is controlled by companies that haven't signed on with Apple yet, but I got the feeling that the record companies really don't trust this system yet and are still afraid that this is going to somehow increase the illegal distribution of their music (like people would buy music from Apple rather than rip it off an original CD).
Is it paranoid to think that perhaps the reason that there are so many albums with only half of their tracks available represents an attempt to see whether these tracks show up more often in song-sharing p2p netowrks than the tracks that haven't been offered?
So I wasn't as impressed as I was holping, only because probably 75-80% of the music I would want to buy isn't yet available on the service.
Assuming that the record companies eventually realize that they can make a hell of a lot of money this way with no distribution costs, and that it doesn't lead to any more theft than unprotectable CD sales already do, and if Apple can win the Windows market as well, then they might eventually make more money off this than computer sales.
One really obvious thing that's missing: the ability to search by song lyrics.
I'm guessing that the actual AAC files downloaded to the Mac are encrypted using a key that's tied to your
I assume that the CDs burned from iTunes are ordinary CDs and there would be nothing stopping someone from turning around and ripping them to mp3.
G.
The other big improvement to iTunes with version 4 is the ability to stream files over a LAN automatically via Rendevous. The problem is that you can't listen to a song bought from the store over Rendevous sharing unless the computer you are streaming TO is one of the 3 authorized computers. With this restriction you might as well copy the file over to get the most out of your license. This is really too bad. I had thought that Apple had the perfect business model: let Rendevous provide previews of songs without costing Apple anything for hosting and bandwidth, but if somebody decides they want to have the song file then the easiest way to get it is to buy it from the Apple store. Instead I'm left with a situation where I'm hesitant buy from Apple at all because that will pollute my shared music collection with files that don't work. Apple is very close to striking the right balance with their DRM, but by applying the 3 computer cap to streams they've made it not worth the bother.
Apple deserves credit for realizing that monthly charges are a formula for failure.
In order for downloadable music to be a success I think 99 cents a track is still too high. If they could get it down to more like 10 cents a track maybe people wouldn't bother with Kazaa anymore.
I noticed in some other articles that some "analysts" considered the profit margins very slim at 99 cents a track. If that's actually true it's only because the old fashioned business model of spending lots of money on promotional costs. If they'd just rely on good quality music and word of mouth (this is the internet after all) I think they could make alot of money at 10 cents a track, and make piracy a less attractive option in the process.
I've been using listen.com for a few weeks now and love it. For $10/month (there is also a $5 option) I can stream loads of music, create playlists, radio stations based on aritsts I like, etc.. Their logic to predict other songs I would like is pretty good. They have a pretty good selection (still can't get some indie artists I like, but most big names are there). And for $.99/track I can burn the songs to CD. I don't know if they have it for Macs or not, but I can't say enough good things about it.
Even if the DRM doesn't affect him the lower quality does. AAC @ 128Kbps is not as good as MP3 @ 320Kbps. The reduction in quality is the primary reason that cds are still a better value. Also, as broadband becomes more wide spread it will get better than this or people will still just continue to share music rather than purchasing it.
I would guess the music selections are different, but on balance, I think I would prefer something like eMusic to Apple's $1/song.
AND FREE BACON!
Now that OS X ~= FreeBSD
How long do we have to wait for KiTunes or XiTunes ?
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
If you normally have to buy 4 CDs to get all of the songs you want, you are also paying for the ones you don't want. This way you're only paying for what you want, and there's a certain value that should be associated with that.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I won't use the service either. Believe it or not, I really, really want a legal Napster with songs that I can pay for, but this isn't it.
With a CD I purchase, I can rip a song, and use it on any device I own and convert it to any format, all LEGALLY, as long as I don't give it to someone else.
I consider music services, at least at this price level, that don't provide the same flexibility to be broken.
I know there are a lot of things you can do within the limits set, but not enough to ensure future compatibility or multi-device compatibility.
I have four computers now, by the way, and who knows how many more in the future. Only one is a Mac, but I'd like music on all of them.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
I'd like to be able to make a wish list of all of the songs and albums that I want, put it in iTunes and tell it to spend $30 a month.... the current set up tends to make me impulse buy lots and lots of songs and spend way to much money :) I think I'll have to give up vending machine cokes to support my music habit...
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
We do not want DRM.
It's wrong.
Full stop.
I'm a Mac user too, and generally like Apple, but just because it's Apple and has a cuddly name ("FairPlay") doesn't mean it's ok.
I'm disappointed in all the glowing reviews, we should be battling this not accepting it and saying "kudos to Apple for only fisting us gently".
Why no mention of the mp3 online music service Emusic? It's very simular; 'cept that it deals more with indie record labels, jazz, and such; and is a flat monthly fee w/unlimited downloads vs. pay-per-track. Can someone who's used both give a compare & review? I've got an Emusic account, and am very happy with it; but my wife has a Mac so we could have both...
the more i hear about this the more it makes me wonder: if this does take off in any significant way - where was MS when these deals were being made? were they not already in bed with the record companies a'la their DRM work?
the record co's would win (or at least stay alive), Apple obvously wins, the artist seems to win (details pending), and so does the customer (more or less - i'm sure the deal will continue to be sweetened over time).
no MS bashing here - just wondering are they already out of the game before its even started?
can they legally offer a competing service with the same price/selection? how significant is their DRM scheme going to be now? (i guess they still have warez, viruses & movie rips to contend with ; )
-O
Mac users don't get much sympathy from PC users when we don't get the same games as you. "Buy a PC" you say.
I say "Buy a Mac." Or wait until later this year for a PC version of iTunes.
It's just funny how people behave when the shoe is on the other foot.
I think you misunderstood his point. When he says they cost more than PCs, he means you have to give up women for disgusting hairy men who talk with lisps. A high price indeed.
You're recompressing a compressed-expanded file.
I could even overlook the DRM if the quality was there, but it's not. If they were selling 320kbs MP3s I'd probably be first in line, but they are not, and as it stands I am not willing to pay for anything less. I realize that I am not the typical customer, and that the 128k AAC will probably be just fine for most people, but all I'm saying is if Apple wants me as a customer then they're going to have to offer a product that I'm interested in.
Keep Austin Weird!
" that's a pretty hard price to beat"
Not really; the 128kb bit rate of these files doesn't approach the original in terms of quality. In fact, this is closer to FM radio than it is to CD quality.
So perhaps the reason there are less restrictions on this music is that the record companies are comfortable selling you FM quality music for a buck a pop?
If they double the bit rate (as an option), it will be more interesting. As it is now, I'll just listen to the radio.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The application he used to grab the audio and turn it into an MP3 is Audio Hijack Pro, from Rogue Amoeba Software. It can grab the audio from any application on OS X, and record it to AIFF or MP3.
The people who won't pay $.99 for a song aren't likely to be any more willing to pay $.10 either, as long as they can still get it for free.
Personally I like the idea of being able to get a CD full of the music I want for a quarter of what I'd normally pay to have all of those songs. Isn't this exactly what we wanted??
I think a lot of honest folks out there will do the right thing and actually use this service now that it's available, but I suspect that many will abandon their supposed principles and continue downloading music illegally.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
True. Yet 5% of the total consumer base is an excellent test size, better than most software get. Once they get the kinks out,then expect Apple to invite others to play.. Windows will get into the act by end of year, and most experts expect the individual song prices to drop...
I have to agree with you here. I am more then willing to pay for music, provided it is a good value. When I go buy a CD for $9.99, get 15 great songs, some great artwork and a CD that I can use completely unrestricted..thats a good value. Problem is CDs rarely cost $9.99, they rarely have 15 great songs. But I can use a CD anyway I want. $.99 is too much for too little in my opinion. Being one of the audiophile snobs that /. loves to rip on, I do care and notice audio quality. Unless Apple is selling files that are the same or better quality then CD, I don't see this as a good thing for me and many others like me.
.vob DVD rips do you see on kazaa? Probably NONE. I dont see DVD sales suffering under P2P, maybe the record insustry should take a hint.
Sure the iTunes site is convenient to buy, but is that convenience really worth all the limitations that come with it? DRM up the ass, noticeable compression, no physical media, limited selection.
If the record company had any brains they would start pushing newer technology like SACD and DVD audio. Superior sound quality, bonus features like videos and slide shows that are accessible on these formats, sell it for a fair price and you will have a revolution like the DVD was.
How many people had extensive VHS and LaserDisc libraries but rushed out and replaced ALL of them with DVD because it was a superior product? Seems to me that movie studios and especially the record industry could make far more money by creating a Great MUST HAVE product, compelling people to want to replace their existing library of music. Would probably make them much more money then they think they may save by going after college students, p2p programs and whatnot. Plus if the audio quality on the SACD or DVD is so good and the file sizes so large, it would not make sense at this time to be trading uncompressed digital copies on kazaa. THink about it, how many 4-8gig uncompressed
Provide a better product, give your customers a good value and they will be itching to hand over their money.
One minor point that is pretty nice about the iTunes store is the accessibility of feedback and song/artist/album requests. No jumping to a website or anything; just a nice, clean feedback form right in iTunes. It provides a link to these forms when search results turn up empty...
A lot of other good points that made me think twice about buying DRM songs.
And lots of people using Kazaa have received viruses and spyware along with their music.
Uh.. apart from KaZaA itself that *is* spyware, have anyone managed to get a virus through downloading music? Yes I know there are viruses out there when it comes to gamez/appz/other executable code.
Or are they referring to that stupid Windows Explorer buffer overflow in ID tags? Yep. let's blame KaZaA for that...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Perhaps one of the most unheralded features of iTunes 4 is the ability
to connect and share with music outside of your own local network!
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).
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 share this particular playlist with a friend. Instruct
them to paste this into "Connect to Shared Music" and they'll have 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.
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! He will have full interactive access to your music library, as
well as any playlists you decide 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
privileges.
Note 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.
ps if you do buy music through apple's music store as soon as you burn
the audio to a cd you break the watermark. supposedly the DRM is meant
to deter not prevent copying.
And the guy we did vote for is helping run Apple. It seems fair to me :-)
name the DRM that impeads you. you can do what ever you want with these songs that any resonable person will do
So I assume that "Reasonable People" does not include non-Mac users? So since my GF has a Mac and I have a el-cheapo homebrew linux box, and we currently share mp3's, now she will get this AAC BS and I will use WHAT to play it? That does not seem unreasonable.
If they didn't make it USA-only. I give them an A for effort though.
Instead, I'll use CD Baby and get songs for approximately the same price, but at CD-quality, and from non-RIAA artists.
Random and weird software I've written.
