Music For The Rest of Us



All the rumors of an Apple-run music service were either confirmed or laid to rest this morning at Moscone Center in San Francisco, when Steve Jobs unveiled new iPods, iTunes 4.0, and the Apple Music Store. The iPods were cool: slicker, sleeker, more features and less money. But the real news was iTunes 4 and the Music Store, which go hand-in-hand.

I think most people who were anticipating the Music Store expected it to be a web service that is part of DotMac, which would enable people to buy music online. What was actually unveiled is a music buying service that's integrated into iTunes, Apple's "digital-jukebox" software. iTunes 4 has the ability to bring up the Music Store right in its user-interface. You can use iTunes' standard UI to search and browse for the music you want, listen to 30-second demos of all songs, and if it's something you want to own then you can click the "Buy" button to add it to your personal library using a "One-Click" scheme similar to Amazon.com's. The key-word in that sentence is own. The Apple Music Store isn't like the other online music services where you can listen to the music as long as you pay the monthly subscription fee; oh, and if you want to burn it to a CD that will cost extra, thank-you-very-much. There's no subscription fee for the Apple Music Store. Once you pay the 99-cent price for a song, it's yours for "personal use;" to listen to on as many iPods as you want, on up to 3 different Macs, and to burn to CD as often as you want. Apple has, in essence, finally persuaded the majority of the record industry to honor the "Fair Use" law on digital content!

Which record companies, you wonder? The "Big 5:" BMG, EMI, Sony Music, Universal and Warner Bros. Their combined catalog gives Apple a whopping 200,000 songs to sell to consumers. What's more, in many cases you can buy an artist's entire album from the Music Store for under $10, beating CD prices. And you also get the album artwork when buy a song or a CD; it's downloaded into iTunes 4 along with the track or album.

The final benefit is that all the Apple Music Store music is encoded in AAC audio format, which was created by Dolby Labs and is part of the new MPEG-4 format supported by QuickTime 6. Apple claims that AAC format is superior to MP3, providing sound quality at 128bps encoding that rivals audio CD. All the new iPods will play AAC format, and existing iPod users can update their unit with a free 1.3 software update from Apple. iTunes 4 requires the QuickTime 6.2 update, which is currently available only as a manual download until the automatic software update is finished.

After seeing the Music Store demo and then playing with it for a while on my own, I think this is going to be really huge for Apple. Not only is gaining the support of the Big 5 record companies a coup on par with bringing peace to the Middle-East, but it's going to broaden Apple's visibility and credibility when they bring the service to Windows users by year's end. I don't know whether this will mean a Windows version of iTunes, or whether Apple will incorporate the service into an existing Windows jukebox product. Either way, I think the Apple Music Store will shake out as the best source for legal on-demand downloadable music. I know that my friend Rick Nielsen, of the band, Cheap Trick, is overjoyed that the Apple Music Store is carrying a substantial portion of his group's music; I can well imagine that other artists will be equally delighted.

This is not to say the service is perfect (yet). Despite the huge catalog of content Apple has available for sale from the Big 5, a large portion of the content seems to be composed of music published in the past, and by the big-name "safe" bets of current artists. For instances, while it's easy to find Eminem, U2, and Sheryl Crow at the Apple Music Store, you'll find only a few of the newer, "on-the-edge" artists like Queens of the Stone Age and Sum 41. You won't find other popular modern groups like The White Stripes, The Foo Fighters, Dave Mathews, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I hope that it's only a matter of time before groups such as these will be included in the Apple Store's offerings. During his address this morning, Steve mentioned that it has been a huge effort encoding all this music in AAC format and getting it ready for online sales. He promised, however, that new content will continue to appear in the Music Store on a daily basis. So while I don't think the day is here yet when I can retire my copy of iSwipe, I think it's definitely on the way.

Posted: Mon - April 28, 2003 at 03:19 PM          

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