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Revelations on Music Revolution.

Eric Dacus

iTunes Music Store (iTMS): the best thing since 8-Track tapes, or something like that. Downloading music is nothing new, and neither is paying for it. However, Apple has found an elegant way for you and I to do both. At 99¢ a song, you can pick and choose what you want and do it knowing the artist is getting a little something back for their hard work. This new service from Apple is being heralded by some as a new revolution in music; I'd like to say its more of renaissance. And about time.

Right now you will need a Mac running Mac OS X 10.2 (10.2.5 recommended), iTunes 4, and an internet connection (broadband will be nicer). A Windows version is due by the end of the year.

Click on Music Store and it takes you to the "Home" page of the store. From here you can browse through the New Releases, Exclusive Tracks, Pre-Releases, Just Added, and Staff Favorites. The Search feature is one of the better parts of the store, and it works much like you'd expect and its fast too. You can also sift through the Store's offerings by Genre as well. There are some cool Exclusive tracks offered (offerings from U2, Jack Johnson and DJ Shadow being three that I've found to be quite good) Buying what you've found is a snap (almost too easy...). If you like, you can One-Click download all the songs you think your credit card can handle.

Anyway, if you want more details than that go to AppleMusic.com for a more complete description. Now on to what I think of the service.

A music service like this is long overdue. The record labels should have jumped on the Napster service right after they shut it down and done something like what Apple has come up with, but instead they went about trying to shut down music sharing by going after services and users alike. Because the competition with the iTMS is either subscription services (yuck) or downloading free (and not necessarily legal) MP3s, Apple had to come up with somewhat of a balance. I don't really mind buying a song for 99¢ if I'm just after one tune, and getting a whole album for $9.99 is a steal compared to the $20 or so you'll pay somewhere like Sam Goodie. Right now I've gotten 6 individual songs and 2 complete albums. So despite that some artists think that downloading music is going to kill the album format, I still buy 'em. I really like that you get CD quality for what you download and that DRM (Digital Rights Management) that is present isn't obtrusive or noticeable. And speaking of DRM, if you happen to be so luck as to own more than one Mac or an iPod you can move your tunes to as many iPods as you've got and to as many as three Macs. I'd like the feature more if I had more than just my Cube.

There are however a few things that I don't like about the iTMS. If for some unforeseen, horrible, and very unlikely reason my hard drive were to fail (I've never heard of it happening to someone with a Mac, but for the sake of argument), I would lose all the music that I bought and would have to buy it back. Yeah, that would not make me a happy person. But that is why you back things up. It may not necessarily be Apple's fault, but there are a lot of bands that are not present (no Beatles or Radiohead or Stereophonics for example), and I know they've got more music coming every week, but still... One last annoying thing is the "Staff Favorites." I would have liked to see some more eclectic mix artists listed there than Christina Aguilera, Nelly, or Good Charlotte, especially coming from the same people that told us to "Think Different."

To sum it all up, I think that the good far outweighs bad for the iTunes Music Store. Most of my gripes are pretty minor or hopefully being worked out with the lawyers. Ok, maybe iTMS is a lot better than 8-Track tapes though I admit I've never used one...