iTunes Music Store

They're in AAC format -- not MP3.

Make sure you press the browse button up by the search box. Its really the only way to find music effectively. Pretty cool deal though!

If all I wanted to do with music was listen to it, I'd be happy with Apple's service. But I want to be able to edit stuff, import it into music manipulation programs like Live, play it over performance applications like Final Scratch, and so on. At the moment, that means I'd have to burn to CD and rip back to AIFF or mp3 to get it in a compatible format. So... although I think it is well designed and easy to find stuff that I do want to buy, I'll probably just use it to browse music and then buy the respective CDs (getting all the tracks I don't want in the bargain).

Tomas is right -- strings aplenty.

And, technically, since the AAC files are encrypted, you'd be breaking a Federal law to do with them what you are legally allowed to with CDs. (Not to mention the pending local Super-DMCA legislation -- Apple's certainly a "provider" as far as that's concerned!)

The real question, IMO, is whether or not, as "consumers," we're willing to sacrifice another set of rights to pay for a convenience. Probably.

iTunes 4 is great but the iPod update is missing most of the cool iPod features noted including "on-the-go" playlists, new games and such...

Anyone have an idea where they are?

I was under the impresison that the new iPod features were available only for the new units.

Regarding the interface... today I rediscovered the phrase "eat one's own dogfood" (via hixie), as in using the very software one is developing. I have the feeling that Apple developers keep this in mind when building new products. A pleasure to use.

So far I love it. I'm not too concerned with the file format, as long as it sounds good (so far it sounds just fine)and I can play it from my iPod I'm cool. Then again I've been not buying any music for quite awhile and my CDs are slowly getting put into storage. Which reminds me, anyone know of any good music storage solutions? I'm looking for ideas here, my hard drive is getting pretty full...Maybe I'll need to get on of those new 30 gig iPods. That's be nice.

Aside from everything else, strings included, you have to give Apple kudos for the design and functionality if the new store. It's really great.

Too bad the 5 big record companies do not have any good artists besides the half dozen groups like Sonic Youth. What is the advantage here? 13 songs for $13 sounds like the going rate in the store, no? But there is less selection. And no printed cover? RIP off. I would rather duck down to the record store and buy used vinyl for $3 and feel like i earned the music i listen to instead of treating it like fast food.

Regarding this:

Apple seems to have really hit this one out of the park by striking a cohesive balance between the needs of the user (flexibility, ease of use, price) and the artists (revenue for their work).

I haven't seen any financials supporting the idea that artists of the big 5 are getting a better deal through this system than any other. However, I'd be pleased to be proved wrong, as I'd like to see this whole system work.

I agree with some of the posts over on Slashdot calling for small label access to Apple's obviously very mature distribution system. If we could access the catalog of Matador, Dischord, BobSled, Reckless, and others, this would really be revolutionary. And those labels aren't even really small.

Kudos to Apple for the execution, let's see if they can really generate opportunity for the small masses with the fine-tuned engine they've created.

Wait. I just searched the store.

No Yo La Tengo. No Pavement. No Malkmus. No Guided by Voices. No Built to Spill. No Mogwai. Didn't search for Archers of Loaf or Big Star, but I'm sure they're not there. Fine, I'm old.

Dude I'm getting a Dell. ;-)

the downloads are in aac, presumably they're not encrypted. you can burn them to cd, anyway, so nobody needs to break any passwords.

there are about 200'000 there, but apple is adding new songs daily, and if everything works out well, we'll soon be able to chose from a much larger range. I'm sure the music corporations are taking a wait and see attitude with this one.

The AAC file format is built into Quicktime 6.2, so there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to use the music files in any Quicktime aware application.

for independent music I go to:
http://www.emusic.com
they have everything I want!!! for 120$ per year, I get more than 20'000 albums!... amazing! not like Apple's attempt!

What Apple and the music corps want now: people should ALL listen and consume to the same music!!! I don't think indy labels will sign soon! ;-)

I am die hard apple fan, and love the way all hardware and software works together so effortlessly. I live in the UK and just like the photo printing service you guys get with iphoto, we still can?t get that. This music service is only available with a US registered credit card. Some one buy Steve Jobs an Atlas.

& we are a series behind you in The West Wing

I am a member of an Indy band with our own upstart label, and I would absolutely do whatever it takes to get us in with Apple.

