First of all I would like to start by saying that WMA sucks more than anyother program I have ever seen...well RealOne and it are pretty close.
Second, the restrictions are retarded. I would never buy a song that wouldn't follow me and die with the computer...because you do occasionally need to get a new one. I would also never buy a song that only let me transfer to a device 2 times. What if I dont want to have the song all the time? and I would never buy a song that I could burn a limited ammount of times. Just explain why I would do this when I could get the same thing (probably better quality) off of a sharing program and have no restrictions...aside that its illegal.
Third, Their preview system is even more retarded than their DMR. I feel like im listening to previews at cdnow or amazon. I hate that second window and crappy quality/interface
Fourth, Commercials...need I say more...yes...I think its so great that crappy companies like this feel threatened and want to make money off someone who controls only a tiny bit of the market. In that way Apple not microsoft controls the market. They innovate and MS (and companion companies) copy. For apple I would say that this is a great honor...to always be 10 leaps ahead of the competition.
The iTMS, Has simplicity, quality and a very decent ammount of quantity. Their downloads are easy, the previews are great sounding and quick! their interface is light and not clunky. basically all that I can say is that it is leagues above Buymusic.com...which also has a crappy name.
all in all i think it is a pretty feable attempt to copy apple...they didn't even do a good job. TechTv did a better job with their apple copying commercials and im sure they had atleast 1/100th the budget...
Apple promoted 200,000 songs at the very beginning of iTMS, not 100,000. Here's the original press release:
Quote:
Apple Launches the iTunes Music Store
CUPERTINO, California?April 28, 2003?Apple® today launched the iTunes® Music Store, a revolutionary online music store that lets customers quickly find, purchase and download the music they want for just 99 cents per song, without subscription fees. The iTunes Music Store offers groundbreaking personal use rights, including burning songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listening to songs on an unlimited number of iPods, playing songs on up to three Macintosh® computers, and using songs in any application on the Mac®, including iPhoto?, iMovie? and iDVD?.
?The iTunes Music Store offers the revolutionary rights to burn an unlimited number of CDs for personal use and to put music on an unlimited number of iPods for on-the-go listening,? said Steve Jobs, Apple?s CEO. ?Consumers don?t want to be treated like criminals and artists don't want their valuable work stolen. The iTunes Music Store offers a groundbreaking solution for both.?
The iTunes Music Store features over 200,000 songs from music companies including BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner. Users can easily search the entire music store to instantly locate any song by title, artist or album, or browse the entire collection of songs by genre, artist and album. Users can listen to a free 30-second high-quality preview of any song in the store, then purchase and download their favorite songs or complete albums in pristine digital quality with just one click.
The iTunes Music Store also features exclusive tracks from over 20 artists, including Bob Dylan, U2, Eminem, Sheryl Crow and Sting, as well as special music videos from several of these artists which users can watch for free. In addition, the iTunes Music Store highlights new releases, staff favorites and up-and-coming artists, and delivers a compelling variety of music from many genres and time periods, ranging from Rock and Hip Hop to Jazz and Classical. The ability to browse the entire music store by genre, artist and album combined with free high-quality previews of every song lets users explore music in an entirely new way, to easily find the hits they love and discover gems they?ve never heard before.
All music on the iTunes Music Store is encoded in the industry-standard AAC audio format at 128 kilobits per second which enables smaller files and faster download times while rivaling CD-quality sound superior to the quality of MP3 files at the same size. The AAC audio format, developed by Dolby, was also adopted to provide the audio encoding for the industry-standard MPEG-4 video format.
The iTunes Music Store is fully integrated into iTunes® 4, the fourth major release of Apple?s popular digital music jukebox software, allowing users to purchase, download, organize and listen to their music using just one application. iTunes 4 features major new enhancements including Rendezvous? music-sharing between Macs, so users can legally stream their music to other Macs without the hassle of copying files from computer to computer.
Pricing & Availability
iTunes 4 with the iTunes Music Store is available as a free download immediately at www.apple.com/itunes. The iTunes Music Store requires a valid credit card with a U.S. billing address, a Mac equipped with iTunes 4 and Mac® OS X version 10.1.5 or later. Further information about Apple?s digital music products can be found at www.apple.com/ipod and www.apple.com/music.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.
