I hope the price does come down, as a buck a song is too high. Considering that the materials and distribution overhead should be lessened considerably compared to CD production and placement, 50 cents per song should be the upper price limit, and hopefully, it would be lower than that.
Once it comes out for Windows platforms, I’ll probably take a look at it, but with the pricing, I’m still going to download mp3s as a “try before you buy” tool.
these objections are all valid. I especially would like to underline what you have said about restrictions:
They use a complicated system of passwords (3 per user) which is really asinine. The password used to login and download should be the ONLY one.
Chosing to use the AAC format was a mistake. I know the format, I have used it four years ago. And while the quality is indeed superior to MP3 for a fixed bitrate, the encoding time is much longer (irrelevant, I know). The point is that people are just getting familiar with the use of MP3s. Offering songs in that format with a higher bitrate (192 Kbps) would have provided the added quality needed without alienating a large group of people less technically inclined.
Another thing, each song file contains personal information about the user (his full name among other things). Nobody likes that.
People want complete control over their MP3s. They bought them, they don’t want artificial restrictions imposed. You can do a lot more with a standard mp3 file than you can do with an encrypted AAC file and you don’t have to worry about the supremely important compatibility issues. For now, they are dodging the bullet by only offering this to Mac fans who’ll just use their macs, itunes and ipods but PC users are a whole other ballgame.
The whole reason of implementing these software restrictions is stupid anyways. I suspect it’s something the morons at the RIAA insisted on. It’s not like the songs will get leaked to p2p programs. They are ALREADY there. Wake up people! They should have opted for a simple disclaimer telling the customers that sharing the song with more than 2 people (or whatever the current limit is) was not permitted. Some people might not respect that, but at least they bought the song! They could have just as easily downloaded it from kazaa or grokster. Geez…
So in conclusion, no, it’s never going to work outside the “autarchic” macland. I sure hope Steve Jobs realizes that and planned accordingly.
The only positive thing to be said about Itunes is that it’s not as horrible as the similar services in existence. I give it one star and a half out of five. The other 2 services (which names shall never soil my lips) are actually rated in blackholes.
Yeah, great point there. :rolleyes: Steve Jobs does have way too much money; I think the next time any of us sees him we should knock him over and take his wallet.
If you’re going to use the file-sharing stuff, just do it. Don’t try to insult anybody’s intelligence by implying that it’s in any way justified.
The 99 cent songs are designed for those of us who only want to buy ONE song off an album, which is a pretty common occurence these days.
However, you can buy many full albums on iTunes for $9.99. Which is what they should cost in the store, anyway.
The only problems I have with it so far is that many albums can’t be bought as a whole, even if every track on the album is available for individual purchase. Sometimes an album will be available with every song but one or two. I can’t figure out what the reason could be for that.
But hey, it’s been around for all of two weeks. I’m sure many of the kinks will be worked out.
Gozu, I’m not sure what you mean about requiring three passwords. I haven’t had to type in a password since my first purchase, and that was just the password to my Apple ID, which I’ve had for a year now.
It’s very possible that I’m wrong on this one. But I remember reading somewhere that downloading and transferring itunes music between three computers required 3 passwords. It doesn’t really matter if I’m wrong. This is a minor qualm.
After further thought, I remember now that the person who wrote the article owned three apple computers. That must have been why he had to juggle between passwords.
Oh, how charming.
Another :wally who informs the public that he’s going to actively and continually break the law.
REALLY smart thing to do. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
$9.99 per album sounds much more reasonable.
The reason some albums are missing tracks is that apparently iTunes doesn’t sell songs longer than 6 minutes–I guess on the theory that you’re getting “too much” for your 99 cents. (As a jazz fan, the six-minute limitation is pretty, well, limiting.)
I don’t know if that’s true. I read that Metallica isn’t signing on because they want their entire album to be heard, not just a song. Same for Radiohead. I think many bands would be afraid that if they agree to this, few will ever hear more of their music than their singles. I know that albums are available, too, but I’m not sure how many will take advantage of that. I’m kind of torn on the issue.
