NAPSTER
Methinks iTunes for Windows will be in a run for their money. Twice as many songs available.
Posted on 10/23/2003 7:46:50 AM PDT by yonif
ITunes for Windows is as fully featured as the Mac software - Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music software rips and burns songs. It links you to a legal music store. It's easily downloadable. And now it's available to the 95 percent of computer users who depend on Microsoft Windows operating systems.
and it's just as easy to buy songs online at Apple's iTunes Music Store.
The catch is that if you want to transfer songs to a portable player, you've got to use an iPod, which start at $300.
Still, compared with the Windows competition, iTunes can't be beat.
Installation is simple: downloading a 19-megabyte file from Apple's Web site and running the installer.
Even in Windows, iTunes resembles a program on the Mac OS X operating system. The interface looks like brushed aluminum - you'll either love it or hate it. The screen, which annoyingly doesn't resize quite like a Windows program, is divided into several panes. One is for the source of the music: your own library, the music store, or play lists that can be created manually or automatically. Another is a search field. Click on the rainbow eyeball in one corner and the view changes for quick, simple browsing by genre, artist or album.
The navigation scheme is carried to the iTunes Music Store, which is always easily accessible and charges 99 cents per track or $9.95 or more per album. Like the original Mac iTunes, Apple has enabled one-click buying. But because of licensing arrangements with the recording industry, the online store is available only in the United States.
The music store - on both Macs and PCs - now offers gift certificates, with regular allowances as a way to keep kids' buying under control.
Also impressive is iTunes' implementation of Apple's networking technology. With iTunes running on my networked Mac, and iTunes running on my networked Windows PC, both versions instantly recognized each other's music libraries so songs downloaded to one computer could be heard on the other.
Apple also has partnered with Audible.com and offers 5,000 audiobooks for sale. For $15.95, I purchased Walter Isaacson's recent biography of Benjamin Franklin. The process was as painless as buying a song.
I could have transferred it to my iPod and synched it with iTunes so that I could always start listening where I left off. Instead, I burned it to CD simply by inserting a blank disk and clicking a button.
The book required six CDs, and iTunes made sure that each started where the last left off. I've been listening to it in my car, and it sounds fine.
With the audiobook deal, Apple is offering something that competitors such as Napster 2.0 and Musicmatch lack. On the music side, the new Napster claims it will have 100,000 more songs than Apple promises at the end of the month.
During my tests, I tried to find examples of songs available on Napster that aren't on iTunes. I found one: Napster has the full album of the Counting Crows' "Hard Candy"; iTunes only has a partial album.
ITunes also offers free features that rival jukebox programs - including Musicmatch, Windows Media Player and Napster 2.0 - either charge extra for or can't do at all.
For instance, Windows Media Player can't encode a CD into MP3 format without an upgrade. Musicmatch allows CD burning and ripping but forces users to upgrade in order to do it at the full speed of their CD drive. And Napster 2.0 doesn't handle ripping at all; you need a separate program to transfer songs from a CD to a computer.
A pre-release version of Napster did have a better radio service that identified tracks and made it possible to skip ahead to the next song. Then again, the Napster radio service costs $9.95 a month for a premium membership.
And Napster doesn't have an option to automatically synch with its player, the Samsung YP-910GS, or automatically generate play lists based on the number of times a song has been heard or how it's been rated.
I was impressed with the Napster music store's full-song streaming - but that's also part of the premium membership. ITunes, like the free version of the new Napster, only plays 30 second previews of songs before they're purchased.
In the latest version of iTunes, Apple has improved the music discovery features. It's posted more artist biographies and what amount to liner notes. And it's even got celebrity play lists.
ITunes also improved its organization of classical music, though the identification of composers, conductors and performers is still wanting.
One thing iTunes can't do is play or encode songs in Microsoft's secure Windows Media Audio format, which is becoming the de facto standard for competing online music stores.
Apple is sticking with the secure Advanced Audio Coding, the native format for its music store, and its Windows and Mac software also support the popular MP3 format.
Though quality is very good under those formats, Apple's decision not to support WMA could limit future platform switching. Apple says its songs won't disappear. But they can't be played if you decide to dump iTunes and switch to Musicmatch or Napster.
ON THE NET
http://www.itunes.com
Apple released iTunes 4.1.1 for Windows yesterday to fix some user interface issues.
Additionally, the application is somewhat unintuitive from a Windows user perspective because it, like OS X, doesn't support right-click context menus.
I use right-click on Mac OS X iTunes all the time. I'm right-clicking on a song item in a playlist right now. Yep, there's a popup menu with about ten commands.
Finally, the fact that files purchased from the iTunes Music Store are only encoded at 128kbps is a deal killer for me. Give me at least 160kbps!
A 128kbps AAC-encoded file is supposedly comparable in quality to a 256kbps MP3-encoded file. I burn them to CD, put the disc in the big stereo, and it sounds great on the Polk Audio Studio Monitors.
I'm not sure about that. Most MP3s are transcoded from compact discs. The CDs use eight-to-fourteen modulation and cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon codes that do expansion, not compression. I think digital compression doesn't occur until the final step when the MP3 or AAC file is created. Perhaps some downsampling is done as an intermediate process at the CD factory, but that's not exactly the same thing as compression.
The AAC-encoded files at the iTunes Music Store are created from the studios' original, uncompressed master tapes.
Since Apple is starting from a better source, the final results should be better. (But there might be exceptions - like the messed up master tape of Steely Dan's "Katy Lied".)
This may be confusion software compression, which is designed to minimize file size, and audio compression, whic is used to punch up the sound. Audio compression minimizes the dynamic range of the music and has nothing at all to do with file size. Except that simpler music probably fits better with software compression.
Three hundred dollar iPods just aren't gonna make it, not within the time frame a service would need to be successful.
Here are the facts -
The iPod is the best-selling digital music player on the market - for both Windows and Mac. It is a successful and profitable business for Apple.
Apple is also the market leader of the fee-based music download business, with a 70% marketshare. The profits in this business are small, but it supports Apple's primary goal - to sell more iPods.
Is that in terms of volume of units sold, or dollar amount sold, compared to many other models? Really, what is their market penetration in terms of numbers of units, to me, that would be a measure of success in the market.
Apple is also the market leader of the fee-based music download business, with a 70% marketshare.
OK, I've not seen that figure, but I believe you. I've heard nothing but complaints from people using the other pay services, so maybe Apple benefits from having inept competitors, a situation that may not continue. Frankly, I'd be surprised if even 25% of the music downloaded in the world was paid for. If the Kazaa market dried up overnight, and Apple got the lion's share of this business, then I'd call them successful. Until free swapping pretty much disappears, the market is still up for grabs.
It is a successful and profitable business for Apple.
Good for them, they need something profitable, their previous method of marketing computers sort of lost out in the marketplace.
By the way, I've only seen one iPod, that was in the hands of a guy who has money to burn, and is a Mac fanatic. I saw it when I was selling him a laptop computer with Windows on it.
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