Anyway Apple is unlikely to fight it, just as Apple doesn't fight the guys who have developed work-arounds to iPod file access limits.
sulli
RTFJ.
how about this...she burns you a CDDA cd from the AAC and give you the music she downloaded.
you can even make MP3s in itunes from AAC files!!! GASP!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Dude, if you're not planning on sharing the music you buy with the whole world, the restrictions that they *do* put in will NEVER hinder you.
Not true at all. I bought a track at work, but I can't play it at home because I'm unable to authorize my home computer(s) due to a proxy configuration.
I got around this by burning a CD and ripping the audio again. Of course, I had to rip it to mp3 because my slimp3 won't play AAC.
I think the store's a great idea and I intend to use it, but the DRM certainly does hinder the innocent.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
If more of the albums I like were available as DVD-A or SACD I would buy a TON of them, but as it stands, the music industry seems content to only push old technology.
Keep Austin Weird!
Fuck that, they need to charge a more reasonable price, like $0.05 a song or $1 an album.
That's not financially possible. Under U.S. copyright law, the songwriter's publisher gets about 8 cents per copy in addition to what the label gets.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Q: Why do they call them "audiophiles"?
A: Because calling them "suckers" is too cruel.
Great post. emusic is another great alternative to store bought copy protected CD's.
If your hard drive goes south, do you have to re-buy all of the songs you have already purchased but no longer have the files for?
As a huge Counting Crows fan I was delighted to see that there were four exclusive tracks on the Apple Music Store that I could not buy here in town. That was the bait and now I am hooked. As an alternative distribution model I hope to see the Music Store flourish by offering both album music and live preformances. Opening it up to independent labels would be good karma as well.
Oh, and for all the Win users out there the Mac boards are abuzz with rumors of iTunes for Windows by the end of the year...
If iTunes are for iMacs, are cartoons for cars?
No, it would follow that cartoons are for carmacs... fucktard.
I am not!
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
I know this has been mentioned before, but, IIRC, Steve Jobs mentioned a windows compatable version coming "by year's end." Also, I read of a possibility of AOL adapting this. Hope this helps... etcreed
So what if the record companies make a fortune? Isn't that a part of the capitalist spirit this country was founded on and still operates under? Let those who figure out how to make digital music sales work profit from it. At least we can select which songs we want to buy, saving us from paying $12+ for one or two songs we really like.
I also encountered the AppleID "bug" when I first tried to buy music. After being frustrated for about 30 minutes, trying to find on-line help related to the problem, and sending off a somewhat annoyed e-mail to the customer service people, I realized that the form it takes you to when it says the AppleID is taken specifically asks for your e-mail address, not the AppleID. I put in my e-mail address (the one attached to my AppleID) and everything worked; it had all the information from my AppleID account without me having to enter anything else.
You said "Now that I get tons of properly-labeled, decent quality MP3's, with no DRM, flat monthly fee, and unlimited downloads"
I hate kazaa and most all p2p apps. I like the idea I just don't care for the hassle and time involved. Its like that linux expression, "Mp3 downloads on kazaa are only free if your time is worth nothing, and quality means nothing to you"
I had never looked into emusic, but if it is in fact flat fee, unlimited downloads, no DRM, I think I may take a look at it. Thanks AC.
Oh, look. Another Apple zealot helping to further spread FUD.
Let's see. Last year after a lot of shopping around I put together my current desktop box. It's a dual (yes, dual) PIII 1.0GHz with 1GB (yes, GB) of RAM, an nVidia GFx something card with 64MB or RAM, and two 40GB disks. All under $1,300.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain how I can get that type of rig from Apple within the same price range, hmmm?
If people are willing to pay premium for a Mac because it looks kewl, fine. If you don't need the kind of firepower I need, fine. There is a certain value added component to Macs which some people go for, and that's OK. I mean, it's your money so you should be able to spend it any way you want. But please spare us the "Macs are not expensive" tirade. You folks sound like Baghdad Bob yelping about the infidels being butchered at the airport. Give it up.
People just don't get it. They talk and talk and talk about having to stop everyone from ripping protected files for sharing on the Internet, when truth is, it can't be done. Then they throw out this stuff that keeps your average luser from ripping the files, but is nothing that your average geek can circumvent. These people need to seriously get their act together.
(offtopic)
Has anyone noticed that even though in the ads for the online store they show a guy groovin' to Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back," they don't have the song or any of Mix's stuff for sale?
Weird.
The parent post is either a troll or he has a serious bug up his ass. This is not "insightful" in the least.
Jebus, people, treat your mod points with some freaking respect.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I don't think that the format is a problem but the 128kbps quality certainly is. Until they start offering 192, I'm probably not going to buy too many more songs.
You will use the Windows version of iTunes
At first I ripped all my CDs to MP3 at 162Kbps. For much of the music that was fine, but there were some types that just didn't sound right. Particularly music that had sound at many different frequencies at the same time. When the bass would thump, it sounded like the treble cut out. Icky. Irritating even. So I upgraded the HDD, dug the CDs out of storage, and re-ripped that stuff at 192 and that sounded good-enough to me.
So my worry is that ACC files at 162, while perhaps better than MP3 files at 162, still won't be good enough.
I hope that when Apple gets done loading their library onto the servers, they will go back and add 192Kbps files for those with the bandwidth and HDD space for it. At the same price of course.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
The main problem with $.50 songs is that the credit card companies charge a minimum flat fee per transaction, on top of the percent-of-transaction fee and the monthly account charge, so it's close to impossible to sell anything for less than a dollar or so.
Example: If you've got a $.35 flat fee plus a 2% transaction fee (and you ignore the monthly fee since you hopefully have lots of transactions to spread it out over), you're looking at having a maximum of $.12 to cover the expenses of the seller and recompense the composer and artists. Let's assume the seller can make back their expenses including bandwidth and web hosting fees, plus computer upgrades and a sysadmin to keep track of all the database issues and automation, with only $.04 per track. (This seems fairly optimistic to me unless you're a huge corporation subsidizing this sevice in some way.) That means that each person in the band will make $.02 every time a track is sold/downloaded. If we further assume that all four artists want to earn close to minimum wage (say low end of $5.00/hour, 40 hours/week), they need to sell 10000 songs per week to earn just over $10,000 a year each. That might be a little difficult for an independent musician without access to radio air time.
Independent musicians and registration-free net radio at EmergentSound
Apple is missing a marketing opportunity. Surely they know they have a miniscule part of the desktop market (Linux passed Mac over two years ago in number of deployed units). Obviously tying this service to the Mac is part of the strategy to bolster that market share. But the one thing that is missing is the ability to let those who don't (yet) own a Mac to browse. By making the web site so that everyone else can see what is available ... e.g. what they are missing by not having a Mac ... they could end up selling more Macs.
Of course a marketing droid would never think of the obvious.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The bad: I'm in the midst of working through some issues with Apple Store tech support on why I can't download the songs I've purchased.
.sig
The good: they've been very responsive, and quick to refund my purchase, asking me to try again. I did, it didn't work, and so I sent them a detailed account of my system and network.
We'll see if the problem gets resolved any time soon, my setup is fairly vanilla.
I don't have a
It's $1.00 a song - easy impulse buy.
It's $1,000 to get started - not an impulse buy for a recent college graduate who's looking for a job.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As was pointed out, it's coming to windows this winter. Mac users are the obvious group to test it out on, both for load and seeing how much people will buy, since iTunes for Mac is already complete.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Just wondering: if I downloaded and/or ripped my CD's, made a playlist, then piped the iPod output back through my Kenwood amp, how would it sound? Anyone tried this?
If 99 cents is too much for you pansies then what is a good price? 50 cents? 25? Oh right I get it, your a cheap ass and just want it free, well it ain't going to happen, so get used to the idea of paying for stuff, Open source seems to have seriously warped peoples sense of entitlement amd I don't see it getting any better any time soon
I downloaded iTunes 4 and started exploring the music store as soon as I got home on Monday. When I confirmed with my parents that I was allowed to use the service, I created my iTMS (iTunes Music Store) account with no problems (I already had an account at the Apple store).
:) ).
The first day the searches were _very_ slow, but I blame that on the initial surge of users. It has gotten better now and they are quite quick.
I don't mind the AAC format because most of the songs I download are the only ones I want from the CD. I think it is worth $.99 and the lower quality of the AAC format to get a single song, worth more than paying $15 for a higher quality CD with only one song I want.
So far I have bought 11 songs. Most of these songs I had previously downloaded from Napster, Gnucleus, or Kazaa. I have also found some other songs that I have heard before, but didn't know the name of, and bought them (Steve Jobs' presentation introduced me to a few
However, they still need to increase their library. They don't have any Weird Al or Blue Man Group! I hope they are able to quickly increase the library size and I also hope it comes out for Windows sooner rather than later. Not sure when when, if ever, it would come out for other countries, but hopefully they can get that working.
Go Apple!
Andrew
Here here.
;)
If someone could also post the address where I can turn n my Toshiba P4 2.4ghz/512/40gb/32mbNvidia4/15.1" laptop ($1700) for a less powerful powerbook g4 ($3,200) I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
-rt
I use emusic ALL the time. The only problem I have with it is the somewhat limited music list. They'll get better, though.
BUT....the whole experience is FAR, FAR better than trying to d/l something off a p2p network.
Reliable, fast, qood quality, properly labeled songs and albums. One click for an entire, in sequence, album is hard to beat.
so macs make you gay? ummm what ever.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Dude, if you're not planning on sharing the music you buy with the whole world, the restrictions that they *do* put in will NEVER hinder you.
Dude, that's just silly.
I use a SliMP3 as my primary audio interface. It plays MP3s. The server transcodes other formats nicely and transparently... as long as they're not DRM-encumbered. I have no slightest interest in replacing it with a Mac, for many reasons.
By DRM-crippling the tracks it sells, Apple loses me as a customer since I can't use them without jumping through hoops (AAC->burn CD->rip CD to MP3). Whatever, that's their business decision, but to claim that the DRM "will NEVER hinder" me is just dumb.
"Stealing" means taking something that the owner is selling without paying for it. "Piracy" means making and distributing copies illegally.
Now that the language lesson is over, maybe we can get on with the discussion.
I say "Buy a Mac."
For the $1,000 that the cheapest Macintosh computer costs, I could buy at least 70 CDs, with full recording quality and full liner notes and no digital restrictions management.
Will I retire or break 10K?
with the DRM built into .aac, I'm curious how these downloaded files work with the iPod? from some comments on the tidbits-talk mailing list on the DRM in AAC, it seems that you have to enter your Apple ID every time you want to play a purchased song. So how can you listen to it on the iPod when you have to authenticate against Apple's servers every time? Does the new iPod have some sort of master DRM key? Does it download your key information when you download songs to it? Enquiring minds want to know
-- DuckWing
Looks like Apple is looking for people to make iTunes for Windows.
