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iTunes Music Store sells 275,000 Tracks in 18 Hours
physicsnerd writes "According to this article on Billboard.com, Apple's iTunes Music store sold 275,000 tracks in its first 18 hours of operation. The Register.com estimates that this netted Apple just under $100,000! Not too bad for a 99 cents store."
Impressive considering the connection problems people were having. Remains to be seen what usage will be after the hype settles down.
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).
if you have a mac then you can use audio hijack with that little baby, anything that comes out your speakers you can record
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
Anyone who has not used iTunes does not understand just how convenient the store is. It's an entry right in your playlist collection (with a different icon). One click on it, and you're at the intro/overview page (or the last page you visited without quitting iTunes). iTunes' built-in search box works on the online catalog in this mode, type something in and it pops right up. Or you can switch to the categorized column-view browse mode (same button to switch any other playlist to browse mode), which is indistinguishable from browsing your local library except for network lag and the Buy button. Find a song you like, and one more click makes it download directly into your library and start playing. It's seamlessly integrated and completely oriented around impulse buying. I'm sure (I *hope*) for most people, one dollar per song is worth the removal of the time and aggravation cost of using P2P (aside from the time spent downloading on my modem, I can find music in the store faster than it would take to find Limewire on my HD and wait for it to gather a server list).
Sorry for the harsh subject line, but I find it difficult to believe that a person can make it more than a few years in life without noticing that virtually every consumer product is priced this way.
$9.99, $99.99, $17,995 (for say, a car). We've had this as long as I've been alive, and from looking into older catalogues it's been standard practice in the retail industry since at least the 60's. EVERYONE rounds their price down slightly, so it appears cheaper when you quickly look at it. In fact, in the past decade many stores have successfully gone to a '95 cents' model, where $9.95 somehow looks more appealing to the shopper than $9.99. A whopping 4 cents less profit, but an amazing increase in sales.
Psychologists have known about this for eons, and marketing types do this routinely. 99 cents just looks cheaper than an even buck, to most people. In fact, it's so bad that if I'm in a store with someone, see something for say $395, I'll comment "wow, four hundred dollars for that?". Almost invariably, the person I'm with will say "no, it's only three ninety five". People are so used to this that rounding up prices just seems wrong, somehow.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Not exactly, DRM affects me after I've paid for something, a cashier doesn't.
Apple states that the 128-kbps AAC "combines sound quality that rivals CDs with smaller files sizes (compared to MP3s)." Someone reported that Apple said during the original PR event that some of the tracks actually sound better than the original CD tracks because they went back to the original master recordings to encode. Ok, I'll buy all that. AAC offers better compression and higher quality at lower bitrates. Fine. If really true, I might even consider re-ripping my CDs to AAC and saving some disk space. IF it's really that good. But as I said, the proof is in whether I can hear a difference. All other technical mumbo jumbo is meaningless.
I previewed a number of songs the first night it was operational and was fairly impressed. Definitely much better than 128 kbps MP3. Then I put my headphones on and started to notice possible compression artifacts. I wasn't sure if I was imagining these or whether I was really hearing something, so I started listening to the previews of tracks I already have, ripped from original CDs. I compared the preview tracks to my MP3 copies, which are high quality VBR averaging a little over 200 kbps. I went back and forth between the store preview and my copy numerous times, and always felt like I heard compression artifacts in the previews. I wanted to setup a true blind test to make absolutely sure I wasn't being biased by knowing which sample was which, but I haven't had time this week.
Apple's Discussion board for iTunes has numerous topics debating the quality of the AACs. Some people swear that the previews are lower quality, and what you get when you buy is perfect. Others say just the opposite. Apple itself says of the previews, "You'll hear a 30-second sample that rivals CD quality sound." Doesn't exactly say that the preview is the same quality as the purchased track, but kind of implies it too. MacInTouch has tons of reader reports that are interesting as well.
I suppose ultimately I'll have to spend $0.99 and see for myself what happens. I'll try to choose a track that I have, and whose preview sounds pretty bad. If the purchased track is indistinguishable from the CD, I'll be a happy camper. But if it's the same as the preview, I'll be severely disappointed. I'd so love for this to take off, as it is the future of music buying. I think Apple has done a good job of balancing consumers' fair use rights with the rights of the copyright holders. If this flops, it'll be more fodder for the RIAA to push legislation through that protects their dying business model. (sorry, had to get political for a second there)
But mainly I'm excited about the prospect of buying music this way. Hopefully in the near future, they'll have liner notes, etc available as a PDF when you buy. And lots more artists, including any that are out of print. That would so rock. So many CDs on my wishlist now are so hard to find, and I'd buy them in a heartbeat if they were available this way now. So please, Apple, don't let us down on quality! And if the quality really is subpar, let's all send them feedback (link at the music store main page) until they listen!
Say hello to zMac.
The other big news yesterday was that Steve Jobs confirmed that Apple is going to start putting up independent music once they get all of the big label music they negotiated for uploaded:
from: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,4 48048,00.html
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. After being a diehard linux fanatic (yes fanatic) for the last 8 years, I've started the switch to OS X.
Yes, it rocks. Yes, Quicken is far simpler than Gnucash. Yes, Warcraft 3 is better than Kohan. Having to learn objective-C is a little bit of a downer, but I guess you can't have everything.
As for the cost, I don't really see it. My powerbook was three grand which is comparable for the same setup in an Intel/AMD world. A 17" flat panel developer worstation is the same price at both Apple and Dell. Yes, you can get Intel boxes cheaper, but the similar components seem to cost the same whether it's from Apple, Dell, or IBM.
I'm not quite ready to trade in my servers for Apples yet, but my desktops are next on the list to replace. I'm looking into the Oracle developers release for Jaguar..not bad. However, I'll stick to linux there for now.
OS X seems to be the perfect desktop blend of unix and open source functionality with a far superior user interface. When I was in college and then fresh out, tweaking linux to work with the latest hardware was fun and all, but I'm over it now. Things like this music service are just icing on the cake...
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
You can use Java with the Cocoa frameworks too.
irb(main):001:0>
why would you pay for CDs when you already are LEGALLY able to copy AudioCDs? Because we pay a small levy on CDRs, Ottawa has negotiated the LEGAL RIGHT for us to make copies of any audio CD we please.
Bring your burner down the the library and copy away! Have a "burn-my-discs" party and invite all your friends!
nope nope nope nope nope
This will be coming to the Wintel world by year's end. You can burn your stuff to as many CD's as you'd like... just change your playlist every ten burns.
Burn 'em to CD re-rip as whatever freaking format you'd like... hell, run it off to tape if you want! Copy all of your music over to a data DVD, back it up to DAT or DLT. You have a ton of options with all of this. You aren't roped into the Apple proprietary system.
This will all be coming to Windows soon enough. Be patient. We Mac users have to be patient all the time, so now it's your turn to wait!
p.s. Several readers have posted that they have downloaded a song a second time and have not been charged.
Pooty tweet