Today, in a followup article, AP gets the pricing right for BuyMusic. They also seem less then enthusiastic about the site now that they have looked at it. The initial flash of excitment seems to be flushing down the toilet.
How 'bout that new Ben Folds EP release? Kind of cool how he's bypassing the record companies, though I guess the record companies mght resent it. But, even without their support, he's currently got the top-selling iTunes album.
Good stuff, too - I really like "Protection" and "Wandering".
Apple appears to be working hard to provide a high-quality product, and I think these listening tests demonstrate that. BuyMusic.com, on the other hand, seems to be more interested in heavy-handed, inconsistent DRM than quality.
Just from reading that orginal iTunes Music Store press release and comparing it to RentMusak.com, it is amazing how much more big picture Apple views technology and content!!
Apple is using its business/technology model for QT in iTunes. It may seem obvious to us, but it is still revolutionary to the industry in that one application can create/produce; download; play; modify, and act as a server for content! From soup to nuts with one application! Obviously iTunes isn't used for creation...yet (Emagic?) or for "serving"...yet (you can do remote playback already, though). But I think we can see those functions becoming integrated in the future. That is what Apple is doing with Final Cut as well.
And THAT is key. In media that is what Real tried and gave up on (Real actually never tried for the production part) and that is the Grail that M$ has been trying to emulate.
The problem is that the average Windoze person doesn't have even the chance to grasp this big picture until M$ has reverse engineered and prototyped their own version and squeezed the big picture into XP. By then the masses think M$ invented the thing and couldn't care less about Apple's innovation that started the whole thing. They are used to the lack of elegance and imagination. Not to even mention the hardware integration.
With the iPod, Apple finally has a hardware product that has made it into the monied mainstream and that may drive its software adoption AND service providing function. The people that come to Apple through this may realize the advantage of one-app to product integration and may even see QT as similarly worthwhile, but then again they may just return to their Dell Media Centers for $700.
BTW, that is why their needs to be a video version of the iPod. There needs to be a way for PC folks to experience the advantages of QuickTime. Switcher commercials with Peter Jackson (LOTR), Spike Lee and George Lucas watching QT trailers of each other's movies with white backgrounds...
If iTunes and QTime can become the eBay and Amazon of media playback (and production), THEN in many respects I don't care if Macs get above 10% of the market, because Apple will be making enough money to stay afloat forever.
Sorry to go off topic....this is more of a rant on why Apple should make an mp4 player, but I don't feel like starting a new thread.
"Except as otherwise limited in this Policy, we may disclose, sell, trade, or rent your Personally Identifiable Information to others without your consent."
"Music Sampling: We use a third party to provide digital music download samples for our customers. That service collects your IP address, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), platform type and a date/time stamp. They also use cookies. "
Their ads are served by the infamous DoubleClick network.
man someone needs to make a public statement about all this crap, a lot of people who don't know any better are gonna get burned. Put it on one of those "shame on you" shows on the news
Don't feel bad for him, he must be an idiot, cuz who would bet their whole future on a piece of crap like this. Even if it was a great service its still an unproven way to sell music.
But buying music from a website? Then you have to look for it on your hard drive and add it to your music player. You might be surprised to know how many of my friends were unable to locate music downloaded from Napster to add it to Winamp. They could only comprehend playing it in Napster! Trying to teach them to navigate to the music directory using Windows Explorer was a painful chore. iTunes isn't a special app you use to download music. It's your jukebox app, and the fact that it does your music acquisition for you (from CD ripping to online downloading) as well is a major, major plus.
Heh. He obviously leaned heavily on Microsoft for all the heavy lifting (which doesn't say much for his judgment), and he might find Wil Shipley's claim true, that dealing with MS is like picking your food from between the teeth of a T. Rex.
I almost feel sorry for him, but given that his pitch veers dangerously close to fraud (how many songs are actually available? since when do "buy," "sell" and "own" mean anything other than "buy," "sell" and "own"? and what are the real prices you're going to pay?) I won't shed any tears if he gets buried.
Anyone who holds the public in that much contempt deserves to crash and burn.
Ahah, prob cuz all us mac users were all going there, bothering to actually read the fine print, and telling everyone about it. The best part is it the page loads up fine, then it goes to the incompatibility screen.