Apple Computer is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to design and build one of our newest Consumer Applications, iTunes for Windows.
Must be possess strong skills in the areas of application design, solid API design principles, user interface engineering, and have a strong understanding of customer and workflow issues. Experience with Windows logo certification preferred. Candidate should have a history of successful large volume consumer product shipment.
A B.S. or better in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science is preferred. Required skills include C, C++, UI, MFC, Win32, COM, DirectX, Installshield and application engineering. Exposure to networking and device drivers a plus. Minimum of 10 years of directly related experience.
Go for it!
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but everytime I see the counter-argument about the price of an iMac being a little bit more, it makes me want to set the record straight.
<Disclaimer>Yes, I have owned an iProduct. I traded an old development desktop of mine for an old iBook, and I loved it, but then I won a Tablet PC at Microsoft's launch event, and haven't been able to go back</Disclaimer>
What you fail to realize about most enthusiast PC owners is that they almost never buy a new PC. It's more of a rolling investment whereby they trickle in cash as they have it to upgrade whatever part happens to be lagging. This is often done at the rate of ~$100-$300 a purchase, where $300 is definitely a very high end purchase. So, in order to switch to an iSomething, a typical enthusiast PC owner (who has a "very fast box"(TM)), will have to save up enough for five to twenty instances of their regular purchase cycle (that's a lot!) in order to get something that has a similar performance level to what they're used to. (And make no mistakes, an enthusiast won't put out a large sum of money for something that's going to be slower.)
That's not just expensive, that's an entirely different economy! Owning apple hardware is like buying a new car every time the speed limit is raised... Granted, it isn't often, but when it happens, it really sucks to have to replace your machine.
Apple won't go down the constant stream of revenue path because they aren't the only ones who sell upgrades, and they like being the only ones who sell Apple computers. Often it makes more sense for a business to work in the service/stream model (just look at how all of the software companies are trying to get us to switch to software under the service model), but Apple doesn't like the loss of control.
Me, I'm in love with my tablet, and plan on selling it in order to buy a Centrino/Pentium-M tablet as soon as they're available (Hopefully, some company will come out with the enthusiast's model, and not just those dinky-900Mhz ULV models. Are you listening???) When Apple has their tablet available, I'll give it a shot, and maybe switch again, but then agian, I have a high paying job, and I'm not working within the confines of trickle purchasing...
I am an audiophile and even bigger videophile. But your joke is damn funny. I will have to remember that one.
You have to be able to laugh at yourself sometimes. Spending thousands of dollars on interconnects and speaker cable, yeah its pretty fuckin silly and we deserve to be made fun of. But the difference is worth it to us, its what we love, it makes us happy, It's our money to spend and we get a great return on enjoyment.
My family gives me a hard time for spending so much money on AV gear, but they always want to have parties at my house to watch the Superbowl or Masters or NHL playoffs or Oscars on one of the best HDTV sets money can buy.
Again, I loved your joke, I'm going to use it myself.
A 15" Powerbook with 60GB drive and 512mb RAM would be $2400. Plus it would have things like being built-in airport ready, double the battery life, built-in firewire, gigabit ethernet, and an overall slimmer and sturdier design. And the great Apple software.
Also take into account that the laptop you are talking about probably cost at least $1900.
Someone is a zealot here, and it isn't Apple users in this case. It's YOU BIAAATTTCH!!!!!!!
You can use whatever you want to play it. AAC decoding is not licensed. If there's not one available, write your own. (That's the stock Linux answer, right?)
There are several AAC decoders available for Mac and Windows. It's just a matter of time and determination before somebody makes one for Linux or Plan9 or DR-DOS or whatever the hell toy operating system you happen to use.
If you have to rip the audio stream to convert to mp3 and do what you want with the music, how is apple's new music service different from all the other services already out there, like Rhapsody? With Rhapsody, I pay $10 a month, and I get unlimited songs. I can rip the audio stream using totalrecorder and do what I want with the resulting mp3s. I certainly listen to more than 10 new songs a month.
I was checking for breadth based on a few groups I like (Chick Corea, YES, RUSH, Queen, Yellow Jackets, etc) and decided to type in "Mormon Tabernacle Choir." Sure enough, lots of songs popped up. But when I clicked on a few, at least one of them was in the "ROCK" Genre. It most definitely wasn't rock...
Is there any information on how/if you can move your music collection to a new computer when you inevitably get a new machine a few years down the road?
Do you just copy the files over?
I hope the new Mac doesn't have to be one of the three designated machines.
Perhaps this should be submitted as a separate story, but heck, Google News is lumping it in with this.
According to CNet, Apple appears to be looking for a developer to help create iTunes for Windows. Seems like a smart move to me -- the Windows user base is clearly vastly larger than Mac, and Apple will still be getting a slice of online music sales -- plus they give another reason for Windows users to buy an iPod.
I keep hearing great things about iTunes too, in that it's apparantly quite a bit better than most music database software. Personally I'm still looking for a good music db/organizing program for either Linux (preferred) or Windows (thank you samba) - I'm in the process of ripping ~1000 CDs to high bitrate MP3 for my TiVo and am in desperate need for some cataloging and playlist creation tools. From what little I've heard iTunes would fit the bill and do it well... but obviously I still need to find something until then (suggestions welcome).
Note that .m4p files are protected AAC and .m4a files are unprotected AAC. To easily convert .m4p to m4a and retain (more or less) the tags:
.m4p album (all the files from one album) to an audio-CD (which you may wish to do anyway.)
.m4a).
.m4p files in iTunes and drag the cover picture to your desktop.
.m4a files of the album at once and then drag that cover picture to the iTunes cover picture to set it for all the selected files.
1) burn the
2) rip that CD back to AAC format via iTunes and you end up with the same files sans protection (i.e.
iTunes will put tags in via freecddb or whatever they heck it is, but it won't automatically put the cover picture back since those aren't in that database, but the good news is you already have it:
3) select one of the
4) select all of the
Now, somebody tell me - since we are burning 128 kbps AAC to CD and the ripping the CD to 128 kbps AAC is there any audio quality loss? For myself I couldn't tell if there was any.
--- What?
Another argument: "I can't afford a Mac because I'm a broke college student and my PC is 30 months old and has no resale value."
Will I retire or break 10K?
oh yeah not to mention quicktime 6.2 plays the AAC file format
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
waht about me is the service 4 me then pls explane thx?
No, this service is not geared toward retarded people. Sorry.
name the DRM that impeads [sic] you.
Done.
you can do what ever you want with these songs that any resonable person will do.
Patently false.
I've actually been a very happy emusic.com user for more than nine months now. Their download manager puts nice properly labeled 128kb/s mp3s with no DRM into properly labeled subdirectories on my machine. I record them to minidisc (using Sony's crappy DRM-full software), CD, and share them among all the machines in my house. All this for $10/mo, and they have a great selection of the kind of music I listen to (mostly electronica and indie rock). Their suggestions aren't perfect, but will turn up some nice gems every once in a while. I haven't touched Kazaa for nine months, and I've only baught one CD in nine months. Bringing my total spent on music to $108 and access to (counting folders now) 120 albums I downloaded since.
You guys are right. I see that they are also looking for someone to create a version of iTunes for Windows also. (Maybe some of you out of workers can apply.)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I think a lot of this attitude has to do with perceptions involving having a large corporation dictate what you will do. Give a choice between two songs, one without DRM, one with, we would all choose the one without DRM. DRM is like having an overzealous parent standing over you shoulder all the time to make sure you dont "break the rules" arbitrarily dictated by them. None of us like being treated like children, and thus do not like dealing with DRM hindered files. It all comes down to the perception of freedom and its value when compared to higher quality files and the hassle of P2P filesharing
Not really; the 128kb bit rate of these files doesn't approach the original in terms of quality.
If we were talking MP3, you'd be correct, but you really should try listening to AIFF versus 128Kbit AAC in a blind test.
My hearing tops out at about 25Khz (last time I tested it with a tone generator, around three years back), and I can't hear the difference between the CD and the AAC file on any of the tracks I've ripped so far.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I agree that it shouldn't be free to get music online but you *should* be able to get it online. Lots of record companies don't really let you without charging you monthly fees.
Apple's got the right idea. Of course when they come out with the Windows version it'll probably be crappy just so they can trumpet how much better the Mac is. Same thing they did with the iPod until a 3rd party (MediaPlay) came out with something that actually worked right (XPlay).
The point: until I can get *all* the tracks I want (from whichever label) on whichever platform I want, there's still P2P and luckily, it's free :)
I won't be held hostage, I'll just take what I want.
If you're telling me you can tell the difference (with your ears) while sitting at your computer or in your car, then you are full of shit.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Ditto. If I use this service I would just have to burn it to a cd and re-rip it as a mp3. Don't tell me about how you could do everything the same with the new format because my only impediment from going back to buying music is I don't want my leagaly purchased music to be dependent on any technology for it to be used. Does anyone really think any restricted format will be usable in 10 to 15 years? It's hard enough keeping up with media changes 5 1/2 to 3/14 to zip to cdr to dvdr to put up with format hell. How about having to buy new players. I'll start buying again when I could choose to have my music in either mp3 or ogg format. I would really start purchasing when the price gets down to $.99 for new songs ( 2 years) $.50 for old ones. A year ago I thought that was I pipe dream but now mayby so?
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
Yes, I understand that the one is a radio service and the other is a download service, but it would seem that, on principle, you'd rather just listen to (perfectly legal!) free AM/FM radio or CDs than shell out money for a IP-restrictive, 128 kbps stream service...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Unlike you, I'll only pay $1 a song when I can download it in losslessly compressed CD or better quality. I don't mind if it's also possible to download MP3, OGG, AAC, or other lossy compressed formats at various bitrates/sizes as another option. I want a music service where I buy a song ONCE and can download it as much as I want, as often as I want, in various formats.
Rampant abuse and/or piracy? No more than already exists. But such an EASY TO USE and USEFUL system would mean fewer people who want to be legal cound and would pay for what they like.
Apple's service is an improvement, in the right direction, but still too restrictive and of insufficient quality.
Besides the fact that you compared a Toshiba laptop with a 15" screen to a Powerbook with a 17" screen, you also neglected to compare the optical drives. The $3300 Powerbook you were comparing your Toshiba against comes with a SuperDrive - i.e. CDRW and DVD-R all in one drive. I'll bet your Toshiba doesn't have that.
A much better comparison would be against Apple's 15" Powerbook - with 512 MB of RAM and a 60 GB HD, it comes to $2450 - but it comes with a slot-loading CD-RW/DVD "combo" drive - again, I'll bet your Toshiba doesn't do that. Nor does your Toshiba have Gigabit Ethernet with automatic crossover, a built-in wireless antenna, or digital video out, right?
