After watching Steve Jobs’ presentation of Apple Computer’s new Music Store, I eagerly downloaded iTunes 4 and helped contribute to the log jam of waiting customers that overwhelmed the service initially. Later in the evening all was well and I settled in for a few hours of shopping. Click ‘read more’ for the full story.
After watching Steve Jobs’ presentation of Apple Computer’s new Music Store, I eagerly downloaded iTunes 4 and helped contribute to the log jam of waiting customers that overwhelmed the service initially. Later in the evening all was well and I settled in for a few hours of shopping.
If you already have a one click account with Apple, just try to log in and then the Music Store will verify the information. Since I used the account initially to buy hardware for work, I had to change the credit card to my personal one. If you try to set up a new account using your .mac email, you will get an error because that name is already registered. Pick a new name for a separate account or just log in and verify the info for the Music Store.
The service is so well integrated into iTunes, that it is almost boring. I found quickly that best way for me to find music was to just hit the browse eyeball and look through the available offerings much the same way I browse my own music library. This is absolutely brilliant, because it makes all the available music look just like your own. I could play 30 second snippets of various songs just like my very own music effortlessly.
My first purchase was the Canal Street Blues by Louis Armstrong. There were numerous versions and I was able to compare at least the flavor of each, before making my selection. Very helpful. I also downloaded some more contemporary music and found that with the Bose speakers connected to my Quicksilver, the AAC format is better than MP3. I could not distinguish between these compressed files and an uncompressed CD without a better sound system to play them on. File sizes ranged from 2.8MB to 11.1 per song.
I updated my iPod without a hitch and had immediate access to my new music. I have not downloaded enough yet to burn a CD.
I found one nasty bug with iTunes 4. If I was browsing music at the store and switched back to check my own music library, some problems would emerge with text in windows appearing over other windows forcing me to quit and relaunch the program. At one point, some of the text remained on the screen even after quitting iTunes. Hopefully, this is not a widespread issue. If it is, it needs to be dealt with quickly. Ed: Bob, I’m having the same problem. Switching between apps sometimes even screws up those apps. My guess is the culprit is the Safari-based web browser built into iTunes. Let’s hope for an update. Folks, feel free to comment back with your experience on your hardware; maybe only some graphics cards are affected? -PK
My sense is that the store is great for purchasing a few tracks from albums you would not normally buy. For entire albums, I would much rather purchase the CD. Although 200,000 songs sounds like a lot, there are many songs I could not find and shopping for albums at Amazon provides a much wider selection.