Comments
Second, the restrictions are retarded. I would never buy a song that wouldn't follow me and die with the computer...because you do occasionally need to get a new one. I would also never buy a song that only let me transfer to a device 2 times. What if I dont want to have the song all the time? and I would never buy a song that I could burn a limited ammount of times. Just explain why I would do this when I could get the same thing (probably better quality) off of a sharing program and have no restrictions...aside that its illegal.
Third, Their preview system is even more retarded than their DMR. I feel like im listening to previews at cdnow or amazon. I hate that second window and crappy quality/interface
Fourth, Commercials...need I say more...yes...I think its so great that crappy companies like this feel threatened and want to make money off someone who controls only a tiny bit of the market. In that way Apple not microsoft controls the market. They innovate and MS (and companion companies) copy. For apple I would say that this is a great honor...to always be 10 leaps ahead of the competition.
The iTMS, Has simplicity, quality and a very decent ammount of quantity. Their downloads are easy, the previews are great sounding and quick! their interface is light and not clunky. basically all that I can say is that it is leagues above Buymusic.com...which also has a crappy name.
all in all i think it is a pretty feable attempt to copy apple...they didn't even do a good job. TechTv did a better job with their apple copying commercials and im sure they had atleast 1/100th the budget...
Apple Launches the iTunes Music Store
CUPERTINO, California?April 28, 2003?Apple® today launched the iTunes® Music Store, a revolutionary online music store that lets customers quickly find, purchase and download the music they want for just 99 cents per song, without subscription fees. The iTunes Music Store offers groundbreaking personal use rights, including burning songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listening to songs on an unlimited number of iPods, playing songs on up to three Macintosh® computers, and using songs in any application on the Mac®, including iPhoto?, iMovie? and iDVD?.
?The iTunes Music Store offers the revolutionary rights to burn an unlimited number of CDs for personal use and to put music on an unlimited number of iPods for on-the-go listening,? said Steve Jobs, Apple?s CEO. ?Consumers don?t want to be treated like criminals and artists don't want their valuable work stolen. The iTunes Music Store offers a groundbreaking solution for both.?
The iTunes Music Store features over 200,000 songs from music companies including BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner. Users can easily search the entire music store to instantly locate any song by title, artist or album, or browse the entire collection of songs by genre, artist and album. Users can listen to a free 30-second high-quality preview of any song in the store, then purchase and download their favorite songs or complete albums in pristine digital quality with just one click.
The iTunes Music Store also features exclusive tracks from over 20 artists, including Bob Dylan, U2, Eminem, Sheryl Crow and Sting, as well as special music videos from several of these artists which users can watch for free. In addition, the iTunes Music Store highlights new releases, staff favorites and up-and-coming artists, and delivers a compelling variety of music from many genres and time periods, ranging from Rock and Hip Hop to Jazz and Classical. The ability to browse the entire music store by genre, artist and album combined with free high-quality previews of every song lets users explore music in an entirely new way, to easily find the hits they love and discover gems they?ve never heard before.
All music on the iTunes Music Store is encoded in the industry-standard AAC audio format at 128 kilobits per second which enables smaller files and faster download times while rivaling CD-quality sound superior to the quality of MP3 files at the same size. The AAC audio format, developed by Dolby, was also adopted to provide the audio encoding for the industry-standard MPEG-4 video format.
The iTunes Music Store is fully integrated into iTunes® 4, the fourth major release of Apple?s popular digital music jukebox software, allowing users to purchase, download, organize and listen to their music using just one application. iTunes 4 features major new enhancements including Rendezvous? music-sharing between Macs, so users can legally stream their music to other Macs without the hassle of copying files from computer to computer.
Pricing & Availability
iTunes 4 with the iTunes Music Store is available as a free download immediately at www.apple.com/itunes. The iTunes Music Store requires a valid credit card with a U.S. billing address, a Mac equipped with iTunes 4 and Mac® OS X version 10.1.5 or later. Further information about Apple?s digital music products can be found at www.apple.com/ipod and www.apple.com/music.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.
Today, in a followup article, AP gets the pricing right for BuyMusic. They also seem less then enthusiastic about the site now that they have looked at it. The initial flash of excitment seems to be flushing down the toilet.