You might want to check the price at toshiba.com, too, because I certainly couldn't spec out anything with a 2.4 GHz processor for as low as $1600.
I'll pay $1 a song when it's a 320kbs MP3 with NO DRM or restrictions. Until then I'll either use Kazaa or just buy the CD.
Because Kazaa is known to be a haven for quality songs at 320kbps?
No self-respecting audiophile who's unsatisfied with 128kbps AAC would admit to regularly downloading songs from Kazaa.
5 bucks your Kazaa-leechin' ass can't even tell a difference between a 192kbps VBR MP3 file and the original raw file in a double blind test...
If I buy a song and I lose it (hard drive fails) can I re-download it for free? If so, how long until that "expires"?
----- rL
Might have had something to do with:
a) Apple being a mac company
b) No iTunes for windows
c) Smaller userbase to work out the kinks on
d) Proof positive for the record companies (we already know mac users have money to spend, so they will be more likely to pay)
e) Trying to promote the mac platform by doing what the PCs have failed at so far
f) "It came out on mac first"
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Well I use my Empeg for all in car listening, and this would certainly stop that from happening. There's one way the DRM gets in the way.
The first consumer CD players were released in 1982 but the Beatles weren't there. Indeed they didn't show up formally until 1987 with the one exception of a limited release of Abbey Road in Japan in 1983.
--- What?
If the record company had any brains they would start pushing newer technology like SACD and DVD audio. Superior sound quality, bonus features ...
...and DRM up the wazoo.
Eh? Every third post is "Apple's compressed music sounds like crap, it's 128Kbps, that's garbage. No way would I pay for such terrible quality." It seems like you guys are paying more attention to the bitrate than the sound and have made your mind up that any music encoded at 128Kbps couldn't possibly be near CD quality. I've not heard any music encoded in AAC but I wouldn't find it impossible to believe that music at 128Kbps could sound good.
I've heard a lot of claims (right here on Slashdot, no less) that DivX encoded video looks just as good as MPEG2 encoded DVD video (which is encoded at a significantly higher bitrate), so why do you guys find it so hard to believe that relatively low bitrate AAC audio could sound as good as MP3 audio of a higher bitrate?
In Soviet Union, song buys YOU!
...
1.) Sell songs
2.) Increase customer base
3.) Merge with RIAA
4.)
5.) Profit!!!
1 Metallica song on iTunes 4: $0.99
Apple 10g iPod: $299.00
Lawn chair: $29.99
Loudspeaker: $128.49
1 tank gas for SUV: $90.00
The look on Hilary Rosen's face when Enter Sandman blasts outside her office: Priceless
What about a beowulf clu...32479ty- bg397ftr0
<TERMINATION CAUSE=Carrier lost>.
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!"
Of course, I still haven't bought one....
What I find particularly nice about this dealy is that one doesn't have to log into some really poorly layed out web page with terrible graphics of Brittney and N'Sync splattered all over and with banners flying all about crashing into each other. It is a natural extension of iTunes and a pleasant aesthetic experience. It works just like the player, type in the name of your favorite band (that everyone has heard of) and the songs are layed out in front of you just like your own collection.
What I think will make this service sucessfull is that one merely has to click on the song for it to become part of one's collection. Songs can be attained just as simply as if they were already on one's harddrive and so the natural defense mechanisms we've all built up for traditional retail establishments and online retailers will be that much weaker. See a picture of a pretty pop star, click on it, and recieve instant gratification for not much money.
I mean, think about it. It really is kind of an ugly experience to log into amazon.com, their page is really quite ugly. And web browsers, if used to buy online mp3s, are not generally very well linked with your player (you tend to download to your default folder and then have to copy from there into iTunes.) Anyway this store makes spending money a really slick and easy thing to do. (cheaper and safer than sex) I just hope that some day it will offer some obscure music that I can't buy in music stores. Then I'll really get off on it.
I picked up "One Love" off of 'Blue Lines' which I shouldnt have to pay for since I have owned at least two copies of that album (but convienience drove me to it). And you hit the nail right on the head with the Portishead example. They have Bjork, but not everything.... They have Massive Attack, but not everything. They dont have Atari Teenage Riot, Ween, and of course __(your faveorite obscure band here)___. Now of course that may change ala' Metallica was the first to jump off Napster but did you see how fast people lined up behind them? If this takes off like it could and the artists (and their evil overlords) start to go deep into their libraries - even the most hardcore would break down to get a real version of the Japanese only Ol' Dirty Bastard "O.D.B.E.P." for 99cents a track (or at least i would since I paid $35 back in the day only to watch my ex girlfriend nuke it ).
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
funny how motorola probably has more cpus in use worldwide than any x86 manufacturer.
can you say embedded?
First the one click sign up form has a small bug if you already have any apple account with a credit card. (e.g. mac.com, applestore, developer account, iphoto). The error messages they give are misleading as to the root cause of the problem but here is the trick to getting it to work. You must make sure that all of your apple accounts have identical info. when I say identical i mean exact. for example having a ten digit hyphenated phone number on one account and not on the music store record, or a different zip code will break it. Finally, counter intuitively, do not enter the security code number from the back of the credit card. the reason here is that the mac.com accounts dont have a place for it to be entered.
if all else fails, create a fresh account with a new e-mail address.
for cover art of all those tunes you did not buy from apple the best solution is clutter a freeware app that works with itunes. it auto lookups the cover art using amazon.com. it has some other feeatures too. but mainly it works slightly better than the one built into itunes since it does a more successful job of recognizing when two songs belong to the same album and avoids storing the cover art twice.
if you want to drag the cover art from clutter into itunes here is a procedure I recomend--I wish I could automate it. 1) open itunes and create a smart playlist of all track=1 tunes to get one tune from every album. 2) click on cover art display where it says "selection" and it will change to "now playing", 3) in the finder open ~/Library/Images/com.sprote.clutter/CDs and sort it by date.
now iterate the following, start playing the first song in your smart playlist, clutter will fetch the album cover, the finder will show a folder containing a jpeg. drag this to the album art in itunes, press command -> to move to the next song in itunes. rinse lather repeat. the only proble I encoutered was as I said in some cases itunes cant figure out that two songs are from the same album.
if you need high res cover art go to walmart's web site.
ps I spent last night playing with the store and after i got it to accept my credit card (yep the credit company called me to see if this was fraud too--multiple charges in a row for the same small amount is a fraud flag not an apple bug). I bought five peices of music before i realized this was like eating potatoe chips. flawless instant downloads, pristine music. fairly easy to find what I wanted, and though some things I wanted are missing the breadth of their coverage in other musical forms is astonishing. I even bough some music form artists I had never heard before because I found it while browsing. I really enjoyed the ability to fill in my music collection with a few songs I used to have on vinyl but would never be willing to buy the whole album again just to get those favorites.
and my conclusion is this. I've spent hours on kazza trying to download just a few songs I wanted. it rarely works the fist time since the servers beomce un avalaible or some dickhead entered the album decriptor wrong or the connection stinks or you cant find a decent bit rate or just part of the album..yada yada yada.
after using the applse site I realized what steve jobs was saying when he pointed out on cnn that using Kazza is like paying yourself minimum wages since you can only get 5 songs (= 5 dollars) in a hours worth of work!!! hopefully in a few years the price will drop even more at which point it will be way better than free,
THe only thing I was not too happy about was that I cant get these in mp3 format so I cant send them to my freinds with plain jane mp3 players. (you cant convert acc that you purchesed to mp3 in itunes--it will let you convert acc songs that you ripped yourself). I could burn a cd and re-rip them but by then the quality will be down. But franky this is just me being a weasel. its not fair use for me to mail songs around the globe.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That's all well and good if you have an album that's all killer, no filler, every song is a keeper. Unfortunately that is very rare nowadays.
Case in point: "Quality" by Talib Kweli. I heard the song "Get By" on a streaming feed from KEXP in Seattle, WA (It was the only streaming radio station with a high-quality WiMP stream...I couldn't install Winamp at the last job I had) and immediately hit eBay looking for the album. I paid $10 for a barely-used copy, and found I had bought a $10 coaster save for the one song I liked.
Now, if iTunes had the song for download, I could just snarf the song for $0.99 plus tax, and save a little under $9 for other stuff. Like more songs from iTunes. Or lunch. Or a used Dreamcast game. Or whatever. :)
This is the best antidote to the crappy, filler-crammed albums out there that fueled P2P in the first place. Maybe now bands can concentrate on crafting GOOD SONGS. Like in the days when they sold 45rpm singles. Thank you, Steve Jobs.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
For those who dread the ACC format, here is a bit of news for you (in case you have not heard of this product). Audio Hijack allows you to put a software wedge between any application playing and will record the output to your standard AIFF. This, of course, can be played and converted to an MP3 with iTunes. Recording options include; Flash, Realplayer, DVD player, Windows Media player. Basically anything you can launch in a GUI.
I have found this invaluable when making personal movies and wanting to capture little sound clips or songs of the web. I run the iMovie FAQ if you interested in other cool things to do with your iLife.
For chrissake, will you grow up? Stop hiding behind your hair-splitting terminology. Whatever you want to call it, we all know what we're talking about here. When you copy copyrighted music without permission, you're BREAKING THE LAW. It is illegal -- yes, the SAME WAY stealing is illegal, or piracy on the high seas is illegal.
You may have a point that unlicensed copying shouldn't be illegal. I might even agree with you. But when you imply you're taking the legal and moral high road just because you refuse to fucking call a duck a duck, you seriously hurt your argument.
As to your last point: fine, I'll agree. And if you don't want me to rape your daughter, then don't let her on my property.
yours
Most, but not all albums cost $9.99. Here's an example of a six-track album for $11.99. (Cannonball Adderley, Somethin' Else (remastered). Slashdot doesn't seem to like itms:// links, though).
I would guess that the album price depends on the label.
Yes. I noticed the same problem. I haven't tried to troubleshoot it yet.
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/
I've found that using an RPF sequence works better than saving a comustion file.
Dunno about that...I built Dell's $6k machine for around $3k (and still had better parts, more memory, etc than Dell would give me. IBM had a similar machine to Dell for about $7k)
$3k wouldn't have even gotten me a top-of-the line Mac (or the dual monitors) with the specs/components that I got. And this PC (dual Athlon 2000+) runs circles around the dual 1.25GHz G4 we just got (on the same programs Photoshop and FormZ)
However, IMHO, the high-end IBook is the best deal for performance/cost in a laptop.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Oh, and congrats on the $27 million bargain computer there....
Anybody know if SliMP3 will be able to play these AAC files?
:)
www.slimdevices.com
I know it's an "MP3 Player," but that didn't stop them from getting internet radio to work with it.
For brand spanking new equipment:
Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz w/1MB L3 per proc.
