iTunes: Apple Looks to Dominate the Online Music Scene Whistling a New iTune Wayne N. Kawamoto
The iTunes program and online music store are effectively joined at the hip. Add Apple's wildly popular iPod to the mix and you have an inseparable, synergistic trio. If you own an iPod, you'll want to use its accompanying Apple-branded program and music store. But purchase a non-Apple music player and you'll be looking elsewhere. Wayne Kawamoto serves up the latest on iTunes v7.4.
What's on your iPod? On college campuses, this question is as timely and relevant as "What's your major?" And you don't have to be on a college campus to find iPod owners (perhaps that fellow employee in the next cubicle who never says anything?). Supporting the ubiquitous, ever present iPod is Apple's own iTunes program and music service.
Indeed, for a scrappy computer maker that has constantly clawed to maintain market share, Apple has found a way to thrive through music. iTunes is among the easiest ways to purchase and download music, video, and more, but its success is tied to the iPod. If you own an iPod there are almost no other options beyond using iTunes (but it's a great one). Even if you don't own an iPod, you won't be able to purchase songs from the iTunes store or support your MP3 player, but you may find the program's ability to rip songs and burn CDs useful.
iTune-In
The iTunes program, now in version 7.4.x, allows you to visit Apple's online iTunes Music Store and purchase music, movies, TV shows, and audiobooks, as well as download podcasts. The program, which is available for free for your PC or Mac, organizes media and synchronizes them to your iPod or iPhone to be listened to or watched, anywhere you go.
The iTunes Music Store offers most music at $0.99 per song and television shows at $1.99 per show. As you would expect in a sophisticated e-commerce site, the music store offers the ability to rate downloads and send songs and playlists as gifts.
Whistling a New iTune
iTunes version 7 offers useful new features that make it more convenient and allow it to better support iPods of all flavors as well as the new iPhone. The biggest development is the removal of digital rights management (DRM), which allows you to download and play a song on another digital music player instead of just an iPod, as well as on an unlimited number of computers. Under DRM, you can move songs that you've purchased from the iTunes store to another authorized computer (up to five), but the music can't be burned onto CD or DVD discs that will work in conventional set-top players.
Unfortunately, Apple is charging $1.29 per song instead of the standard $.99 — a 30% increase in price. Apple is touting the fact that its DRM-free songs are higher in quality through the use of 256 kbps AAC encoding — about twice the standard bit rate — which may justify the price increase to some customers. But it's the freedom to download a song and use it the way consumers want that's the real benefit. And Apple has finally – albeit reluctantly – capitulated to this market demand.