This could literally become THE distribution channel for indy artists like us.

To LKM and others:

From Fortune: "Each song is encrypted with a digital key so that it can be played only on three authorized computers, and that prevents songs from being transferred online. Even if you burn the AAC songs onto a CD that a conventional CD player can read and then re-rip them back into standard MP3 files, the sound quality is awful."

Yes, they are encrypted and yes, you will break the law to do otherwise legal activities. Having said that, the store is cool, $9.99 or less per album doesn't suck at all, previewing and downloading are easy, and people are going to love it. Let's hope the Indy people are close behind.

For the record, I was aware the files downloaded were actually "AAC" digital audio files, but I felt using the catch-all "mp3" acronym was easiest for most readers to understand. Technically, no, the files are definitely not standard mp3 files, and in fact I probably should have made that clear. That's what writing in a rush will do for you.

For more info about AAC, check out:

http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/

I don't like the pay per music thing: if you have an intro that let's say is 1:20 long... how much would you pay for it ?
I have a lot of albums that have more than 20 musics on them (thinking about indy bands) ...hmmm I would pay them directly , but not Apple! come on guys! this is not indy thinking! this is indus! :-)
moreover I now buy these albums for no more than 12$ ! cover included, and physical support! ...

Todd, I think the kind of readers who frequent your site already know the difference between the mp3 and aac formats. Aside from that, I'm curious as to what Tomas means by wanting to do more with music than just listen to it. Tomas, if you read this, please explain. As for the other 99% of folk who'd rather just download popular music and listen to it, this service is certainly the most user-friendly yet. Time will tell how well it catches on -- but I believe we won't really know until early next year, after iTunes for Windows becomes available.

I have been waiting for a pay-per-song service for a long time. It's been disappointing to have the labels complaining about file-swapping but not offering an alternative as easy as Napster. I was hoping the price point would be 50 cents, but I'm not sure how this is breaking down and how much the artist sees. There are a bunch of songs that I will buy for $.50-$1.00 that I would never spend money on a full CD from the artist. I too hope indy labels can get in on this, as the whole independent radio promoter scam is a pet peeve of mine and conitnues to shut out non-major-label artists from the airwaves.

For all of you who are critical of the music selction because your favorite under the radar group isn't on there, chill. There's more coming. Hell, Dave Matthews isn't even there, yet. And he's already on the radar. This thing is just ramping up. More on the service on my site...

Bitch. moan. bitch. moan. bitch. moan. bitch. moan.

Isn't this the space where I take a pretty good product offering that is better than what anyone else has developed and then rip it to shreds because it doesn't conform to my crazy little demands and it doesn't include my brother's best friend's sister's cousin's garage band that signed with Stinky Pete's Label? Geez people, they JUST launched it. You think they might improve it?

Bitch. moan. bitch. moan. bitch. moan. bitch. moan.

Apple is well known for its irreprochable service!! but this has a price!! Apple distributing music is somewhat nice for people! for me it says they will stop selling hardware in the near future! as soon as they get OS X on Intel (google: darwin on Intel)...

I will remain with my emusic subscription which has more than 25'000 artists! indy and so! from Marley to Thrusday!

And I don't complain ! I truely love apple! this time I am not convinced! well, this is indeed very nice for all the people waiting this service! I never used Napster, except for rare live gigs! never for albums! I so hate digitization in my ears, and MP3 was such a crappy format, ... let's hope AAC is better :)

the Vinyl Lover!

Seems great. I am looking forward for the PC version to come out soon. :) But the new iPod is a mustget!!

only one thing I think steve & co. should add... let's say you only like one or two songs from this album, and there's one on that record over there, and then there's that other one you've been dying to get. apple should burn all those songs onto one cd if you want them. kind like a mix thing. that would be very cool. who has 7500 songs? ha.

I honestly think that this Apple music works really well in conjunction with a subscription to emusic.com. Emusic has a better selection of music for an aficionado, and all the files are unrestricted MP3s, whereas the Apple service can fill in the missing gaps for big 5 label content that emusic doesn't have. so I can fill up with my emusic subscription on all the matador, minty fresh, jetset records, etc., artists that I want, and still get that bumpin' Missy Elliot remix or PJ Harvey album I wanted.

