Apple's itunes commercials, lol

[hotwings]

I have been following the Apple experiment and hoping that they (or someone else) would set up a similar service for the majority of computer users (ie. PCs). I would certainly use such a service but the bitrates would need to be higher. In this day and age even uncompressed wave files are possible. At least ACC coding (which has been around for many years - introduced just after MP3) gives better sound quality than MP3 for the same bitrates (and about twice the sound quality of MP2 audio) but the bitrates would still need to be above 192kbps to be a viable alternative top buying the CD.

True, higher bitrates would be nice, and I suppose even a wave file could be possible. However i think the real strength of such a system is that you could download the songs that YOU want. Buying the cd will give you pristine quality, but how many times have we experienced buying a cd with 2 or 3 good tracks and the rest is crap? The really good songs i would consider buying the cd, the top 40 stuff/casual listening stuff that comes and goes this is a great alternative cause I know I would never buy the cd, maybe not even a single. In this case the record labels and the consumers win. They get some of my money when they would have gotten none, and I get to pick the songs I want to buy.

[energy80s]

But the whole plan here is to stop buying CD's at all. Therefore you pay your money on a "per song" basis and get the equivalent of a full CD copy on your hard drive. This can then be burnt onto your own blank CDR or re-encoded to MP3 (or whatever) for your portable player. That's where this system needs to go ... not as an addition to record shops, but as a replacement for them.

[spiderman2k1]

Well I can say this about the Apple store if I want to buy a full album I would just buy it. If I want to pick song's from artist to artist I think I would use Apple Itune's. Any new album at best buy is like $12.99 it not worth my time downloading it and burning it and also making cover's. I Really think Apple should have sale's like real store's when a new album come's out the first week or two you should be able to download it for less then what best buy sell's it for . I think 99 cent's it a little pricey should be like 50 cent's that what I would like to see but even if it was 75 or 80 I think I would really use Itune's. For 99 cent's I would only pick song here and there thats it.

[galactica]

Personally, I think that is the point.

How many times do you buy an album and it only has 3 or 4 songs you really enjoy on it!

Too often for me. The advent of the music store allows you to save money because you dont have to spend 10 to 15 dollars on an entire cd and only just get 2 or 3 good/great songs.

Personally, i think this will make artists strive to make more hits and put more goodmusic on a cd rather than having 3 hits and just putting 7 or 8 more songs on to make an album.

Just got Shina Twain's UP for my wife, come on! 19 songs (on just disk 1) and another 19 on disk 2! [thats another story in itself!] really only 3 songs she listens to.

Thats 3 dollars instead of 16.99!

True, i would be more inclined to buy whole albums (to fulfill my OCD) if the price were more like 50 cents/song but then the record labels would be screaming they are loosing profits!

My hats off to apple for this new feature!
/Galactica

[fortension]

There certainly isn't any other service out there that lets you put legally downloaded music on a portable device.

Nope. Emusic.com - $15/month, almost unlimited downloads, no DRM, LAME APS encoding. Just no major labels, which some of us take as a good thing.