Feature that are needed in iTMS
This is not about what artists Apple needs to sign up, but rather what features are needed to push it forward and make it more acceptable when the windows version hits. So far I have come up with the following:
Parental controls so that a parent can prevent their children from buying "Explicit" music. Also a cash governor that limits how much they can spend in a given period of time.
The ability to buy an album at a discount if single songs have been bought. I bought two songs from an album, just to find out that I wanted the rest. If I could have bought it minus the two songs I already paid for I would have, but alas I bought the cd because it ended up being cheaper.
Lastly, this is more of a general iTunes rather than a iTMS but, I would like iTunes to report how long until the iPods battery is charged. Wasn't one of the original reasons why the iPod came about because, "the iApps know about the devices, but the devices don't know about the iApps"? I would love to look at iTunes before I leave and see how much charge the iPod has.
Parental controls so that a parent can prevent their children from buying "Explicit" music. Also a cash governor that limits how much they can spend in a given period of time.
The ability to buy an album at a discount if single songs have been bought. I bought two songs from an album, just to find out that I wanted the rest. If I could have bought it minus the two songs I already paid for I would have, but alas I bought the cd because it ended up being cheaper.
Lastly, this is more of a general iTunes rather than a iTMS but, I would like iTunes to report how long until the iPods battery is charged. Wasn't one of the original reasons why the iPod came about because, "the iApps know about the devices, but the devices don't know about the iApps"? I would love to look at iTunes before I leave and see how much charge the iPod has.
Comments
Or perhaps implement some kind of ID3 tag analyzer so that iTunes can look at an mp3's tags, and give you a few options..."Search this song at the iTunes Music Store," "Look for this artist at the iTunes Music Store," etc.
It's not quite a p2p sales strategy, but it's close.
And instead of just the cover art, allow users to download the entire CD booklet when you purchase an entire album.
Also, using the same navigation as ALL web browsers: cmd + left arrow for back, etc. Right now, it's cmd+[ for back. It drives me crazy not to be able to navigate in the way I'm used to.
Originally posted by torifile
[B}
Also, using the same navigation as ALL web browsers: cmd + left arrow for back, etc. Right now, it's cmd+[ for back. It drives me crazy not to be able to navigate in the way I'm used to. [/B]
cmd + [ also works in all web browsers
Originally posted by Macaddict16
cmd + [ also works in all web browsers
Well, color me impressed! Now I can remap my mouse to use that combo instead of the cmd+left arrow so that I can press the button in the iTMS and have it work. Thanks! (I still think they need to standardize on one particular key combo for functions.)
I stopped purchasing from the iTMS after discovering that it's lower fidelity is distracting in my home theater. In my car, 128kbps aac is indistinguishable from a real CD. Yet at home, for this customer, the lower sound quality outweighs cyber-convenience when compared with CDs from a brick-n-mortar.
se t616. I've downloaded some free homemade ringtones but
they are pretty crappy compared to the professionally made
ones.
Also, when buying a ringtone there should be two versions.
A short ringtone with the main melody and a full
ringtone with the whole song.
Originally posted by mello
I'd like to be able to download polyphonic ringtones for my
se t616. I've downloaded some free homemade ringtones but
they are pretty crappy compared to the professionally made
ones.
Also, when buying a ringtone there should be two versions.
A short ringtone with the main melody and a full
ringtone with the whole song.
I'm almost 100% sure that Apple doesn't want to get into the ringtone business.
(And no, this has NOTHING to do with crossfade effects.)
AAC extensions for gapless playback exist, so there is a standards-compatible way to tackle the problem. It would require an iTunes and iPod update, and perhaps some of the music currently in the iTMS library would have to be re-ripped gaplessly, for those albums like Dark Side of the Moon, where it really matters.
Originally posted by cooop
User music reviews a la Amazon,
I'll second this.
Originally posted by shetline
AAC extensions for gapless playback exist, so there is a standards-compatible way to tackle the problem. It would require an iTunes and iPod update, and perhaps some of the music currently in the iTMS library would have to be re-ripped gaplessly, for those albums like Dark Side of the Moon, where it really matters.
Yeah, playback gaps have been seriously bugging me, and I don't think that joining tracks is a useful workaround.
Why haven't they addressed this? Is it too expensive or difficult to do the necessary programming? Is there a backwards compatibility issue? Or is it just not a high priority? This seems like an obvious problem to me, but maybe I'm out of the mainstream with my listening to live albums, dj mixes, and pink floyd records.
What is it?
Oh yes, and iTMS for Europe.
Originally posted by arabb
Yeah, playback gaps have been seriously bugging me, and I don't think that joining tracks is a useful workaround.
Why haven't they addressed this? Is it too expensive or difficult to do the necessary programming? Is there a backwards compatibility issue? Or is it just not a high priority?
I fear it's not a high priority. How can something like this become a high priority when most listeners don't even seem to be aware of the problem, and don't get what you're getting at when you say "gapless playback".
Try introducing this topic in another thread or forum, and generally you'll get one of two things: stony silence, or completely-miss-the-point suggestions about using crossfade.
It's very frustrating when you care about something like this, would like to see it fixed, but you also know that a vast amount of apathy and/or ignorance is working against you.
Backwards compatibility isn't a problem. I doubt the programming is that difficult. The biggest expense would be finding the music that truly needs gapless encoding and re-encoding it. Perhaps the process could be automated, or the re-encoding could performed on all of the iTMS music whether it needs it or not.
If each song could be re-encoded, on average, once every 10 seconds, it would take around 50 days to re-encode a 400,000 song library.
I've been wondering if Apple maintains a library of uncompressed music to which they can go back for re-encoding at anytime, or if they're only keeping AAC files and would have to go back to the record companies for fresh re-encoding. Hopefully they've been smart enough to do the former, so they're always ready for any improvements in encoding technology that might come along.
OT: my thanks to Shetline for linking to skyviewcafe in his signature. Good site, by the looks of things...