Apple's Music Service

[schweb]

Source: MacCentral.com

Apple today introduced the iTunes Music Store, an online music store that Apple bills as "Downloads done right." The service provides users with access to over 200,000 songs without any subscription fees.

The iTunes Music Store -- designed to work hand in hand with Apple's new iTunes 4 software and the new iPod models also announced today -- provides users with the ability to burn songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listen to songs on an unlimited number of iPods, and play songs on up to three Macs. What's more, the iTunes Music Store is Mac-exclusive, at least for the moment -- Apple says a Windows-compatible version will come later this year.

Artists from the five major commercial music publishers -- BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner -- are all represented on the iTunes Music Store, and Apple's new service has even managed to secure exclusive tracks from more than 20 artists like Bob Dylan, U2, Eminem, Sheryl Crow and Sting.

Users can listen to free 30-second excerpts from songs, search by title, artist, album, browse by genre, artist and album, watch free videos, then purchase and download their favorite songs or complete albums.

The iTunes Music Store leverages Dolby's Advanced Audio Codec, or AAC -- a key QuickTime 6 and MPEG-4 audio technology that produces smaller files at 128Kbps with superior sound quality than MP3 files, according to Apple.

The iTunes Music Store has been integrated into Apple's newly released iTunes 4, available for free download from Apple's Web site, and requires iTunes 4 to work. The software and service require Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later.

The iTunes Music Store requires a valid credit card with a U.S. billing address. In his speech to attendees of Monday's special event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif., Apple CEO Steve Jobs indicated that Apple was working on ways to open the iTunes Music Store to international users as well.

 

[Emrys]

I voted maybe, but I don't think it's possible to make file sharing illegal. It is against my rights to be able to share stuff that I want with others. It might be that they find some sorta copy protection that will actually work, but file sharing will never be illegal. At least not in the way it is implemented now. And even if it did become illegal, they will find ways around it. It is inevitable.

 

[Graphite]

I think it will work out, but they need to get more artists.
They are lacking in many of my favorites.
Seether
Sinch
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS! <--- how the h*** can you NOT have them?
36 Crazy Fists

 

[Giaguara]

it probably succeeds. but so far anything i was looking for was there.. so it has to be commercial enough US - taste music. mine isn't mostly. but even metallica had nothing there, and that's classical music for me. astor piazzolla had 1 track but that's among the 1 G of high quality mp3s i've already grabbed (mostly of the cds i own, and some unreleased-in-europe-and-us stuff as well), anything modern south american, japanese, italian ... <_<

 

[rman]

I think it will work. I have not looked as of yet.
I do believe Apple will need to have a greater
music selection to choose from though.

This is only the start, I think it will work better
as they iron out some of the bugs and problems.