The iTunes Music Store

Once upon a time, you had to buy music on the media it was encoded on: player piano rolls, then phonograph records, then tapes, then compact discs. And then along came MP3 and a little outfit called Napster. There was an instant explosion of trading of MP3s via the Internet, which made the record companies very, very angry. But no one seemed to know what to do. Except Apple.

And so it came to pass that in April of 2003 Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store, and sold over one million songs in the first week — and that was only to Mac users, for no others could access the iTunes Music Store. Suddenly, it was easy, legal, and affordable to download and use digital music files. There was a revolution in the way people thought about music distribution — again. Soon there were several sites selling music on the Internet in emulation of the iTunes Music Store. But none of them were as successful. Still, said the critics, Mac users are just 3 percent of computer users — small potatoes.

Then in October of 2003, Apple announced that Windows users could now access the iTunes Music store via iTunes 4.1 and QuickTime 6.4 for Windows. Soon the 25 million members of America Online would gain access to the iTunes Music Store. And so it seemed that the iTunes Music Store was poised to conquer the online music selling business. A real fairy tale!

Figure 20-23 shows the home page of the iTunes Music Store.

Figure 20-23: Visit the iTunes Music Store.

If you have iTunes and an Internet connection, and you are not one of those people who doesn’t like music, you would be doing yourself a grave disservice to not visit the iTunes Music Store and at least browse around.

To visit the Music Store, in iTunes, simply click on Music Store in the Source list. There you will find over 200,000 songs from virtually every category of music, from the five major U.S. labels, and over 200 independent labels, and getting larger every day.

The music is encoded in a format called AAC (for Advanced Audio Coding). The AAC format is part of the MPEG-4 specification, and it features more efficient compression and better quality than MP3 format. In fact, the quality of AAC encoding rivals that of uncompressed CD audio. If you have iTunes 4 and QuickTime 6.2 or higher, you are in.

If you are sick of most of the popular offerings of the large labels, you are not alone. The iTunes Music Store offers music from independent labels that is not available elsewhere online, and is virtually impossible to find anywhere offline. You will also find exclusive tracks from major artists that are available only through the Music Store.

You can spend endless hours browsing to your hearts content, or zero in quickly if you know what you want. There are simple search and Power Search options. Editorial write-ups, reviews, and lists of recommendations can guide you, as well as playlists picked by celebrities. And all from the comfort of your own home, or wherever you have a computer connected to the Internet.

And there is not just music. A large library of audiobooks — more than 5,000 titles — is available. There are also episodes of a variety of interesting radio shows.

At the Music Store, you can preview for free whatever you are interested in, then buy a song or an album with a single click. Songs cost 99 cents each. You can listen to your purchase as soon as it downloads — instant gratification. After you buy the audio, you own it — no monthly fees or tricky rules to follow. You can burn songs onto an unlimited number of CDs. You can use your audio on up to 3 different computers at once. You can also use iTunes to share music with Macs and PCs on a local area network. Allowance accounts can be set up for kids, and gift certificates are available.