Slashdot Mirror
Apple Releases Major iTunes Update
shunnicutt writes "Apple has released iTunes 4.5 (and iPod software 2.2 and QuickTime 6.5.1) and relaxed some iTunes Music Store restrictions: now tracks you purchased can be authorized to play on up to five other computers, instead of three. However, they reduced the number of times you can burn a playlist to an audio CD from ten to seven. Another new feature is iMix, which allows you to publish playlists on iTMS, including comments on each track. The iTMS also offers a weekly free single for download."
crazney adds "This release also changes their network sharing protocol in a way that breaks the open source iTunes sharing applications that have been released (based on my work on iTunes 4.2's DRM)."
kefoo writes "Among the new features is Apple Lossless Encoding, which claims to compress losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD quality audio." Hm, and I was about to re-rip all my CDs at 320 kbps MP3 ...
Update: 04/28 14:56 GMT by P : I just tested, and I can listen to previously de-DRM'd AAC files from playfair, but I cannot use either playfair or FairTunes any longer. The former "Couldn't get DRM key for user," and the latter produces a blank file.
One cool feature mentioned in 4.5 is "iMix", which publishes your playlists to the iTMS for all to see. So out of curiosity, I tried to publish my "top 25 most played" playlist. Out of the 25 songs on the list, only seven were available at iTMS.
Sure, one could argue that I have eclectic taste in music, but on the other hand, they are missing some pretty big names: Radiohead, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Chick Corea...
On an unrelated note, I wonder if iTMS is going to start offering lossless files. That would be cool.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
Apple Lossless Encoding
;)
So let's bring out the ALE and get drunk celebrating.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
My work PC is behind an authenticating firewall, so I was never able to log into iTMS and consequently was not able to authorize my work PC to play my purchased music. When I launched 4.5, it brought up the IE dialog box for entering my firewall password, and voila... I could enter the iTMS and log into my account!
I love the addition of two more authorized computers as well. I'm getting a new PB this spring to give my four Macs/PCs that I would have iTunes on and now I can keep them all authorized!
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Nice to release on the anniversary, and draw some attention.
My one complaint with the service is that you can't download the source file multiple times. So, I may have a license to listen to it, but I have to get the file from somewhere, if I lose it. They let you listen to your music on 5 machines, but you have to transport the file itself to those machines, by yourself. A real pain in the butt.
Beyond that, it's fantastic, and I recommend it to anyone shopping for a service.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
More important than this update is Apple's new push to provide music to college campuses. Their information is available here http://www.apple.com/education/itunesoncampus/. As a Penn State studnet whos money is being wasted by a garbage contract with Napster, I hope that iTunes begins to displace Napster all over the country. Napster is a shoddy, two bit service that offers a marginal utility at best. I'm rooting for iTunes and AAC in the battle for university contracts.
And maybe this is available in other MP3 players - but this is my list after setting up some new Smart Lists this morning:
1. Nested lists: so I could have one list that says "if genre = rock", then a sublist that just has "if My Rating is > 3" or "if year published is 2" and the other "if My Rating is > 3" (which I use to differentiate between "Background work music" and "Driving kick ass music".
2. Copy playlists: Another major issue with the above is that if I have 2 playlists that are 90% the same, I'd like to set the first one up, then just copy the list logic into a new one and only edit the 1 or 2 differences.
3. iSync iTunes I have a laptop, and so does my wife. Right now, all of our music sits on a Master hard drive on a Powermac, then synced to my iPod, which when I'm at work I plug into my laptop and place on "manual" (so it doesn't copy the laptop music files). This works out, but it's not what I'd like.
What I'd like is to go home, sit with my laptop and have it say "Oh, I see Playlists X, Y, and Z on your main computer have updated, and I've updated these MP3 tracks ratings/tags/etc. Let me sync up."
Then I could select the lists I want on my laptop from the main machine and only those files would be copied to my box. Since, if I buy music from the iTunes Music Store I can play it on 5 separate machines, it would be nice to have an "auto-sync" kind of system.
I think that's about it for now. I like the option of a new lossless recording (if I ever get my computer tied into a good sound system I can use it - I think there's some new devices that can stream from your Mac to from about $200 that might be worth a look).
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
iTunes on Campus, which lets academic institutions site license iTunes Music Store content for their users delivered by Akamai's distributed network, which now not only includes over 700,000 songs from all 5 major labels and 450 independent labels, but also thousands of audiobooks, periodicals, and journals.