1.256GB DDR333 SDRAM (PC2700) - 2 DIMM (1 gig DIMM 1 256 DIMM)
80GB Ultra ATA drive
Optical 1 - Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX w/64MB DDR
AirPort Extreme Card
Apple Pro Keyboard - U.S. English
Mac OS - U.S. English
Subtotal $2,144.00
Granted, it is more expensive, but not horribly so. I didn't see any mention as to whether your computer contained DVI out, Firewire, Gigabit ethernet or any wireless connectivity. These are all useful features of course, and thought they wont tack another $700 on to your PC, they will tack on some cost.
Then ofcourse there is this:
Power Mac G4 1GHz DUAL/1.256MB/80GB/DVD-R/CDRW/GigE/56K - Refurbished $1,824.00
And then of course there is always ebay for buying and assembling a system.
In all yes macs are more expensive, but certainly not the price gouge people make it out to be,
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Also, some albums are listed as "Explicit" or "Clean." Notice I said "albums": if one song in an album has a label they all seem to, though I didn't do an exhaustive search. Since this is structured as song-centric, I feel they should have labeled on a song-by-song basis.
I've actually seen per-song explicit warnings.
For an example, use the browse method and dig your way through System Of A Down albums and you'll see a small [EXPLICIT] tag on the sone line, on the right of the song title column.
This service is *way*, *way*, too expensive
for the average joe. Until they can get the
prince down to $10 a month (or less) with
unlimited downloads then this service will
only catch on with individuals with money
to burn.
I haven't looked at their music catalog but
200,000 songs, while large, isn't what I would
call comprehensive. Basically I want every(*)
song/album/cd released in the U.S. back to at
least 1960.
My $.02 worth...
(*) I'll qualify "every" as those songs, albums,
and cds that sold over some mininum number of
copies.
The service is awesome. I like the high quality 30-second clips. .99 is kinda crappy, but I can live with it. What I can't live with is what they charge for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (and other similar albums). Dark Side of the Moon costs $14.99 for 9 songs. To make it worse, two of the songs are "Album Only" songs that cannot be purchased individually. I realize that while there are only 9 songs on the track, a few of them are longer than 5 minutes. But that still isn't work 14.99 to me. I'll just go buy the real thing for that much.
For those complaining about the $0.99 pricetag of songs.. try to think ahead a year or two when other music distributors jump into this market. :)
Competition in this space will quickly force prices down if the services are not much differentiated from each other.
I'd imagine the margins could drop down to the point that they are the same as those for a CD before the RIAA runs into problems.
(would they go around buying up the competition at that point? anyone with a good head-start in this market would be in a better acquisition position than the latecomers... what's that about Universal for sale?
I found cdbaby.com a couple years ago, and have bought about 1/2 of my CDs from them since then. I've found several local great bands this way, and several of my favorite bands. (Though nothing will beat Rush and Pink Floyd for me)
Portal - intelligent, philisophical anguish, working on their second album. Like Tool-Anima / NIN (Canada)
Scarlet Life - great trip hop. Like Portishead, but more cutting (Chicago)
and Pelican City, Seroya, Vanessa Handrick, Moon Theory, Civilization, Alex Tronic, Molly Zenobia, Laya Fisher...
And I get the satisfaction knowing that 50% to 80% of the CD price goes directly to the artist.
They make great presents too. :)
I think this service is great. The .99 impulse buy price sounds like a "magic number" to me.
If I was Steve-o Jobbs, I'd allow and motivate people to use the Apple stores (or other stores, Best Buy, Circuit City, Ratty Shack, etc.) to access this service. Wouldn't it be great for the non-tech-savvy does-not-have-a-broadband-connection is-afraid-to-install-new-software customer to go into a store (with a nice fat broadband connection), pick the songs they want and walk out with a custom CD hot off the burner?
Of course, there might be snags (they wouldn't want the file you bought to be accessible by another anonymous walk in customer), but it's probably easy to work around.
Kudos to Apple anyway.
/* TAANSTAFL */
What will be the chance that any music I buy today will still work? Apple might be gone, or might have dropped the music service and then who would authorize my machines to play the music?
What if I want to move from an apple to windows/linux/some other os?
I have collected tens of thousands of dollars in music over the last 20 years, and I can still play it all on any device I choose. No way I am spending a large chunk of money for something that a company can take away at any time they choose.
I'm a PC enthusiast. But I haven't bought a new computer in nearly 6 years. I simply upgrade a little at a time.
You can't do that in a Mac. The price/performance of a Mac is significantly worse than a PC to begin with, and then beyond that it's MUCH more expensive if you want to "keep up with the times" since incrementally upgrading a Mac is MUCH more difficult than a PC.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
in any case they made it too hard. I can understand why they wanted to make it failsafe from their point of view. but I feel they did a loust job on the error messages that only lead to confusion.
but heck it is one heck of a smooth start up for such a big undertaking. I mean consider the fantastic risks they taking putting such a valuable collection on line. they had to double think everything. so its not too surprising they interface is a bit over agressive in protecting itself. Imagine trying to do this in a windows environment where nothing is homogeneous. yikes. only apple could pull this off. no wonder they are giving themselves till next year to add windows services.
A proxy configuration issue? Could you elaborate on this? This sounds like an easy-to-fix problem.
Obivously the music store is targeted at existing Mac users; I don't think anyone is going to switch just so they can use it.
Er... it's almost $1,000 more. That's normally a factor for most people, I'd say.
I didn't see any mention as to whether your computer contained DVI out, Firewire, Gigabit ethernet or any wireless connectivity
DVI, no. I have a monitor I actually like and I'm not about to shell $2,000 for a comparable size LCD. Firewire, yes. On the Audigy card. Everything else I don't need or want. Besides, if I wanted to add wireless, for example, I could do it for under $100 bucks.
Like I said, you're free to spend your money any way you want. But your argument here doesn't hold much water.
Power Mac G4 1GHz DUAL/1.256MB/80GB/DVD-R/CDRW/GigE/56K - Refurbished $1,824.00
Still well $800 over a comparable *refurbished* PC.
He built that system a YEAR ago.
I'll price out a similar system in the PC world:
Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton core) - $150 (Actually, I think it's down to $125 now, but $150 would include a heatsink)
Epox EP-8RDA+ motherboard - $120 or so
1 GB DDR333 - $200 for Corsair XMS, two 512M sticks
GeForce4 Ti4600 - Under $200 now
Chieftec case with power supply - Under $100
Go for the gold - DVD-R drive, $230. $150 if you get lucky at an OfficeMax sale like I did.
Intel Gigabit Eth cards can be found for under $100, possibly under $50. (IIRC they have a deal where you can order one card for $50 or maybe it was even $30something.)
120GB 7200 RPM HD - $120
WORST case that's $1220 for a system that eats your nearly double-the-cost system for lunch. (CPU-wise it's probably even, but the system I priced adds a DVD-R drive, 40 gigs more HD space, and a video card that will eat that pitiful GF4MX for lunch. Wireless would be another $50 or so. The EpoX is an nForce2 mobo, so that includes dual-channel DDR, Firewire, and a VERY nice sound subsystem among other goodies.
For the price of your refurbished system, you could add an 18" Dell UltraSharp 1800FP flat-panel display and a small-ish surround sound system. (Target has one for $140 now, 300 watts total made by RCA.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
According to Apple, you can put the music on an unlimited number of iPods. I tried this. I dumped the music on my friend's iPod. It played just fine.
Now, I can only draw one conclusion from this: The iPod decrypts the AAC file without using your Apple ID. So, if somebody hacks the new iPod firmware update & gets the key out of it, anybody can play AAC files. How do I know this? Well, we tried to play the AAC file off of my friend's iBook in iTunes. Didn't work. The file was *still* encrypted, yet only iTunes cared about it.
To me, this has to be some ridiculous fast one Apple pulled on the RIAA Labels. I mean, you can still share music. You just have to use an iPod to do it.
* Twenty of your friends come over
* You copy all your purchased music from your computer to their iPod
* They leave and enjoy your music on the iPod without your presence
I'm behind a proxy and iTunes will not connect to the store. I tried sniffing the connection but it was all junk, which makes me think they use SSL when they really should be issuing a "CONNECT" and *then* start with the SSL.
Very frustrating and I had the same problem with Safari until two versions ago when they FINALLY fixed the bug. Now the bug is back!
I'm really listening to a wide variety of material; anything from baroque chamber music to the latest pop diva.
When the mp3 phenomenon started a few years ago, I was satisfied with 128kb mp3's. What I found after a while was that 128kb mp3s weren't very good, and once I discovered the flaws, they were immediately obvious on any recording. It seemed to me to be roughly on a par with a cassette copy of an album. Okay, so I went to 160, but it only removed some of the flaws. I found that 192kb was fine most of the time, but for music with a lot of transients (which could be anything, orchestral, certain pop, country), there was artifacts. By going to 256kb the artifacts disappeared. But the file sizes are too big. So I've switched to LAME VBR high quality, which is pretty good.
I have no particular beef with AAC (yes, I have heard it, but not extensively); but I would like the option of a higher bit rate. Reviewers comments on ACC (the one in the WSJ article mentioned) lead me to believe AAC at 128kb is better than MP3, but not significantly better. I have more experience with MS's lossy compression, and I haven't found it to be better than MP3. RealAudio's claims of better lossy compression than MP3 are clearly false, so lets say I'm skeptical of someone making magic claims about lossy compression at 128kb.
Do you think the lack of option of higher bit rates is due to technical limitations, or licensing limitations from the RIAA members? Or perhaps the feeling that most downloaders are going to be satisfied with what's offered?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Just something different.
a) 30-sec preview. Try before you buy.
b) Convenience. One of the two biggest advantages to this service.
c) This is the most important. One big complaint people have is that on so many CDs, there are 2-3 good tracks and the rest is crap. This is why I almost never buy CDs myself. Yes, the cost per track is more, but the ability to buy individual songs rather than a whole album means that if I just want 2-3 tracks from a given album, I can spend $2-3 instead of $10-15.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I am currently searching for an inexpensive laptop I like, and I do not think that Apple's products even begin to compete with x86 products in terms of price.
The iBook is the low-end mac laptop. For $1000, you get an outdated 800MHz G3 processor, a smallish 12-inch screen, a videocard that's two generations behind the status quo, and only 128 megabytes of RAM. Ignoring the processor and the screen, this is about the same as a cheap PC laptop. However, the processor is already two generations behind, and the rest is not much better. With today's software, 512MB of RAM is the bare minimum.
However, whereas a nice PC notebook can be gotten for about $1500, Apple's powerbooks start at $1800, and that particular 867MHz model is not that much better than the $1000 iBook. The good Apple notebooks start at $2000, and even the fastest processor they have is a slow 1GHz G4. Given that Intel is up to 2.5GHz in laptops, that's not impressive at all. Regardless of how well everything else is made, do I want to invest $2000 in outdated hardware that will become obsolete in a couple of months? Not really.
