Yeah, I agree completly. I am using the Music Match download service, and the buying portion is pretty similar to others (although its cool that you can start listening before the download completes...standard I know, but its the little things that count). Also, they have an awesome radio functionality. They have a radio station for every genre and for every artist. So you basically can get a custom radio station with music similar to a particular artist. Plus its cd quality, and free....awesome. This feature alone is why I stick with the software. Although the downside is that they number of tracks available to buy is pretty low. I usually find that in the music I like (trance), there is only about 1/100 or less that I can actually download after I hear it on the musicmatch radio service (yet another reason I like their radio...they will play stuff even though you can't download it from them yet).

ok, this was a long comment, maybe I should have used a trackback.....hehe, next time...

This was a fair, thoughtful review. Just one caveat: the iTunes music store went live with more than 200,000 tracks, and probably added another 50,000 over the next few months. By the end of Octover, Apple will see that number rise to 400,000, which includes music from more than 200 independent labels.

The service and the software will just get better and better. That's the Apple way. ;-)

Salut!

Richard

[quote]
>>I personally think that they should not have launched the iTunes Apple Music store without a Windows player given the shear number and buying power of the Windows users. I mean having a digital music store that Windows users can not use was sort of like setting up a shop and requiring that only left handed gay Canadians ( sarcasm ) can shop there.?<<[/quote]

Seems like a weird move, I know. However, consider the sense of elitism Apple created by going about it this way. They were saying: "We have the newest, best, cutting edge music service -- and it's for our loyal Apple users. It's for the people who choose to be different. Being different has reaped them this benefit, and this reward."

Giving Apple users that jump-start left Windows users salivating and considering a switch. Apple has to have _some_ way of differentiating itself in this Wintel world. And by offering the fruits of its labor _only_ to Apple users (in the beginning), the company did what it should do: catered to its loyal clientel base first.

Buymusic.com might seem to be cheaper but you have to check each songs/albums digital rights and if that album is a reasonable (IE: you actually can have rights to use it more than once) if you want an album, you have to download EACH song individually (when you click download, you go to download window and then back) - yea, really well thought out.

You want to avoid any WM tracks anywhere as you point out - different WM players can't even play all the tracks. Unlike Apple's mp3 or AAC, you can actually scroll forward without bringing down the whole player.

Apple's technology is good and is right up there with the competition from Microsoft but they need to now focus on the content. When it boils down to it the choice music is what matters. I did think that it was nice that you can move a protected iTunes song from one computer to a next and once you lock a WMA9 DRM music file to a PC it can only be played on that PC unless you burn a CD. It is a shame that Apple is releasing this in the same month as Napster2 that uses both Microsoft and MusicMatch software.

(you just really like having an excuse to post that pic of Lars ;) hehe)

personally, i'm just going back to buying CD's at used CD places...much easier to just rip the tracks i want, and the CD's are cheaper there...i'm not messing w/online music stuff anymore :P bah!

My local used CD store sucks. The only good ones I know of are over in Seattle and I don't allways go there.

Nice review Jake.
I've been a Mac user since 1987 and would like to see iTunes and the Music store take off on the Windows side because a lot of my PC friends want an iPod.

One thing you might want to check out to save a step in MP3 converting. On the Mac anyways, in iTunes preferences you can set the cd burning to burn either standard cd files (aiff) or MP3 files. I burn MP3 cdroms all the time because my daughter's portable and car players both play cd and MP3s.

One other thing AAC format is not an Apple format, it's an open standard format created by Dolby. Apple has really gotten away from using proprietary formats and hardware in recent years.

I tried that last night. It gave me a message saying that "Protected Audio content" can not be converted to MP3 using iTunes. Apple may not have created the AAC but they are the only ones that are selling music in that format.

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is high-quality perceptual audio coding technology appropriate for many broadcast and electronic music-distribution applications. Coding efficiency is superior to that of MP3, providing higher-quality audio at lower bit rates. Developed and standardized as an ISO/IEC specification by four industry leaders (AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, and Sony Corporation), AAC is supported by a growing number of hardware and software manufacturers as the logical successor to MP3.

http://www.dolby.com/company/is.ot.0011.TechOverview.03.html

Bummer on the AAC to MP3 cds. Have you tried using iTunes instead of Musicmatch to re-rip those cds back to MP3s? Just curious.

Itunes uses a high quality MP3 encoder from Fraunhofer.

Yeah it asked me if I wanted to replace the data in the music library and if I wanted to replace the protected songs. I might just rip the CDs to Sony MD ATRAC3 format in the future so I can put them on my MD with no re-compression.

Sorry to be posting so much I don't have a PC to test this out on.

The AACs that are created when I import my music cds can be converted to MP3 doing the following:

I set the preferences for importing from using AAC to using MP3.
Select the songs in your iTunes Library you want to convert and go to the Advanced Menu and choose "Convert Selection to MP3".

