Tryin' to get all 21st century and ********, I signed up for iTunes (don't even own an iPod) just to ******** around and see what they were offering. I have to admit it's pretty nifty. The whole .99/song and average albums being $9.90 is cool. I plumped for a few oddball songs I hadn't heard in years, realizing of course this is the slippery slope this type of format can lead to (I remember that Dixie Dregs song as being cool...). Anyhow, I was surprised at both how much crazy esoteric way out stuff is on there and huge ass gaping holes in the "inventory". There's been a lot of talk about some of the dinosaur heavy hitters that are missing (Beatles, Zep), the Johnny Cash stuff on American, and I noticed that some of the bigger folk/world music labels not represented (Shanachie, Green Linnet). I wonder what other people's experience with the service, as opposed to the iPod equipment, has been. I was pointed in the direction of Listen.com, but it's a subscription service so I didn't bother. Has anyone used them? What other for pay music services have people used?
We own an iPod. I know because my wife occasionally leaves it out where I can see it. But I love iTunes even without the iPod. I've downloaded a ton of stuff -- sometimes esoteric stuff (mostly World Music), sometimes odd tunes from back in the day (Stanley Clarke's School Days, for example). Sometimes you want the whole CD, other times you just want the one Rick James track. It's great. Nothing can compare to the instant gratification or the price for that matter. There's a lot missing, though. I keep hoping that they'll fill in those missing bits. But slippery slope is right -- I think I've financed the next three Pixar movies or something. I haven't tried Listen.com. I usually listen to the iTunes radio which has some nice Electronica stations. I use that here at work. I also subscribe to Live365 which I like a lot. Local NYC radio is only good for traffic and weather.
I've only used iTunes myself. I guess the problem with a subscription system is that most people aren't going to buy regularly enough, and the 99-cents thing makes it so much easier for me to say "Ah, what the hell." I'd rather pay a dollar than wait 4+ minutes for an mp3 that's going to be less than CD quality, if it even plays, but I'm also not going to pay a fee up front for a service I might not use at all. The greatest strength (and evil) of iTunes is that they're not trying to make money off the music. They're barely breaking even. But they did get what they wanted out of me, which is to drop a few pennies on an iPod. No buyer's remorse here though.
Real Networks bought Listen.com awhile ago, and they took over Rhapsody which is our interface (I worked for listen and now for Real). We're a public company, so I can't really say much.
Not being a Mac kind of guy, I never used iTunes until I got my iPod, but I've really come to love it. I dig how quickly a CD can be uploaded to it, I like the ease of burning tracks from an easy to setup playlist, and obviously the iPod related features appeal to me as well. The fact that it keeps track of recently played and most played tracks is pretty cool just for kicks. As far as buying tracks from the Apple Store, 99 cents is a bar-goon for hard to find single tracks, but I still don't get the appeal (other than speed of purchase) of spending $13-14 on a downloaded album, when you can buy a CD copy with artwork for the same dough, and just upload it into iTunes in minutes. Hell, you can take that CD back and sell it used for $4, taking your net purchase down to about $9.... Not sure if you guys know (or care), but you can read the free iTunes download codes on Pepsi caps before you buy the soda if you hold the bottle at the right angle. You can read the bottom line of the inkjet message, which is either "AGAIN" as in "Sorry Please Try Again" or a code that looks something like "QZ7H5S" which would mean a winner. My wife caught me pulling this stunt in front of the soda cooler at Walgreens the other night and informed me I looked like some nut with a compulsive disorder picking out "just the right bottle".
I was thinking about the whole ordering an album thing from iTunes. I did order one the other day, just because I could. It was Squeeze's Greatest Hits (oh, be quiet) and had about 20 songs on it of which I really only wanted maybe 14 but it was still cheaper to order the whole thing. Obviously I don't get whatever liner notes there were, but I really don't care in this case. I have found the iTunes carries all 4 recordings of Jean Redpath doing the songs of Robert Burns, which retails on amazon for about $18 and is that or more if you find it in a record store. $9.90 for each record is not bad, but this is a case where I'd really like to have the liner notes (she apparently goes into details about each song). Still $39.60 for all four volumes v. $72.00 doesn't take a math scientist to figure out. BTW when you import cd tracks into iTunes or iPod does it automatically convert them to mp3 (or AAC)? You know one of the writers here the other day pointed out the fact that you can put every single AC/DC record ever released on one cd in mp3 format. The world really is getting more and more like the Jetsons every day.