There is nothing to be torn about. The only reason albums came to exist in the first place is because of the medium they were distributed through. It was a lot more cost effective to place several songs on a disc or a tape. In the digital age, albums have no reason to exist. And it’s a good thing, no more releasing cds with one or two good songs and padding them with crap. Now, each song has to sink or rise on it’s own merits. And don’t you start nitpicking and …ah nevermind. I have to go play with the kitten 
This is the first I’ve heard about a ‘6 minute’ song limit, and I can assure you it’s not true. I just checked out some Coltrane and Miles Davis as quick examples, and they’ve both got many, many songs available in the iTunes store that are much longer than 6 minutes.
Change “heard” to “bought” and you’ve got it. 
There are 2 other threads on iTunes by the way.
As pointed out elsewhere about $0.65 is going to the record company.
Don’t forget that Apple has to pay for bandwidth and keeping the servers up etc. Not to mention the credit card fees.
Personally I don’t buy (or aquire) much music, so I really don’t have a strong opinion. I think the DRM is resonable (I mean, how many people need to play a song on more than 3 computers?)
Unlimited CD burns (10 with the same playlist), unlimited iPods, streaming (I think the limit is 5 listeners per source machine–if true that means you could listen on as many as 15 computers)
Sure, there are other services that did similar things, but they all serious problems.
Brian
I’m not understanding the “99 cents is too expensive, I’d rather buy CDs and rip my own MP3s” crowd.
Let’s assume the average CD has 12 full-length tracks and costs $12. For buying a CD and ripping your own MP3s to be a better deal (financially speaking), you’d have to have this average CD and enjoy each and every song on it, to the point where you wouldn’t exclude any songs from the CD if you had the choice.
Realistically, however, how often does this happen?
I have several CDs with more than 12 tracks, but on a good portion of them, one track is either a remixing of another track or a short “intro” type track. Either way, they’re not tracks I consider to be on par with the rest of the songs, in terms of both originality and the satisfaction I get from it.
$12 for a CD is rare these days. On Amazon.com’s Best Seller list, one of the cheapest titles, Jack Johnson’s On And On, has a list price of $18.98 and an Amazon.com price of $12.99. Great discount off the list price, but it’s still more than $12. Yes, you can find cheaper prices on CDs, but your options become limited. I have a couple CDs for which I paid $12 or less, but they were classical music CDs, and were in the bargain bin. Best Buy currently has a “2 for $15” special on CDs, but unless I want the years-old Dookie by Green Day or Carly Simon’s Greatest Hits, I’m out of luck. Costco sells CDs for prices lower than retail, but the lowest price I’ve gotten a CD for at Costco was $12.50. The fact of the matter is, popular music costs a lot more than the hypothetical “average” I gave above.
What’s the price of singles these days? Back when they came on 5-minute cassettes, I remember them costing about $1.99. This was back in the mid-90s. So ten years ago, singles sold for twice the price that the iTunes Music Store is selling them for now.
Take a trip to Amazon.com, and you see that the prices have gone up. For example, Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” CD single sells for $12.99. It contains 4 tracks, but two of those are remixes of the first, bringing down the total number of unique songs down to two. Going by number of tracks, you will pay $3.25 per song; if by original songs, you will pay $6.50 per song. Hardly a bargain.
Even a less popular song, Madonna’s “Die Another Day”, is a questionable value. It costs $7.50 and has 6 tracks, all of which are remixes of the original “Die Another Day” song. This works out to a cost of $1.25 per song. Which is still more expensive than the iTunes Music store.
True, some CDs are “enhanced”, meaning that they have all sorts of cool multimedia crap on them, but for those interested only in the music, these extras are unnecessary, and therefore are irrelevant.
Finally, I think most of us will agree that seldom do you find a CD where you like each and every song on it. Even your favorite album by your favorite artist won’t have songs you couldn’t do without.
