BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Radio & Music >

ITunes 4: The Music Industry Hits The Blue Mold

  
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
20:17 / 29.04.03
So, I downloaded iTunes 4 and spent the rest of the night perusing the iTunes Music Store and the biggest stunner? I bought Bjork's "It's In Our Hands", the only new track on her Greatest Hits CD, for a dollar. I'll be doing the same for the four or five tracks on the Family Tree boxed set that are unreleased this evening.

Pretty fucking huge, huh? I mean how many times have you bought a greatest hits CD just for a quality copy of one unreleased song? And how many millions of dollars have labels made because of just such an impulse? I was happy to be able to buy songs I wanted, happy that Apple was getting some more good press, but this one little opportunity really blew me away more than anything else. The music industry finally seems ready to modify the model of music listening for the first time in decades. (I'll not get started on artist compensation, that's a much larger and more toxic can of worms).

So, what does this say about how we listen to music? Will cool liner notes be replaced someday with radiohead.com levels of flash interaction with every album? Some are forseeing the death of the album altogether in focus of singles, which will probably happen for those who completely suck, but I think this opens a whole new playing field for those who are interested in being truly innovative. Kid Koala has, I think, five follow ups planned for his latest comic book/cd opus Nufonia Must Fall. Imagine what the last one might look like on an iPod 3 that can run Flash MMX movies and can output sound in 6.2 AAC, all of which will be handily downloaded for fifteen bucks (figuring inflation) from the iTunes Music Store.

How about the Soulseek crowd? When the IMS hits windows at the end of the year, will downloaders start getting interested in paying for music? I downloaded pretty heavily, as much as OSX allowed, and found myself dropping at least fifty bucks on music I hadn't listened to in decades but being able to find it and listen to clips for every track, compelled me to pick up whole albums like Tougher Than Leather and Rubberneck, CD purchases that always eluded me until I left the store. Their library is missing a lot, mostly independent stuff, but I doubt that will be far off. There's a suggestion box for additions on every page.

If anyone around here runs with the Macs and has checked it out, what do you think?

Hype, hope, or none of the above?
 
 
Lee
20:54 / 29.04.03
I'd be snapping up tunes by the yard if it weren't for the fact that, as with iPhoto and Sherlock, Mac users outside the USA have to deal with reduced functionality in iTunes 4. Since iPhoto users still can't order prints or albums of their photos, even with the software at version 2, I can't see myself downloading music with anything other than Aquisition for the next year or so.

Still, AAC support suddenly allows for 25% more songs on my 10gig iPod. That there's quite a silver lining.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
21:06 / 29.04.03
I have no interest in pay downloading services. If I'm going to buy a record, I want the physical part of it.

Also, 95% of everything that I download on Soulseek is extremely rare, particularly the old radio/found audio/rare comedy records and all sorts of out-of-print recordings. I also like to collect live concerts and limited-run compilations. No pay file sharing service will ever be able to compete with something like Soulseek, because they just won't have any of that. They couldn't if they wanted to. For many people it isn't about not wanting to buy the records, it is about acquiring and collecting, trading and sharing.

Tech geeks can talk about the "death of the album" all they want, which is silly because it's not their decision how the artist choose to create their work, only in how they interact with it.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
21:21 / 29.04.03
Biomass, I am all over AAC. I did a test replace on the new Via Tania CD and the sound quality at just 160 is fantastic. I forsee a much happier external hard drive and iPod.

Flux, as always, you're spot on. I'll never see myself buying a new release off iMS for both quality and full package issues, but for me its an alternative to stuff I would have definitely stole for no good reason, old Clutch albums that I hadn't heard in years. I'll still be downloading my rarities, but stuff that's either ridiculously inflated (like the Bjork collections), songs that are part of simply average albums (I bought "Freedom" by RATM, for example), and older stuff that had little or no physical presence as far as liner notes or design goes (Tougher Than Leather, Rubbernecker), the fit seems perfect. The album will never die save for those who tire of making them (Sheryl Crow is already praising the idea, so that should say it all right there).

But the biggest development was definitely AAC. Better sound for less space. My headphones are ecstatic.
 
 
Red Cross Iodized Salt
23:38 / 29.04.03
Browsed the 'iTunes Music Store' for about 45 minutes last night, and I have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed. I searched for about eight or nine tracks that I have had trouble finding on Soulseek/WinMX/Kazaa and none of them were available. I think it will be a moderate success, primarily with older Mac devotees who listen to a lot of Pink Floyd.

I'm all over the AAC support though...
 
 
schwantz
22:18 / 02.05.03
The AAC thing seems good in one way (better sound quality), but bad in others. For one, any songs that you download in "Protected AAC" cannot be streamed across a LAN without "authorizing" specific computers. Lame, since "authorization" can only happen on three machines, and seems to be designed for machines that you or your immediate family own. MP3s, on the other hand, can be streamed with no restrictions. This seems to be incentive to either try and crack AAC or to find MP3s through P2P. Not sure why such a lock has been placed on streaming. Is it just a way to get everyone to buy an iPod (no restrictions there)? Another lame thing about AAC is that the iPod seems to be the only hardware player with AAC support - another reason for me to want to figure out how to crack AAC so I could put the songs on my Rio. I know I can burn a CD, and then re-encode, but that's just lame.

I WANT to like this service, as I'm a musician, and a big fan of Apple products, but I also have a Rio player, and am working on streaming audio players that don't play AAC (only mp3).

Also, Apple needs to open the store up to the indie labels, ASAP. The selection is pathetic for anyone who is looking for more than just the MOST mainstream of music. I mean, no Pavement? No Yo La Tengo? No Shimmer Kids (shill shill)
 
 
w1rebaby
22:50 / 02.05.03
AAC is quite simple to crack. Burn it to an audio CD, and then rip the MP3s. You can do it straight from iTunes without even removing the CD. Took all of six minutes for an album for me.
 
 
Tom Coates
01:20 / 03.05.03
270,000 downloads rumoured in the first 18 hours. Not bad, by all accounts.
 
 
John Brown
05:10 / 03.05.03
I don't believe there's limit on the number of computers to which you can stream files downloaded from the Music Store or a requirement that you authorize recipients of the stream (although there is an option to require a password to access a stream). You can authorize only up to two other computers (a total of three) to have an actual copy of a song, however.

Here's one summary of the DRM.
 
 
John Brown
05:17 / 03.05.03
Just to correct myself, I realized that if you're listening to a stream, iTunes will skip songs in shared library that were downloaded from the Music Store, unless you're authorized to have a copy of the song. You can stream everything else, though. And if you trust the listener enough, you can give them your account ID and password, and then s/he can hear songs from the Music Store.

It is kind of stupid. And it's a bit complicated. But at least the music industry is showing a willingness to compromise a little.
 
  
Add Your Reply