Let me know if this works for "purchased" AAC files from the iTMS. I don't have a Music Store account at home because I'm still on 56k and downloads are painful. Thanks

Yeah I tried that last night and it would not let me convert protected purchased music using iTunes. I had to burn an audio CD and then rip it from there using other software.

I dunno. Perhaps I'm being a luddite - or worse a thief (yeah I always feel _so_ bad ripping off the RIAA...) but I can't see any of these schemes. Kazaa Lite/K++ as well as BitTorrent for those things I want to try before I buy and if I'm going to _pay_ for the damn things I expect lossless compression. Anything else IMO is just a sampler and should be free.

One big point everyone misses, Apple's true profits are in the iPod, not the music. Sure, the music makes money (I belive it's liek 34¢ a song or so), but they really want you to buy the hardware.

So, of course, they will make it work best, or only work, with the iPod, and not the other hardware choices of the world.

The software is that first free rock of crack, the subsequent highs will cost you.

I really like the idea of being able to buy using micropayment rather than steal so i will look into this. Jake, I looked at the same MD player as yours at Target and they do make one with an AM/FM TUNER but it costs 200 Dollars!!! WTF!!!
I will wait until the price comes down after Christmas but that thing is doper than XboX. Word?

Yeah I saw that. I am not crazy about the radio so I got the simple one. It will be cool to see how this compares to Napster 2.0. If you pre-register for Napster you get five free songs when they go live. I suggest you check it out.

This from the man who once threatened to kill me for a PowerPC card?

Tch.

Sure I am critical but overall I like iTunes for Windows

I apologize for the 3 pings, it seems as if typepad messed something up...

Apple has taken special care into choosing what music they want to sell. They have not stuck thousands of songs on there that were written and sung by a bunch of garage musicians. The other services stick anything on their servers so that they can raise their song number. I rather have quality over quantity. I think the iTunes Music store is a much more viable option for its superior song quality (AAC vs. WMA, it's ease of use and this sorting out the crap that they spend lots of time doing. Nice review though!

Andrew

I am a bit skeptical if Apple only picking the best of the best when I can't find any techno albums that I want to buy on it. If they were only picking the best of the best there should be lots of good music to buy. But currently I am not shopping there because I am waiting for them to get new music that I want.

You are right, Jake, in the sense that they are missing out on a lot of great artists, but as the leaders in this domain, they want to get the music that applies to the population. Techno, to most, is frowned upon and not even considered music. I like it, but I don't expect to find it in a virtual music store. Techno is considered that "crap" they don't really want to sell. Until they have maxed out on "non-crap" artists and music (sadly, radio music), I doubt we will be seeing the stuff that minorities enjoy. As for the non-crap that is not on there yet, we should just give Apple some time. They are adding a lot of songs every week and giving more attention to what they do than any other service I have seen, so I am happy to wait.

I have tried iTunes on my PC. When I burned my songs to a CD and then tried to convert to MP3, two songs converted into MPEG1 which won't load to my minidisc. Other than that I have been too pleased with iTunes.

Humm I do not use MPEG 1 for audio. I will import pre existing MP3 files into Sony Soundstage and then convert them to ATRAC so they can be loaded on the Minidisc but if I can I will just rip ATRAC files straight from a CD using Sony Soundstage.

"There was two Moby songs that are exclusive to Apple iTunes store. I just had to get them because they are not on any of his CD albums."

Ummm... those Moby tracks ("Love Of Strings" & "Soul To Love") are not iTunes exclusives and are available on his "18 B Sides" album, along with a ton of other great tunes and a very nice bonus DVD at the same price as a music CD (pretty low price considering the DVD is included). You should check it out...

Ok I will check it out but at the time of writing that it were iTunes only exclusives

HELP!
all my daughter's music is saved on sony sonic stage, in atrac of course o: . Now she has an ipod and would like to load her music files directly.

PROBLEM: her backpack and favorite original CD's were stolen, so she can't load to ipod that way. she can burn from atrac to a cd-r (actually, about 50 cd-r's). isn't there a better way? sony must convert atrac to cd-da(?) to get to the cd-r, but isn't there a way to do that step right on the hard drive, then convert to aac from there? where can i download software for this..... or are we just victims of the proprietary wars? Too bad, she was one of the few kids who bought all her cd's (imagine that).
--Joe

This is sort of why I keep all my digital music in mp3 format. I would actually burn to a CD-RW so you can whipe it clean but there is no easy way that I know of to take a bunch of ATRAC file and quickly convert them to ACC or MP3

You all might be interested to know that the iTunes music store had a 70% market share of all songs downloaded legally before iTunes for windows was even released

Yes but how does that compare to the P2P networks?

Well P2P networks dont constitute legal downloads do they

They exist and millions of people use them every day. If they are 100% legal or not is moot.