Also new is the ability to import unprotected WMA into iTunes, and an iPod update to support Apple Lossless Encoder.
And last, iMovie 4.0.1 has been released.
Do you normally keep iTunes expanded while listening to music? I agree that it takes up a lot of screen space, but the only time I keep it expanded is when I'm developing a playlist or importing songs. Once I get it playing, it gets shrunk down or hidden.
Granted, I have a 17" screen, so I don't know what it looks like on a twelve incher, but I've never had any complaints about the interface layout.
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
A couple weeks ago there was a discussion on /. about iTMS. One of the points I made is that I haven't used iTunes in a while because I have 4 computers at home and it was a hassle to keep authorizing/deauthorizing them because you were limited to three authorized systems. Another point was made that Apple should expand the number of authorized computers to 5 because their OS X "family plan" lets you install OS X on up to 5 computers...therefore they should be consistent.
As for reducing the playlist burn amount from 10 to 7, I don't think anyone will notice. Although CDRs are dirt cheap, they are pretty wasteful for the small amount of music they hold. Flash and HD music players are the way to go.
Good work, Apple! Next step: Get the songs I buy on iTMS to work with TiVo's Home Media Option.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The Party Shuffle feature gets rave reviews from me.
In the past, I have used a playlist I call "now playing" to move music in and out of during a party. This can be a real pain when you really just want to play a few playlists back to back.
Party Shuffle changes all that. It allows you to easily DJ a party. You select how many "just played" songs and how many "upcoming songs to show. You then select a source, be it your music library or a playlist or a smart playlist (think Rock or Pop where 1979 year 1990). You then can easily manage what is coming up in the list and view what just got played. You can click the "refresh" (where Burn and Import are) and the list will be regenerated at random. You can also give preference to the higher ranked songs in your library.
Lastly, and this is a feature of the entire music library, not just playlists or Party Shuffle, the same "arrow" icons that show up in the iTMS when you search for a song are present in iTunes. This means you can click an arrow for a song name, album, or artist and it will launch a search on iTMS. But say you don't like that feature? Well you can of course turn it off in preferences, but you may also hodl down "option" and click it. The result? it searches only YOUR library, not the iTMS.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
No. If you try to compress a wav file with zip, rar, etc., you will get very little compression. There is very little repeated data in a wav file. Looking at a wav file with the knowledge that it is audio, however, allows for decent lossless audio compression.
Hm, and I was about to re-rip all my CDs at 320 kbps MP3 ...
You either have very few CDs or way too much time on your hands.
I was considering making higher bit rate versions of my library but would only hire my brother to do it for me (over 200 albums).
"Survival of the fittest Max, and we've got the fucking gun!" - Pi
Yeah but the itunes files are at 128k, so a burn then rip is going to result in noticeable sound degradation at this point.
can't you get that kind of compression(get 40mb wav into 20mb file) with just zip&others
Absolutely, for WAV files which are half silence.
They don't warn you that once you upgrade, you can't access shared music on older versions of iTunes. Now I have to go upgrade all my systems.
Don't install it if you don't have time to upgrade all your computers, if that sort of thing matters to you.
Yea, they should definitely sacrifice hardware sales to support this free program! Why didn't they think of that?
Hello? Apple makes money off iPods, not iTunes or the iTMS.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
Actually, Zipping a wav file will do absolutely nothing. There's way too much entropy in a regular song to find similar patterns which it can compress. Also, FLAC only get's about a 60% compression ratio, meaning 100 MB of wav turns into 60 MB of flac
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Actually, iTunes does support several competing players, and has since well before the iPod's appearance. It's not something they advertise much, but it is there.
Is that real Queueing, or a workaround?
Ummm...does it matter? What constitutes "real Queueing" for you? It fuckin queues a track. Sounds real enough to me.
Until they remove DRM. Don't let them control what you can do with your files
Unenlightened moderators or those that are crack dependent may mod you down.
I think the point needs to be made that as good as all the itunes seems to be, everybody is forgetting one critical fact;
You can not resale the music that you have purchased like with a regular LP, tape, or CD. Apple has purposefully left out first sale rights as it would erode the artificial value of the music. Even if there was a mechanism to erase all your copies and resale your itunes to someone else, Apple would not allow it, as this would put downward price pressure on the music Apple sells.
