Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I heard something on the radio this morning and thought "Damn, I really want to get that on CD."
That almost NEVER happens to me - maybe once in five years. In part because the finite amount of music that I listen to was mostly written 150 years ago and recorded 30 or 40 years ago, and in part because I seldom listen to anything but NPR while I'm in my car.
And I'm moving, so ordering something online, which is what I'm forced to do in order to get the music I like, would pretty much be an act of faith on my part. It ain't gonna happen.
Finally, last night I tried to download a trailer for a movie (Serenity) off apple.com, and it prompted me to install itunes.
So I wrote down the title of the piece and when I came into work today I thought "what the hell" and downloaded iTunes to take a look for the piece in question (Ennico Morricone's "Moses and Marco Polo Suite" - basically a couple themes from film scores), after being assured that the music I downloaded would at least be transferrable to a CD.
So here are my impressions:
1. The itunes application is annoying in several minor ways. It is its own, quasi-web-browser, only an annoying one that's too much like Internet explorer. Apple apparently doesn't believe in context-clicking, and I was confused that the "back" button didn't take me all the way back to the start page when I wanted it to. There are no tabs as such, and I miss them.
The user interface is highly apple-centric. Not a big deal but I think I would've been happier to see a real browser-based site along with a player that takes up something less than 75% of a 1280x1024 screen.
I also notice that itunes wanted a credit card number before I could use the program. Bleh.
2. timwhit complained of slowness with the itunes application. I can't say I notice, but I'm sitting in front of a rather muscular PC at the moment (Athlon64 3200/1.5GB). I've heard that itunes is very slow to download music to a device over USB2.0. Is that what you were referring to?
iTunes itself is responsive enough.
3. Music selection - It's just "meh". I see the bewildering array of pop releases I would've expected, but in the genres that I have actual knowledge of - classical music and jazz - the titles tend toward big-name artists performing the same 10 pieces rather than repertoire (e.g. itunes had every classical pianist ever playing Chopin nocturnes, but no recordings at all of, say, frequently performed symphonies by Ralph Vaughn-Williams). I more or less expected that, but it's still disappointing to see. iTunes DID have the music I heard on the radio, though, and a couple of searches got me to a place where I was hearing music I never would've known about otherwise. Serendipity is a good thing.
About 80% of the tracks I looked at had a 30-second sample available for preview. Given that all this music is stored electronically beforehand, I'm not sure why previews weren't available for 100% of the tracks. WTF?
4. Price - $.99 per track of DRM-encumbered .AAC files, or $10 for an album, except some albums. I bought the Ennico Morricone tracks I wanted as a full album, around $6 cheaper than I could've gotten it as a new, pressed CD.
5. Sound Quality - Turns out, AAC is lossless compression. I downloaded a single track from a music CD I happened to have handy, and compared the waveforms in Nero's Wave Editor (Apple says it's lossless, but I'm kind of picky about these things), just to be sure.
6. DRM BS - I loaded itunes on a second PC. I found that I could not access the music I purchased and downloaded. This, of course, is evil, especially since Apple has clear knowledge of what I have purchased.
7. Burning - iTunes lets me burn the music that I have purchased as a "playlist". Each playlist can only be burned a certain number of times (more DRM BS). Bleh. I burned my Ennico Morricone album to a disc. On another PC it was correctly identified by CDDB, which I take to mean that the audio on my burned disc is identical to that on a pressed disc. I *did* have to define a playlist in order to make a disc. That seemed cumbersome to me.
I also went ahead and ripped the CD back into FLAC files. No sense in having a bunch of useless .m4p files, in the event something happens to my PC.
In the end, I think the thing that I like is the chain-of-association browsing, but I can do that at amazon.com as well. I continue to think that online music stores don't have a wide enough selection of music to be useful for anyone but teenyboppers with top 40 tastes, but I'm not exactly in iTunes' target market, either (well, OK, as an under-30 suburban male with lots of disposable income, I probably am, but my personal tastes say otherwise).
I have to think that reason for the popularity of itunes is all about instant gratification. I cant see anything else that's particularly compelling abouit it.