I have 9650 songs.

They cover some 30 Gigs (exactly!) on the drive... But I'm unfortunatly on Windows.

Anyway, there sure is a lot of moaning going on about indy labels. First of all, as most have pointed out, I think it's safe to say that this'll grow dramatically in the coming time.

But also there are people out there who don't listen to indy labels as much as some of you might, in fact I'll bet my left mabel nut that they cover the vast majority of the consumers!

Now if only I had the money to switch :).

You know, it's hard to get indie music anywhere, so we can't expect Apple to have it in their new music service aimed at general consumers. Give them time.

I've posted a pretty lengthy review of the service (particularly its interface and features) on my blog--check it out.

Apple's service will be great for the average user who wants to download music and doesn't already, or someone who downloads every now and then. It's for more mainstream artists. It's for people who don't REALLY care if their download is a VBR MP3 with Lame encoding or whatever. It's for users who like to make their own mix cds of their favorite songs they hear on the radi , MTV, whatever.

It's like a consumer music source rather than a PRO source. emusic.com is a nice service and it's definately loaded with more obscure artists. Most of what I would consider serious sources for non mainstream music are not legal, so I think Apple got it right what what the general public will use. It's kinda like when iTools became a paid service. I didn't see the value for myself. It's the same with this sevice, but I can sure see the value for others. Bravo Apple.

Oops. ACC supports VBR. :)

"if you have an intro that let’s say is 1:20 long… how much would you pay for it ?"

an interesting question. i searched for a cd that i knew had short 'skits' and intros. they didn't have the cd i was looking for ( snoop dogg's doggystyle ), but i checked out a nate dogg cd and there's a nice 14 second intro that'll cost you $0.99, or you can just listen to it all as a demo.

it's a small flaw, but something that they should address. a lot of rap cds have things like that throughout the cd, and paying the same for those as a full song seems unfair. maybe a system where, if you've bought x% of the cd, it gives you the short one's for free. they dont really add a whole lot to an album, but it's nice to have them. or even packaging them all up into one $0.99 purchase. there has to be some ameniable way to pay for them, but not get ripped off for the same price as a full song.

oh, and i'm dissapointed that no one's said anything about the new sharing system in itunes ( icommune, anyone? ).

it's in the preferences to turn it on, and you can copy the link to read the files from the playlist list.

i dont know how it works, further than that. that was why i'm dissapointed. :P

sorry to post up a storm here, but i just noticed the "listeners who bought this also bought" corner. that's a nice touch that should add a lot of depth to the service and peoples purchasing decisions.

overall, i'm really impressed with this upgrade. the store is great and, if it works as i think it's supposed to, the sharing is wonderful.

i dont like the new look for the play/forward/back trio of buttons, but i'm sure i'll get over that sooner, or later.

About the intro question - I did notice a couple of albums that I know for a fact have 30-odd second intros as the first track on the album. In the iTunes service, the "album" only shows tracks 2 through however many were on the real one. Obviously, this won't work for completists who want the whole thing, but I also see the other side where nobody would want to spend 99 cents for a 10 second skit.

The new Rendezvous sharing feature is really incredible, and only shows its true strength if you have a bunch of people on a LAN with iTunes 4 running. Here at Turner, I'm able to access multiple people's collections. And...see all the guilty pleasures they've been hiding.

The store is pretty fantastic so far. Definitely need a bit more selection, but I have already bought a few songs that I have been unable to find on my local LAN.

The new Rendezvous sharing is truly the best feature to be added to iTunes in this round. My LAN has about fifty people with over half of them on Macs. About five of us have downloaded iTunes4 and started using the Rendezvous sharing. My MP3 collection has effectively quadtrupled in one day. Oh, bliss!

One last point: what the heck is with the color of that new iTunes icon?

Check out Fortune.com's interview with Jobs - He's remarkably candid and lets slip that iTunes for Windows is coming. (woe, er, Whoa!)