Sure, you can get an Apple box for the same price as a PC, but the Apple box will include significantly older technology. If I want to do something which needs more power (like encoding video or playing games), I'd be forced to buy a new laptop sooner. Sure, I won't get the pretty candycoating on the PC notebook, but it would probably stay current for much longer.
For all thsoe complaining about the price, remember this is basically v1.0 of Applemusic.com. My prediction is that as it progresses, we'll start to see cheaper prices, and varied prices.
ie: There are some songs I'd gladly pay $1 for, others which I wouldn't (but would buy for a quarter) etc.
I'd bet that we'll see different songs having different prices eventually
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Actually, due to Apple's agressive educational discounting, I can get the 15.2" TiBook for just a shade more than that with a Superdrive.
Harvard is selling the 15.2" TiBooks are $1,799 (867Mhz, DVD/CD-RW) and $2,479 (1Ghz, DVD-R/CD-RW), including an Airport card and extended warranty. The iBook 800Mhz (DVD/CD-RW) for $1,099. The 12.1" Powerbook is $1,559 including a free Airport Extreme card and extended warranty. The Queen Mother 17" book is $2,979, including the extended warranty (Airport Extreme and Bluetooth are built in). A Superdrive eMac is $1,059.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Huh? (Sorry, it's hard to pull an Ellen in text)
What are you talking about? What sort of encoder are you using? MP4 and MP3 both can use multiple audio encoders...the MP4 is just a wrapper and presentation. There's no reason (that I'm aware of, I could be a moron) that it should sound different. Or be a different size.
Where's Ben Wagonner when you need him to set you straight? I'm confused.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
I do however have an app that hijacks the audio stream before the speakers and allows you to play with equalizers, balance, etc. Oh, and it lets you save the result as an MP3 as well as playing it through the speakers.
This app is called Audio Hijack Pro.
Fantastic value for 30$ only.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I might use eMusic if they upped their bitrate, which they apparently plan to do. In the meantime, I refuse to listen to 128k MP3s, much less buy them.
Also, I found eMusic's selection pretty limited.
emusic.com:
"unlimited" (actually =2000 tracks / month) downloading for $10-15 / month, no drm, fewer legal restrictions, artists still get paid, quality is similar to apple's. 950 mostly indie labels means fewer big names, but i've found ~20 albums by artists i already like as well as many new favorites all in the last two weeks. so far i'm paying ~$0.25 / album but if i maxed out the service, i could get albums for as little as $0.05. they have nice charts, articles, suggestions, etc.
i'd recommend signing up for emusic's service once a year for 3 months (minimum term), and using apple's service and local [used] cd stores to fill in the gaps.
-branden
And it never will with your attitude. As far as I'm concerned, CDs are still the best way to get music. They may be a bit on the expensive side, but there is NO DRM, the highest quality that you can get on the consumer level short of getting the origional DAT recording (or a SACD or a DVD-Audio disc, both of them not as wide spread as Red-Book CDs), and most importanly the data is self-contained, there is nothing to download and nothing to lose in the event of a HD crash. Oh, and the best part of CDs, if they exists, there is some way to buy them. Virtually every artist that is signed on a label of any size has a CD that you can purchance either through their online store, or if they are a bigger artist through an online CD store such as Amazon or CDNow. If you are really strapped for cash there are some places that sell Used CDs. I picked up a copy of Implode by Front Line Assembly for $8. Beat that price. An of course there is e-bay if you are feeling brave.
The point I'm trying to make, is that I see no reason why we can't recieve the same quality of product that we get with ordinary CDs? Why do the rules change when we go into music stored in a file instead of in a raw stream on a disc? The rules shouldn't change, but with attitudes like yours (and attitude that I've been seeing far too often on Slashdot), it looks like we are just going to sit back and let them do whatever they want.
If Apple would act as your music backup archive, letting you redownload the music in the future if your hard drive goes or they ship a new and improved codec and AAC becomes obsolete - now that would be worth having. That would give you something you don't have with CDs.
I've had my CD collection stolen twice now...
I checked it out last night - anyone know when they're gonna support UK accounts ......
This has been said by many people, but I don't understand why it would be any different from converting it directly from .AAC to .MP3. When you burn an .AAC to CD, presumably, it will be the highest quality you can possibly get from the .AAC. You then rip to .MP3, it should be the same as decoding from .AAC and encoding to .MP3 (indeed, that is exactly what you are doing, except the intermediate step of converting to CD, which shouldn't degrade the sound at all.)
I wasn't able to register until I read on Macintouch that your id has to be your email address--firstname lastname doesn't work and will result with a generic error.
Its the truth. Transcoding hurts quality. It doesn't matter if you burn first or not.
Of course, I think this illustrates the point nicely. Out of the box iTunes 4 makes it just hard enough to make mp3s to discourage more casual use.
Users with a legitimate need for mp3s (in car, mp3 player that doesn't do AAC) can get them, which is good, but it isn't one-click piracy either.
Still, blank CDs are cheap but they're not free.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
What happens when I catch the Linux bug and move to that platform? How about if the Microsoft anti-Switch campaign catches my fancy and I'm all for migrating to WinXP? What about playing that killer tune on my car stereo? If I decide I wanna goof around with this Ogg Vorbis thing people keep talking about? Or if I want to take a little snippit of a tune and turn it in to my "new mail" sound? Or I wanna add snippit to a presentation comparing pop music of today to the 60s and 80s?
Its amazing how people don't understand the issue.
It better get better than this. The music industry is suffocating from their own weight. They're lacking compelling, new content. They're overpricing their product. And for the first time in their history, the music industry is finding itself losing its main advantage - control of the only economical distribution channel(s).
Apple is coming close. It might even be close enough to be successful. Whether its close enough to save and industry in collapse may be another question.
Sure, plain-vanilla AAC decoding is easy (for some value of "easy").
The problem is that playing (DRM) encrypted AAC isn't possible without getting a copy of the crypto key. Which appears to be embedded in Quicktime someplace in the Apple scheme. So no, you can't just hack out an AAC decoder of your own and use it to play tunes you've bought from Apple, 'cause you won't have access to the crypto keys.
BTW, this is not just speculation. I tried it with a tune from Apple and a copy of faad2.
it is far easier to mount images on a mac than any other OS.... has been since os 8 or so. just double click a .img or .dmg
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
you can even make MP3s in itunes from AAC files!!! GASP!!!
Actually, no. You can use iTunes to transcode your own, non-DRM AAC files. It will refuse to do so for AACs you purchased from Apple.
No, this is not speculation. Yes, I tried it. "Warning! _song name_ could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats." (And yes, you can work around this using the AAC -> burn a CD -> rip the CD hack.)
There seems to be a lot of speculation and FUD on this topic. I hope that over the next few days we will get some actual facts about the nuts-n-bolts of the DRM.
I was driving to work this morining that thought of this idea:
Have credits (as another poster said) $10 gets you 15 credits or so. Now that the ipod keeps track of the songs you listen too, you can sync with itunes and it will generate a list of songs you like. Similar to amazons books list.
The thing is I like music, just don't care who sings it and don't have time to keep track of artists.
Having something like itunes where it could download 15 new songs that it thinks I like and put them on the ipod would be cool, then automaticly cycle out the songs I hit "next" on. So I alwyas have a fresh listing on my ipod of new songs.
Of course this would require a lot of AI and people in the back ground that will generate and catagorize music.
What do you think? a $10/month service that will automatily get you new music?
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
One thing I've not seen mentioned is that it's easy to request new songs/artists/albums - I've already put in a request for Wierd Al, so if everyone does it we should see his stuff there sooner!! I'd love to see some exclusive Wierd
Al tracks and videos...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As a very offtopic response, check out ECS for cheap, quality (though loud) laptops. I just bought one: 2.4GHz P4, 512 MB, 40 GB drive, DVD-CDRW, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 15" screen, Radeon 9000, etc. for just over a grand US. No OS included. The model I got was the ECS Green 732.
Obviously false.
Do you have more than three Macs you will use to listen to that music?
Quite possibly yes. Or I might want to listen on a Mac that currently doesn't have an Internet connection to authenticate to Apple. Or Apple's site might be down for some reason. Or Apple might unilaterally decide to alter the terms. Or I might even want to listen on a PC.
I'm not upset with Apple's DRM implementation. It was the only way to get the record labels on board, and it's nowhere near as restrictive as Palladium looks to be. But like any DRM system, it will invariably inconvenience legitimate users.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
If you have some form of strange proxy for your outbound communication, I'm thinking it's your ISP limitting you, not the Apple authentication. There is no connection initiated from Apple TO you to authenticate the file. As such, most common proxy configurations should not hinder you.
There's likely a simple solution to you problem. Could tell you what, though, without knowing specifics.
-Alex
The killer aspect of Apple's service really is that it is built into iTunes. Not only is it quicker to get what you want, but as soon as you request it the song is managed for you and you have to do literally nothing except listen...
This is the first use of web services (in that you use a specialized app instead of a normal web browser) in a consumer setting that I think I would label a "wild success".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But your argument is different than the original poster, so you're essentially drifting off topic. You *can* afford a Mac, you just choose to discount it in comparison with PCs.
You label the the 800MHz G3 processor as outdated without giving a metric to which a dated processor is defined. If you're playing music, it works. If you're making DV movies, it works. If you're making photo albums, writing word documents, sending email, watching DivX, it works. By what metric is 800MHz or a G3 outdated?
Similarly you say the GHz G4 is slow. I have a 933MHz G4 desktop that's slower than those PowerBooks, and it's encoding AAC, making DV movies, burning DVDs, watchind DivX, compiling Mozilla... what is your metric of slow? 2.5GHz in Intel laptops does not define fast, how long it takes for you to get your task done defines fast. I guess if you're playing Unreal Tournament 2003 on your laptop, then yeah, a 2.5GHz P4 is faster, but I don't know if that makes the G4 slow, either.
You say that the $2k investment will be obsolete in a couple of months... yet where/what is your metric? By your statement, my 933MHz PowerMac will similarly be outdated in a couple of months, and I can easily see it lasting me for another year, maybe two. Or my 400MHz PowerBook; yes it is old, but it will still last me another 6 months, if not longer.
So you want to encode video? Macs can do that. You want to do it faster? They have dual 1.4GHz PowerMacs that can encode video plenty fast. Fast enough for you? I dunno, how fast do you want it? Fast enough for me? Sure.