So, given that you can make a CD where you can pick which songs will be on it, therefore ensuring you don’t pay for what you don’t want, how can buying CDs and ripping your own MP3s be a better way to go?
Apple has said that in the Music Store’s first week, nearly half the purchases were of full albums. Hopefully, that will persuade more bands to come on board.
There are album people and song people. Song people are the ones who have been complaining since the death of the 45 about paying for a full album when only two or three songs on it are any good. iTunes is a huge boon for song people.
Album people, like myself, just aren’t interested in grabbing single songs here and there; we want the whole CD. To me, getting a single song is like watching fifteen minutes of a movie. Neither view is right or wrong; they’re just two different ways of thinking.
iTunes is not so great for album people. I can get a CD for $14-15 (people who pay $18 for CDs need to stop shopping at the mall) or download the album from iTunes for $9.99. That’s not sufficiently cheaper for me to put up with the lack of a physical medium with cover art, inferior sound quality, and restricted files.
Plus, one of the beautiful things about P2P is the fact that I can listen to vast quanities of music of my own choosing, sorting through it to see what catches my ear. If I don’t like it, I just don’t listen to it again. It’s hard to do that at a buck a song. If iTunes had a sufficiently broad selection and offered unlimited downloads for a fixed price, I’d be willing to pay quite a bit for it. I can’t imagine they’d have the server oomph to be able to pull that off, though.
Dr. J
**
The service is built into iTunes, the best jukebox software I’ve ever used on either platform. So you burn tracks to CDs from that program. To move them to another Mac, you just copy them over a network or to a CD/DVD-R. On the second Mac, you need to have iTunes 4 installed and authorized under your Apple account, and you’re good to go.
The iPod, Mac and Windows, now plays .m4p and .m4a files, and it has pretty high market penetration. Adding AAC support to other players would require a software update, which isn’t that high of a barrier.
And if you really need to get the music onto something that’s not AAC-aware, then just burn the song to a CD and re-rip it as a high-bitrate .mp3 and transfer that.
**
Once again, the main target for this service is for people who want songs, not whole albums… though the price for a whole album is quite nice, in most cases.
You’re still not accurately describing the situation.
To purchase music at the Apple iTunes Music Store, you must have an Apple ID. This consists of an email address and a password.
To be able to play your purchased music on a Mac, you must be using a version of iTunes 4 that is authorized under your Apple ID. To do this, you open iTunes 4, select “Authorize Computer…” from the Advanced menu, and enter your Apple ID and password. You only have to do this once.
You may authorize up to three Macintoshes under your account. You do not need different passwords for each Mac.
Also, you can “deauthorize” one Mac (maybe when you sell it) and “authorize” another Mac. You probably could “deauthorize” and “reauthorize” a multitude of Macs all day—just as long as only three are authorized at one time.
I’m glad to see that the “6 minute limit” myth has already been debunked. I too have seen music over 6 mintutes available for 99 cents. However, very often if a piece of over 6 minutes, it’ll not be available individually, but will be part of the album. I guess that’s OK.
So far I’ve spent $12 on the iTunes music store. I will buy more as more becomes available. Like others here, I’m an “album” person for the most part, so if it comes to buying a complete album on CD, or buying it through the Apple Music Store, I’ll buy the CD. However, there are a few tracks of music that I’d always just wanted, except I didn’t want the whole damned album to get them. And now I have them, thanks to the Apple Music Store! Woo hoo! What a deal!
Also, if anyone starts to gripe about Macs being the first to have this—don’t even start, please. And please believe me, I’m not trying to make this a Mac vs. PC thing, because I personally don’t have any huge vendetta against PCs (just bought a new XP box, as it happens). I just think part of the reason Macs came first is because we all have iTunes already, so it was easy to set it up for us first. Also, since when do things have to come out for Mac and PC at the same time? Every Mac user will tell you, sometimes we’ll have to wait for a Mac version of something to come out, while the Windows people already have it. So—if iTunes comes out for Mac first, ::shrug:: The PC people have to wait a while to get their version, no biggie. That wait won’t kill 'em.