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,447333-1,00.html

Regarding your post, Pete ... there is a reason why the Apple Music Service is only available to those with US registered credit cards. It is because artists almost always have different record distribution deals for international sales. Apple is only handling domestic distribution, so in order to make the service a global one, there would have to be many more added deals to the table.

the rendezvous sharing isnt just over lans, it can also work over the net. i haven't been able to get it to work yet, but i've been talking to people on another forum who have been able to set it up. basically, it seems that you just have to open up port 3689 on your firewall and allow sharing in your preferences.

give your friends your ip and they can either open it in itunes ( advanced -> connect to shared music, or daap://ip.address.here in a browser ).

it's not wonderful over ip, you get rebuffering and a couple latency related problems, but it does work.

ugh, clarification ...

where i said "i haven’t been able to get it to work yet", i meant that i haven't been able to share, but i have connected to someone else.

99 cents or free ?hmmm
I'll take the freee one thanks
I give it a year before it goes the way of the cube and the newton
the new ipods are nice though
how long till they stop playing MP3's i wonder

I love watching the big five music pimps gasping for air as they go under

putin a hose in their mouth while downloading the latest version of kazaa lite

gurgle gurgle

Well i'm no affraid to admit that I didn't know the difference between AAC and Mp3. :-)

cedric, Apple is NOT going intel anytime soon. Hint:
http://daringfireball.net/2003/04/qwerty.html

Jason over at 37signals' Signal vs. Noise has some ideas for improvements to the new iTunes Music Store.

Let's put it this way: This is the first online music service ever to get to the point of separating me from some of my money. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to have done something nobody else has managed to do in years.

The comment up there with "price point" made me think about this a bit ... volume discounting.

Some folks are talking about wanting only a couple tracks, and I can understand that. Even with artists that I really like, I don't necessarily want to pay for everything they've had. If I'd heard the music before and knew I only liked tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13 on a 19-track disc [Fibonacci sequence intentionally used], sure, I'll want to pay less than full-price.

But in offering that ability, I think I'd probably also be willing to pay a bit of a premium. Why? For customizability, be willing to drop a couple more dimes a track. You can also then make the reverse argument: if I'm going to be a mass consumer, I should get it more cheaply.

Just a couple musings to make people think...

Following up on Evan Backes' comment on why Apple's online store is currently US-only, the reason is exactly as Evan pointed out. Each artist usually has different distribution deals for different countries.

I spoke to Chris Bell, Apple's product manager for music (he has responsibility for iTunes software, iPod hardware and the iTunes Music Store online service), and he confirmed that Apple definitely intends to take this world-wide, but it means making deals with record companies in each individual country or marketing territory.

As to availability of indy labels, Apple is very interested in adding them, and is getting lots of enquiries. But once again, you have to start somewhere, and they chose to begin with deals covering the 5 biggest labels that had the potential to license millions of popular songs. Chris said they will be anouncing many more disitribution deals very shortly.

Seeing his presentation at J&R in New York, and listening to the philosophy behind the design, I am really impressed.

These guys have designed a service with all the flexibility and freedom a typical consumer would want, while still providing a revenue stream and reasonable controls to keep the recording industry willing to play.

I think this is going to revolutionize the music business.

I also think the price per song may drop, once some of the start-up costs are amortized and as more and more music is sold this way.

The night it was released, before I read any reviews, I downloaded iTunes 4. "Huh? What's this?", I thought when I saw the music store button. After clicking on it, my thoughts turned to 'wow', and within 5 minutes I had already downloaded a few tunes.

I have never paid for a music download before, and I'm an old guy (50 something). This is great, easy to use, and will forever change the way we buy and listen to music. Yes the selection is limited, but already growing since that first night. I'm a part time musician as well, and my pro music friends are blown away as well.

All in all, it's very sweet. I've downloaded a handful of songs and it's so effortless. This is going to make my life easier in 2 major ways: a) being able to download only the song I want without having to buy the whole damn disc and b) it's going to save me the money and the hassle of buying a $17.99 CD (vs. $9.99 online) then having to rip it. Right now, I'm in the midst of ripping my 300+ disc collection. It's amazing how little space it uses.

My only gripe: when an album on the iMS (iTune Music Store) is a partial album (e.g. When I was Cruel by Elvis Costello), there should be a way to buy the entire partial album - and not for more than the normal, full album price. The disc I'm talking about has 15 tracks listed, so to buy all the tracks will cost me $14.85, when it should, by rights, cost $9.99.

Still, it's a great thing. Now, I just need to talk my wife into letting me have an iPod for Channukah.

Eric