You talk about how long your PC notebook would stay current... how long would it stay current? I've had my PowerBook for 2 years, and am probably going to upgrade it at the 3 year mark. My PowerMac has been around for less than a year, and again I'll probably upgrade the CPU, hard drive, and video within a year, and then the whole machine within 2, maybe 3. What's a usable lifespan? I think that is dictated by *you*, and not the market or the machine.
GPL Deconstructed
Maybe institute a minimum purchase amount for the songs or a slight volume discount for multiple simultaneous purchases?
Maybe have a price of 50 cents a song plus (guess what?) 35 cents/purchase? That way, the credit card flat fee is always covered adequately, and if someone buys 100 $0.50 tracks, that cost becomes insignificant to them.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Who said Apple was opposed to DRM? They've supported Quicktime streams that cannot be saved for a while now.
It seems that what Apple is opposed to is excessively restrictive DRM. E.g., DRM that makes it a hassle for you to get your "fair use" out of the stuff. The new iTunes Music Store is an example of this -- honest users won't have any big roadblocks in their way, while determined pirates will find various hassles they'll have to work around. It's a compromise, not a one-sided solution.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I think the Apple service looks pretty good too. I just wish I could get my label's music on it. I mean, I didn't expect Jobs to fly his jet to my house and ask for copies of our cds or anything, but it would be nice if there was an avenue to get music not made by one of the five majors on the service. Everyone want to do me a favor and request music from "Stop, Pop, and Roll" in the requests section? I'd be a big help!
In case you noticed, the iTunes Music Shop DRM is pretty minimal compared to any other RIAA-sanctioned service. i.e. Apple put in the bare minimum amount needed to allow them to provide this service legally.
This Apple DRM can be compared to speedbumps, as opposed to the brick walls of many other download services.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Try Ebay or other stores (e.g small dog electronics) for a used or refurbished one.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
All this talk about iTunes and so-called "legitimate" music downloading got me thinking - How are the copyright holders going to know if that "Without Me.mp3" on your system is legitimate? Now, I realize that there are technologies for digitally signing/watermarking content. But what is required in order to examine and verify those signatures/watermarks? I have some ideas, but I'd be interested in hearing what others think. (I'd post this to "Ask Slashdot" but for whatever reason I've been rejected every time but once.)
ok...I knew the first one would work.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Is there any way to see what they have in the catalog if you're not a Mac owner? I don't know that I'd be swayed to buying a Mac by iTunes Music Store alone, but I'm dying to see what they have. Tragically Hip? Anthrax? Metallica? Queensryche? Filter?
make a cdda cd then rip it to mp3. crist are you stupid? you don't want to waste cds use a cdrw.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I have often advocated that if established artists would leave their record labels and self produce, most fans would purchase their work directly from the artist's websites. This does produce a problem for radio stations and royalty payouts, but cuts the major labels out of development and also their self inflated value on music costs. Many artists establish their own record companies precisely for this level of control over their work. Since very few mainstream artists have had much success distributing their music on their own without a record production company, the Apple service is a great stopgap with prices that are affective and accessible. I bought my first mac this month for OS X and an iPod. The apple music service just sweetenes the deal. I hope through wide support from the iTunes community and further through the Window's iTune community (when it is launched) this service will grow.
Whether or not you agree with the argument, it is hardly a case of flaming. On top of that, the poster has actually marshalled data to support his argument -- unlike the fanciful 'you could afford it if you wanted' post which he rebuts.
you are so stupid. make a frigen cdda cd from the aac files (use a cdrw so you not wasting cds) then rip the new cd to mp3.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I can see where you'd think that this is the same thing, but in my mind those are two different services. I mean I may pay for cable TV or DSS, but that doesn't mean that I don't expect a better quality from the same movies when I buy them on DVD. Yes, XM doesn't sound good to me, but in my car it will do. When I'm listening to music on my home system I desire a higher quality to my music because my home system is designed for that level of quality.
Keep Austin Weird!
Let me start by saying I don't have a Mac, so I haven't actually seen the store. If this is already a feature, than mod accordingly...
Anyhow, I'd like to see a streaming radio feature, where I could listen to a particular genre and have an option to buy the music that has played.
I used Rapsody for a while and I really liked being able to listen to a radio format (streaming playlist whatever) and then get info and purchase the song currently playing. I discovered a lot of new artists and songs that way.
The 30 second preview is nice, but I'd like to hear an entire song (in a no rights format--no random access, no replay ability, lower quality) and then decide to buy or not.
Want music from the Music Store for free you ask? It can be done. All you need to do is fine some tracks that are less than 30 seconds long, and BAM, you got one free track.
When your house catches on fire. Do you have to re-buy all of the CD's you have already purchased, but no longer have?
It's called backing up, or insurance.
~ Michael Niessner
I must really suck to be poor. I can't imagine having to hang so much of my self identity on a sub $250K purchase. I guess if you are only going to have one computer for the next five years it would fuck with your head. I wonder if super poor do this same kind of nonsense with $20 goods.
Don't forget Audio Hijack. You have to get the pro version for it to work properly but it will give you an mp3 of anything being played in iTunes; including radio streams/rendezvous streams
Check out MP3Sushi. I'm not sure how it will work with these DRM files, but your GF can run the Sushi server and can either make the playlist available or stream a playlist radio-style. You can then tap into the jukebox or stream from any box that can support streaming (I was able to listen from an Audrey home applicance).
I do however have an app that hijacks the audio stream before the speakers and allows you to play with equalizers, balance, etc. Oh, and it lets you save the result as an MP3 as well as playing it through the speakers.
What app is this?
I won't buy music at any price. But then again I don't download music either.
Come to think of it, I don't listen to music. I don't like ANY of it..
I just a cranky old bastard and I hate everything new.. Most "music" is trash anyway and the so called "artists" are degenerate scumbags that deserve a bullet in the head for polluting the minds of children, not a paycheck..
Its even unclear to me what happens if the host name chages or if I have to re-install my OS. will I lose one of my authentications each time I fail to deauthenticate a computer. (.e.g suppose the hard drive crashes and I have to rebuild my computer, I cant deauthenticate the old computer since its dead.)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The problem is that playing (DRM) encrypted AAC isn't possible without getting a copy of the crypto key.
Duh.
How exactly is that a "problem?" That's what the system is supposed to enforce! That's a FEATURE!
If you want to play m4p files on your Linux system or your Palm or your Commodore 64 or whatever, burn them to CD first and then rip the CD to m4a. The ripped files sound just fine, and they are not protected in any way. Of course, you should only do this for personal use. Anything more would be illegal and wrong.
As soon as I heard this was available one use popped in my mind immediately. Free Preview. I can see many people simply preiewing songs...finding the ones they like...then heading to kazaa...
Yes but the fact remains that fat americans ARE disgusting.
Did you order the PC you "shopped around for" from Dell or somewehre similar or did you build it yourself? If you are in the build it yourself catergory or even the white-box group then you are probably not in Apple's target market.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Built it myself.
you are probably not in Apple's target market
I understand that. But the OP made it sound like everyone in the world who uses a PC falls within Apple's target market, and "myths" prevent us from realizing that, we poor wankers =)
"Backwater" does not begin to describe eMusic's library. I was able to satisfy my more eclectic and obscure tastes in music for a few months while it was a novelty, but that's about it. I'm not going to subscribe to an effectively static content base like eMusic when Apple's is around. Check out the top downloaded albums on each service. 'Nuff said. If you want to make money with music (remember, these are businesses, not public services) then you'd better get the largest number of the most popular songs out there. To each his own, there's a place for both, the market will decide in the long run.
And in general, now that the dust has settled, Apple did a great thing in the way of free markets. They have one solution that is legal, cheap, easy, and sensory-satisfying. You can still go to the record store. You can still use p2p (in between the big brother IMs being sent to the users the last few days... what direction do you think THAT's going in...) You can still rip/mix/burn. The constitution is not in tatters and definitely Hilary Rosen and probably the EFF and I'd wager even the gang at 2600 are sleeping soundly this week. Not a bad accomplishment for a guy and his shop who's been presumed dead and buried so many times there's a revolving door on their gravesite.
I'll spend money here. Likely more than CDNOW^H^H^H^H^H Amazon, because I don't have to wait for or pay for shipping. BTW - I got my invoice for 15 songs - $14.85 and 0.00 tax - anyone else see that?
And as one of the promos mentioned, this forces better music - no more 1 hit track and 11 fillers - you'd better make every track count or you'll be selling 1/12 of your previous sales in short time. Are you listening, Mr. Mathers? Miss Spears? Damn. Sure glad I bought TMBG's Apollo 18 as a CD...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The context of "FM" to which he refers is FM Radio and you're a little confused. You do not listen to the frequency-modulated signal on the receiver end (for the pedantic: except insofar as the original audio signal is a collection of frequency modulations). A carrier is frequency modulated with the audio - the audio itself is not. The audio signal is extracted by de-modulation, filtered, amplified,..., to produce the reproduction of the original audio signal that you hear.
What he is talking about is primarily the bandwidth limiting (limiting max frequency range) and other manipulations that are done (such as dynamic range compression) and distortions that may be introduced by transmission over the air (e.g. multipath).
Normally, the negative effect that most people will notice in an FM broadcast is the limiting of the frequency range.
Disclaimer: I didn't run amok trying to find this occurrence just to debunk the author's so called "review". I just happened across this album. Apparently people that bought Jack Johnson also bought this album.
Search for the album Orgy, by Candy. You'll notice that a single song "Blue Monday" is not labeled Explicit whereas the rest are.
One thing left out of most of the reviews I've seen (and I'm hard pressed to even consider the above a review) is iTune's new sharing feature. I can view remote playlists and select which songs to play. How cool is that? I know winamp lets you start your own radio station, but this is a step beyond, now my friends aren't limited to what i push them, they can pick and choose what to hear.
joe.
The poster said "after a lot of shopping around".
I bill my time at $100 an hour (not as expensive as it sounds when you have your own business). A lot of shopping around, downloading drivers, assembling computers, and dealing with conflicts costs much more than the difference between a PC and a MAC.
There is a lot of hostility out there about which computer people use. Who gives a shit?
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
I really like the system Apple's got for distributing songs electronically. How long before they come up with some system for distributing movies in a similar way and price them at $.99 or even $1.99?
I've downloaded 34 albums in the first month for $15.
I'm not perfectly certain about CDs but the way the laser-disk forerunners worked was the analog signal was stored as a digital pulse code modulation. that is to say yes the burned spots on the disk were binary but they were not digital bytes. instead the length of the gaps between bits represented the signal in a continuously variable analog fashion. the disk reader just used a time to amplitude converter to demodulate the time between bit pulses. or alternatively you could just output a digital byte represeenting the digitized time between pulses. That would look digital from the outside but really is analog in the inside.
