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3:30:00 PM EDT
Hearing Blue Monday -- New Order
iTunes
iTunes is finally out for Windows, a fact which, thanks to Apple's magical ability to process hype, overshadows the fact that there are already a number of services that allow people to download music to Windows, including (corporate overlord plug -- and shamelessly so!) MusicNet @ AOL. What iTunes adds to the mix is a certain dollop of cool that a number of the other contenders don't, along with certain other not-so-intangibles like not-entirely-ridiculous digital rights management.
Even so, at this point, there's still not one completely useful site when it comes to online music. Without naming corporate names, I myself use one service to where I pay a monthly fee to stream CDs, in order to see if the CD is worth getting, but use another to download the CD or individual tracks. Some sites require you to use specific players to listen to your music; every time I try to listen to the Barenaked Ladies tracks I downloaded from one site it chokes Winamp, my primary music player (and fires up my Web browser to take me to the site where I purchased with tracks, which is really annoying). I have no choice but to listen to the tracks with Windows Media Player, which is loathsome (for some reason it eventually uses 98% of system resources, which is ridiculous, as I have 512GB of memory). iTunes formats its music in ACC format -- which I know for a fact won't play on my portable jukebox, which is not an iPod. You see the issue.
What I really want is the ability to do everything off of one site. I think we're getting there, we're just not there yet. The first site that does it all, however, is definitely going to get my business.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
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Well, I don't mind paying. I want musicians to eat.
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I agree with you. I want to be able to do everything all on one site and not have to pay for any of it.
10/17/03 12:09 PM