The music industry has controlled the price of CDs through illegal collusion, and probably are still managing to do so. Itunes is a natural extension of artificially controlling the price of music.
If normal economic forces were allowed to take over, there are quite a few industry executives that would no longer be able to afford their drug habit.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I've previously converted 19 iTMS songs to stripped AAC with Playfair 0.5 and iTunes 4.5 plays them just fine.
. . .bigger budgets/more expenses, bigger houses/more junk. . .
May I humbly offer the suggestion that you acquire Self-Restraint 1.0?
It's free.
KFG
Good for Apple.
The whole reason they can get so many of the labels they do is that they protect their rights. I know it sucks for the little guy who wants to give music to all of their friends, but I find their version of DRM within acceptable limits, unlike most other DRM systems.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
I hope to god this is redundant.. I'd be really scared if I was the only one who noticed.
This is exactly what the anti-DRM nazis were talking about.. they CHANGED the licensing agreement and nobody cares.
Do you realize what this means? They could simply one day revoke all but 1 of your machine licenses, put all your m4p's into one big encrypted image, and turn your genitals into scrambled eggs and there's nothing you can do about it because YOU agreed to it by buying DRM.
Sure, THIS time it's not a big deal, in fact most people will be happy with this new way of doing things.. but doesn't it bother you that they can take as well as give?
Seven burns down from Ten on tracks you already own.
Think about that..
And no, I'm not a stinkin pirate or anything like that. Just think if the implications
Latewire
Josh
FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
Well the results are in and between Apple's Press release and the Steve Jobs conference call there are many numbers to consider.
140,000,000 - Annualized song sales at current rate
100,000,000 - Number of songs projected to be sold in 1st year
70,000,000 - Number of songs sold the first 365 days of the service
2,700,000 - Current rate of songs sold per week
1,000,000 - Number of songs available by the end of 2004
700,000 - Number of songs available now (5/04)
450 - Number of indy publishers with music on-line
10 - Previously allowable identical CD burns
7 - Currently allowable identical CD burns
5 - Current number of authorized PCs and/or Macs
3 - Previous number of authorized PCs and/or Macs
70% - Market share of iTMS digital music sales
5% - Market share of Apple desktop/laptop/server sales
0 - Number of more successful on-line music services
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
>May I humbly offer the suggestion that you acquire Self-Restraint 1.0?
>It's free.
>KFG
Free as in beer? Or Free as in speech?
Sorry, I couldn't RESIST.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
The logic is fairly easy to understand: Apple's leadership position in the downloadable music market hinges entirely on its ability to get the labels to license the tracks for download. If Apple doesn't go way out of their way to keep DRM irritatingly hard to work around, the labels yank the music and head over to Redmond which is more than happy to screw the consumer.
Apple is walking a fine line here... Without the tracks, it has nothing to sell. Without fairly liberal license terms, people just head back to the latest peer-to-peer client and nobody makes money.
So the logic in breaking backwards compatibility is that if there's no penalty to keeping a 4.2 or 4.0 version running, people will still be able to use Fairplay or stream to non-lan IP addresses while enjoying all of the benefits of the new 4.5 version.
What's going to end up happening is that everyone will maintain a full library of iTunes versions (like I do) and use the version that's most appropriate for their needs. Want to listen to your home library at work or on the road? Fire up 4.0 before you leave. Want to get rid of the DRM on your tracks? Run 4.2 and FairPlay, then switch back to 4.5 and enjoy the new features.
I'm sure these older versions will break with a system upgrade down the road, but by then, there might be an even cooler jukebox out there.
To me, the larger question is how long it's going to take the media industry to schedule a rectal craniotomy and figure out how to deal with the 21st century instead of hanging out in the 1990s.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
To quickly assess how well the new iTunes 4.5 lossless compression scheme works I picked 10 songs at random from my collection to convert to Apple Lossless Encoder format. The good news is that each song only took a few seconds to convert on my 1.0 GHz PowerBook. Noticeably faster than when I ripped them to WAV files. Unfortunately the compression ratio is not that good. The aggregate compression ratio of the ten songs was 1.5:1. The min, median and max were 1.3:1, 1.5:1 and 1.8:1. This is by no means a thorough evaluation, as my collection is heavily skewed to rock music and far more samples would be required. I would have expected far better however, given that the high correlation between the two stereo channels gives an almost brain dead 2:1 compression to start with, and other lossless projects on the web claim closer to 4:1.