I dont know if thats how Cds work or not. maybe someone can tell me
The reviewer is not the only one who has run into problems logging on to the music store. Here's another report of the exact same bug:
http://www.appleturns.com/scene/?id=3918
However, today the same website said things seemed to have cleared up yesterday morning, and they no longer had problems. So presumably the bug has been fixed.
see this
I can download pink floyd's Echoes (24 minutes long) for the same price as the dead kennedy's Terminal Preppie (1 minute 30 secs)! (assuming both tracks are available). Sounds like a deal to me!
Oh and please excuse Apple's shameless in-your-face plugging of the new iPod in the video. It's new, they're proud of it and all that. (I'll stick with my MD recorder myself...)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
So the problem here is that if she gets like, 1000 songs ( theoretically ), I have to spend another $50 for the cds to transfer them, then spend a day or two putting cds into my drive as she takes them out of hers....that is a PITA.
well if your lazy and wait until she has 1000 songs then yeah it will be....oh and you could just do the easy thing and use Quicktime 6.2
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
el-cheapo homebrew linux box
Winamp3 has had the same ducking problem for ages now on some hardware configurations. They still haven't figured out what causes it.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
That would mean that for ten bucks you buy a CD that Apple can take away later, but in a store you buy a CD that you own forever, and can re-sell.
Speaking of re-selling, I didn't catch the details about transferability of my license, and now that I'm signed up I can'ty find the license either from within iTunes or on Apple's web-site. I want to read the license agreement again, and Apple should make a link available. Anyone have a link to the license?
If music is now sold via the Internet, in a form where nobody but the record companies owns anything that can be transfered or can't have its license revoked, then the age of on-line music distribution will suck. I am worried.
I think there is an akami server down the street from me or something, because the downloads are nearly instantaneous.
I actually thought that it did not work when I clicked, because it happend so fast!
Apple has many advantages:
/from the masters/ sound CD quality (at least to me).
1) Selection and better support from the labels.
2) Recognizability (a lot of the people who would normally consider emusic an option are now going to be looking much more closely at Apple).
3) 128 kbps MP3s sound horrible, 128 kbps AACs that have been ripped
4) The DRM included is pretty nonrestrictive unless you own more than 3 modern macs. I can offload it to as many ipods as I like, burn it to as many CDs as I like (shifting songs a bit every ten burns, but I can still burn all of the same songs). About the only thing I can't do with it is host it on a p2p network.
5) Full integration with my music client.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I have the serivice up and running and really think it is the cats freakin four footed pajamas.
The thing about it that kind of wierds me out though is the lack of ownership of anything other than ones ability to listen to the music.
At least when you have a physical copy of a recording it has resale value, though usually not much.
Thoughts here?
If the average cost of a CD is $15 - $20, and the average number of tracks on a CD is about 15 - 20 (in some cases), then in the end, you'll STILL be paying the same amount of money you would be paying for a regular CD. The only difference here is that Apple has nicely 'repackaged' it so that it *appears* that you are getting a deal. Sneaky, eh?
It's definitely not a bad idea though--the RIAA gets to charge the same amounts of money they normally would if they sold you the entire CD, and the consumer gets to download the song he/she wants as if they only bought one cd from the store. In short, everyone 'wins', but the RIAA still gets to charge you 15-20 dollars per CD.
I had the same problem when creating my account, All you need to do is back out the information already there, and put it back in yourself. Then it will allow you to use your current account. Also if you use an AMEX card, you cannot put in any spaces or dashes when entering your number of the system will not recgnoize it. With that, you should be able to use your current Apple ID with no problem.
The individual "songs" themselves are also odd. Look at the Beethoven 9th Symphony. They've broken the 4th movement (the choral "Ode to Joy") into multiple "tracks" asking $0.99 for each! Then there are instances where not all of the tracks of an album are available for download. If you'd like to listen to the 1st, 2nd, and 5th movements of some work, then download them individually. If you want the whole work, you've got to download the entire album.
This may work for popular music, but it leaves a lot to be desired for classical music.
Why are people having so many troubles with the apple ID thing?
I did the thing and had no problems - but then, I read everything. I saw that it did not actually want me to create a new account. I saw that I needed to enter the security code on the back of my credit card.
Once I read everything properly, it was fine. There is no spoo-- I mean, bug.
And I immediately burned an audio CD with the files. I can now take that audio cd and rip the songs to MP3.
I didn't and probably won't though, since I have no reason to right now. I'm all about buying my own music. I know that's not terribly "popular", but that's me.
That is all. Carry on.
has anyone discussed the possibility of the following two options for the future: 1) The possibility of other people (e.g. small independent record labels) opening their own stores which you can then add to your list of favourite shops? It would just add another shop which appears as another playlist like the Apple shop. 2) The possibility of Apple making an 'iShop' app, which brings all your favourite shops to a single Application. e.g. Amazon, O'Reilly, Ebay etc. could all have their own shop plugins (a la Sherlock) which would appear in your own personal shopping mall which is filled with all your favourite shops.
on most major label releases, the publishing rights are also...
I wonder what measures the major labels and publishers have taken to prevent another Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs fiasco. If you're not familiar with Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs, it was a court case in which the publisher of "He's So Fine" (written by Ronald Mack and performed by the Chiffons) successfully sued the publisher of "My Sweet Lord" (written and performed by George Harrison) for copyright infringement, even though Harrison was not aware that he was copying a copyrighted song. Do the major publishers have automated databases in which composers can search for melodies that have already been copyrighted? Or is there some sort of copyright liability insurance that songwriters have to take out, similar to a physician's malpractice insurance?
Will I retire or break 10K?
written evidence that "The rest of us" are actaully non-mac users. (for those who are confused, Apple computers have long been referred to as "The computers for the rest of us", in that they are different).
I've written an article on Why Apple doesn't get it (and EMusic does). Unlike Apple, EMusic has no DRM, offers real MP3's, supports any platform and charges a flat rate. I go into more detail in the article, including how they can improve the service.
-- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
okay so you got 20. and my grandma got 1 maybe. the median person is probably getting very few per hour for the reasons given. youre just a savvy person way out on the bell curve. most folks aren't. if you want to try to argue that Kazaa is not painfully slow, problematic, diffcult to use and weak on features like song previewing, then youre in your own private idaho.
maybe not: see this thread and reply if you have some facts to dispute it.
is a well-thought out combination of applications and network services (for which the trendy word is web-services).
I don't see it as a bundling issue at all - after all, they are to release a Windows version later on this year. What it is is a really good application enhanced by a very well done backend - in short, everything Microsoft has promised but never delivered.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Everyone use Weird Al Yankovic when requesting...
Though come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I typed "Wierd Al Yankovic" when I did the entry, as I can never spell "Weird" right on the first try. Rats!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's amazing how people always complain.
Seems like just about every product release, Apple fails to save the world. Criminy. You'd think they could get their act together by now. Lazy buggers.
They release a nice little browser, Safari, as a beta -- and half the /. posts are about how it doesn't really fundamentally change what browsers are all about, so why are the Appleheads excited? (Uh, 'cause it's a nice, very fast, handy little browser.)
They come up with a pay-per-song service at an okay rate, $1 a song, and they get the major record labels to agree to DRM restrictions that come as close to "fair use"-friendly as I can really imagine them accepting, and they make it easy as anything to operate and basically pain-free. It's what a ton of people have been griping for: per song, no subscriptions, DRM that isn't intrusive...
It does seem to suffer from the same problems other music libraries do: you need to back them up against crashes, if you switch to another system you have problems moving files around, partly because of the DRM the recording industry demanded.
But will it save the "industry in collapse"?? Probably not. Maybe we shouldn't be expecting free updates to software we got free with our computers to do so... You think?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Emphasis (strength?) is mine. OK, so, for me, this is the scoop. If the shopping is fun, then I don't mind people quoting me a price that prices that time at $0 per hour. In my life, though, that won't work. If it took you 20 hours to price this out, then that's the same as real money. If it took you time to figure out why (say) the video card RAM wasn't being recognized by X11, the meter was running for me. And so on, down the line.
I am the first to admit that I won't be getting "that type of rig" from Apple. I'll get something that works out of the box with an excellent OS, strong included software, and things that save me time and money. For a home machine that I'm using on my time, doing anything else would be silly. I'll leave the RAID configuration issues at work, thanks.
Babar
Did you even read the linked post? Hint -- get an adult to read you the part about "jumping through hoops".
Er. Did you read the parent? It says
You can use whatever you want to play it. AAC decoding is not licensed.
Which is basically not true, in context. Which is what my reply addressed.
Did you have a point?
even if they are getting more money I am losing less
That's the wonderful thing about advances in technology. It's not a zeo-sum game; everybody wins.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Are you aware of a similar case, Selle v. Gibb ( here [musicanalyst.com] or here [columbia.edu])? The same song written by two people, yet found not to infringe due to lack of access.
I've read that opinion, but unfortunately, the courts now seem to presume access because if a song has been on the Billboard Top 100 even once, then it's probably still played regularly on oldies stations.
So how can I protect myself as a songwriter?
Will I retire or break 10K?
does it run on linux yet?
btw: you're
Many people are using Linux to "get work done"[tm] and forgte about it once it is installed.
Stop your tired propaganda that frankly impresses nobody.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Correct me if I am wrong: I need a Mac for all this.
If above is correct I say: killer apps do not run in a niche OS only.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Complaint #1. "Not all songs are available".
Expect this to be remedied soon. Retail stores are going to be seriously hurt if all the latest songs are going to be available on the AMS right off the bat.
Complaint #2. "You have to change the playlist for every 10 burns. That sucks".
Well, creating a new playlist is as simple as selecting the tracks that you want, dragging it and dropping it on the playlist column to the left. And iTunes is smart enough to organize all the tracks with the same album name, into 1 playlist with the album name filled in. How complicated can that be?
Seriously, stop hating, keep an open mind and you just might see the value in this. Besides, AMS is just another avenue of getting at music, and choice is good.
"iDRM" = flaming pile of smegma.
I hope the hacks at the RIAA don't confuse what Apple fanboys will buy, versus what the "average consumers" will buy.
The average consumer won't pay hundreds of bucks extra for a shit-on-a-stick iMac, or UnderPower Mac, they won't buy this either. It's pretty much a fact of marketing reality that less that 5% of everyone will buy whatever Apple sells even if it's slower, more expensive and has less software.
Similar services have already failed because the masses know better. There was no iCult hoopla when any of the other services went live, and no loony fanbase of zealots to kick start them.
And I'll bet money the masses won't care to download another player so they can buy a lossy DRM infected music file.
I wonder how much the Artists get back for this?
For the moment I prefer to rip streams of MP3s using stremripper (streamripper - I love you), rather than to use Kazaa or any paid service.... if Apple offered 256K then I'd be interested.