Originally posted by MacsRGood4U
Apple promoted 200,000 songs at the very beginning of iTMS, not 100,000. Here's the original press release:
Sorry, that'll teach me to make up numbers off the top of my head. (Well, it probably won't--it's so much easier than looking them up.
Doesn't change the fact that they were braggin about having more songs than iTunes when they actually had far less.
cheers!
Good stuff, too - I really like "Protection" and "Wandering".
Went ahead and got it.
Haven't listened to any Ben Folds in a while.
Good stuff.
Apple appears to be working hard to provide a high-quality product, and I think these listening tests demonstrate that. BuyMusic.com, on the other hand, seems to be more interested in heavy-handed, inconsistent DRM than quality.
Apple is using its business/technology model for QT in iTunes. It may seem obvious to us, but it is still revolutionary to the industry in that one application can create/produce; download; play; modify, and act as a server for content! From soup to nuts with one application! Obviously iTunes isn't used for creation...yet (Emagic?) or for "serving"...yet (you can do remote playback already, though). But I think we can see those functions becoming integrated in the future. That is what Apple is doing with Final Cut as well.
And THAT is key. In media that is what Real tried and gave up on (Real actually never tried for the production part) and that is the Grail that M$ has been trying to emulate.
The problem is that the average Windoze person doesn't have even the chance to grasp this big picture until M$ has reverse engineered and prototyped their own version and squeezed the big picture into XP. By then the masses think M$ invented the thing and couldn't care less about Apple's innovation that started the whole thing. They are used to the lack of elegance and imagination. Not to even mention the hardware integration.
With the iPod, Apple finally has a hardware product that has made it into the monied mainstream and that may drive its software adoption AND service providing function. The people that come to Apple through this may realize the advantage of one-app to product integration and may even see QT as similarly worthwhile, but then again they may just return to their Dell Media Centers for $700.
BTW, that is why their needs to be a video version of the iPod. There needs to be a way for PC folks to experience the advantages of QuickTime. Switcher commercials with Peter Jackson (LOTR), Spike Lee and George Lucas watching QT trailers of each other's movies with white backgrounds...
If iTunes and QTime can become the eBay and Amazon of media playback (and production), THEN in many respects I don't care if Macs get above 10% of the market, because Apple will be making enough money to stay afloat forever.
Sorry to go off topic....this is more of a rant on why Apple should make an mp4 player, but I don't feel like starting a new thread.
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
Sorry, that'll teach me to make up numbers off the top of my head. (Well, it probably won't--it's so much easier than looking them up.
You can keep making up numbers if you make your sig, "what I lack in accuracy, I'll make up for in sheer volume."
From the Privacy Policy of BuyMusic.com:
"Except as otherwise limited in this Policy, we may disclose, sell, trade, or rent your Personally Identifiable Information to others without your consent."
"Music Sampling: We use a third party to provide digital music download samples for our customers. That service collects your IP address, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), platform type and a date/time stamp. They also use cookies. "
Their ads are served by the infamous DoubleClick network.
Blum, who made more than $125 million selling part of his stake in Buy.com, declined to say how much the service cost to launch or market.
"If it's a failure," he said, "it would be deathly for myself because I'm betting so big on it."
Now I feel kind of bad for him.
Originally posted by frawgz
But buying music from a website? Then you have to look for it on your hard drive and add it to your music player. You might be surprised to know how many of my friends were unable to locate music downloaded from Napster to add it to Winamp. They could only comprehend playing it in Napster! Trying to teach them to navigate to the music directory using Windows Explorer was a painful chore. iTunes isn't a special app you use to download music. It's your jukebox app, and the fact that it does your music acquisition for you (from CD ripping to online downloading) as well is a major, major plus.
I hear that.
Originally posted by frawgz
Now I feel kind of bad for him.
Heh. He obviously leaned heavily on Microsoft for all the heavy lifting (which doesn't say much for his judgment), and he might find Wil Shipley's claim true, that dealing with MS is like picking your food from between the teeth of a T. Rex.
I almost feel sorry for him, but given that his pitch veers dangerously close to fraud (how many songs are actually available? since when do "buy," "sell" and "own" mean anything other than "buy," "sell" and "own"? and what are the real prices you're going to pay?) I won't shed any tears if he gets buried.
Anyone who holds the public in that much contempt deserves to crash and burn.