That almost NEVER happens to me - maybe once in five years. In part because the finite amount of music that I listen to was mostly written 150 years ago and recorded 30 or 40 years ago, and in part because I seldom listen to anything but NPR while I'm in my car.
And I'm moving, so ordering something online, which is what I'm forced to do in order to get the music I like, would pretty much be an act of faith on my part. It ain't gonna happen.
Finally, last night I tried to download a trailer for a movie (Serenity) off apple.com, and it prompted me to install itunes.
So I wrote down the title of the piece and when I came into work today I thought "what the hell" and downloaded iTunes to take a look for the piece in question (Ennico Morricone's "Moses and Marco Polo Suite" - basically a couple themes from film scores), after being assured that the music I downloaded would at least be transferrable to a CD.
So here are my impressions:
1. The itunes application is annoying in several minor ways. It is its own, quasi-web-browser, only an annoying one that's too much like Internet explorer. Apple apparently doesn't believe in context-clicking, and I was confused that the "back" button didn't take me all the way back to the start page when I wanted it to. There are no tabs as such, and I miss them.
The user interface is highly apple-centric. Not a big deal but I think I would've been happier to see a real browser-based site along with a player that takes up something less than 75% of a 1280x1024 screen.
I also notice that itunes wanted a credit card number before I could use the program. Bleh.
2. timwhit complained of slowness with the itunes application. I can't say I notice, but I'm sitting in front of a rather muscular PC at the moment (Athlon64 3200/1.5GB). I've heard that itunes is very slow to download music to a device over USB2.0. Is that what you were referring to?
iTunes itself is responsive enough.
3. Music selection - It's just "meh". I see the bewildering array of pop releases I would've expected, but in the genres that I have actual knowledge of - classical music and jazz - the titles tend toward big-name artists performing the same 10 pieces rather than repertoire (e.g. itunes had every classical pianist ever playing Chopin nocturnes, but no recordings at all of, say, frequently performed symphonies by Ralph Vaughn-Williams). I more or less expected that, but it's still disappointing to see. iTunes DID have the music I heard on the radio, though, and a couple of searches got me to a place where I was hearing music I never would've known about otherwise. Serendipity is a good thing.
About 80% of the tracks I looked at had a 30-second sample available for preview. Given that all this music is stored electronically beforehand, I'm not sure why previews weren't available for 100% of the tracks. WTF?
4. Price - $.99 per track of DRM-encumbered .AAC files, or $10 for an album, except some albums. I bought the Ennico Morricone tracks I wanted as a full album, around $6 cheaper than I could've gotten it as a new, pressed CD.
5. Sound Quality - Turns out, AAC is lossless compression. I downloaded a single track from a music CD I happened to have handy, and compared the waveforms in Nero's Wave Editor (Apple says it's lossless, but I'm kind of picky about these things), just to be sure.
6. DRM BS - I loaded itunes on a second PC. I found that I could not access the music I purchased and downloaded. This, of course, is evil, especially since Apple has clear knowledge of what I have purchased.
7. Burning - iTunes lets me burn the music that I have purchased as a "playlist". Each playlist can only be burned a certain number of times (more DRM BS). Bleh. I burned my Ennico Morricone album to a disc. On another PC it was correctly identified by CDDB, which I take to mean that the audio on my burned disc is identical to that on a pressed disc. I *did* have to define a playlist in order to make a disc. That seemed cumbersome to me.
I also went ahead and ripped the CD back into FLAC files. No sense in having a bunch of useless .m4p files, in the event something happens to my PC.
In the end, I think the thing that I like is the chain-of-association browsing, but I can do that at amazon.com as well. I continue to think that online music stores don't have a wide enough selection of music to be useful for anyone but teenyboppers with top 40 tastes, but I'm not exactly in iTunes' target market, either (well, OK, as an under-30 suburban male with lots of disposable income, I probably am, but my personal tastes say otherwise).
I have to think that reason for the popularity of itunes is all about instant gratification. I cant see anything else that's particularly compelling abouit it.