Is anybody familiar with these folks: http://www.emusic.com/pitch.html They seem to have partnered themselves with more folk, punk, reggae, and other slightly outside the mainstream musics.
I got in on their old "100 Free MP3s" deal and downloaded a seven CD Coltrane set and the latest Bis album. Pretty good selection, and the free intro deal means you can cancel w/o paying. RS
Short answer - Yes. Long answer - The default setting is AAC but you can choose various bitrates and formats (mp3, AIFF, etc).... which comes in handy if you want to get around the password protection on music from the store or want to play songs from iTunes on non-iPod mp3 players.
The Beatles and Apple are about to go to war today in the high court over the right to use the Apple trademark in respect of marketing on line music. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=495167
I don't know the whole deal with ipods, but I did hear about those batteries. Apparently, they'll break after 1-2 years, and they're not-replaceable. Ipod users would know more. Maybe there's a fix, maybe not. Downhillbattle.org has their own views on the subject... This logic's probably not right, but .....If you buy music, you're still giving money to the RIAA and they're still gonna sue. In an ideal world, you could just download music from the band's website for their prices. Without labels or the RIAA or anyone. Maybe it would be encoded so you could only burn X times. Maybe not. Maybe you could be able to buy extra burns. But the RIAA wants things THEIR WAY, and that doesn't seem fair to the bands. Some bands are working their asses off only to get a cut of the pie. My brother tried Napster and apparently you need to buy to download (per song, or per month), and then pay an additional fee to burn.
I've had an iPod for over 2 years now and the battery still works fine. The battery is also replaceable, whether it's through Apple or one of the other alternatives.
I don't know about you folks, but I've been transferring my collection over to iTunes. I'm over a Gig and that's just with what I had laying around on my desk. I think I'm going to need a new hard drive.
For some reason w/ my iTunes, every time I try an import a CD through iTunes, or burn a cd through iTunes, it freezes my computer, anyone else had this problem? I've uninstalled and reinstalled probably 4 times now but the problem remains...
What kind of set up are you running? Do you have enough RAM (>256K)? BTW what bit rates is everyone importing at. I've done the first go round at the standard 128kbs, but it was recommended by someone with better ears than myself that I should up to 192kbs (I couldn't tell any difference at 160kbs) since I'm archiving a lot of rare stuff. Thoughts.
XP home edition with an 80 gig hard drive and 512 ram. The Burner is a combo CD-ROM/CD-RW drive. would that make a difference?
That's weird I'm running almost the same thing, except I only have 256 for memory but I do have a 120G hard drive (which I will definitely fill up). Still I've got the same CD-R/CD-RW drive and I've not had any problems importing. I've not burned that much so I can't comment with full authority. Maybe someone here will pipe in with some info, failing that try to contact iTunes or check out iPodlounge.com
Are you encoding them as AAC or mp3? Keep in mind that a 128kbs AAC is equivalent to 192kbs mp3 (supposedly) so you get more bang for the buck using AAC. My untrained ears think a 128kbs AAC that I ripped from a CD sounds better than a 192kbs mp3 I downloaded illegally. Also, a co-worker told me that AAC files you buy from the iTunes Music Stores are of better quality than the AIFF format used for CDs. I'll try to confirm this.
I'm doing them as AAC. What I heard was 128 AAC was equal, sound quality wise, to 160 mp3. I'm assuming if I do 192 AAC it'll sound really ********ing good. I will say 128 AAC was sounding pretty spiffy.
I've done almost 7K songs at 128 AAC after trying some of the higher rates and not being able to tell a difference...then again my ears may be burnt after many years of walkmen, discmen, & loud live shows.
I'm glad I'm having the growing pains now and not when I'm 7K songs involved in the project! The 128 AAC does sound really feckin' good, but talking to my brother in law he recommended the 192 AAC approach so I went in and deleted the 2G of stuff (appx 600+ songs) thinking no biggy it only took a couple of days to rip it all. Now I've got 1.17G (248 songs) so I don't know as it is a massive change in the amount of hard drive space taken up (for what kind of returns). As fate would have it I tried to burn a cd to listen to, to see if I could really tell a qualitative difference in sound but it keeps telling me my playlist is too big to fit on one cd. I changed over my pref. to MP3 for burning but I'm wondering if it doesn't auto-convert from AAC.
Some interesting stuff here: http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusicclassical/mp3test.html http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=178240