6.1 Welcome to the Music Store

The iTunes Music Store is a super-simple music download service that has the backing (and the song catalogs) of five big music companies, plus an increasing number of independent ones. Its inventory contains over 500,000 songs from major-label artists like Bob Dylan, U2, Missy Elliott, Jewel, Sting, and hundreds of other musicians in a range of popular styles like Rock, Pop, R & B, Jazz, Folk, Rap, Latin, Classical, and more ”and the collection grows by thousands of songs a week. You can also browse, sample, or buy any of 5,000 audiobooks from Audible.com .

NOTE

To see what songs have been added recently, click the Just Added link at the left side of the main Music Store page.

Farther down the page, you can also see and hear what famous people are listening to in the store's Celebrity Playlist section. It never hurts to know what Wynton Marsalis and Kevin Bacon are listening to these days.

You can browse the virtual CD racks from the comfort of your own computer, listen to the first 30 seconds free from any track in the store, and download desired songs for 99 cents each with a click of the mouse. There are no monthly fees. And your digitally protected downloads don't go poof! into the ether if you decide to cancel your subscription, as they do with certain rival services. All your downloaded songs go right into iTunes, where they are just a sync away from your iPod's traveling music collection.

You can play the downloaded songs on up to three different iTunes 4 “equipped Macs or PCs (in any combination), burn them onto CDs, and download them to the iPod. Thousands of people use the Music Store every day, in fact, without even realizing that the songs are copy protected.

Apple's early success with the iTunes Music Store ”more than 25 million downloads in the first six months ”caught its rivals' attention. These days, Apple's imitators in the dollar-a-song biz include BuyMusic, Napster 2.0, MusicMatch, and even Wal-Mart. (Remember, though, that music from these services come in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format, which won't work on the iPod.)

NOTE

The iTunes Music Store is a feature of iTunes 4 and later. If you're still running iTunes 3, you can download the latest version from Apple's Web site at http://www.apple.com/itunes/download.

On the Mac, iTunes 4 requires Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later, a 400- megahertz G3 processor or better, and at least 256 megabytes of RAM. (You also need QuickTime ”Apple's multimedia software ”version 6.2 or later, which you can also pick up on the iTunes 4 download page.)

On the PC, you need Windows 2000 or XP, a 500-megahertz Pentium-class processor or faster, and 256 megabytes of memory.