Magical Music Tour

A few thoughts on Apple’s new music service:

• Visually compelling, as is expected from Apple. When I heard it was going to be integrated into iTunes I was put off, mostly because I don’t like iTunes’ interface. Fortunately for people like me, the music store’s interface shares nothing but a window with iTunes. It could still be better, but it doesn’t suck as much as i would have expected.
• I don’t want AAC, I want mp3. You can make every argument you want about AAC, it doesn’t change a thing. When the rest of my mp3 playing devices play AAC, then I will not care. Can I convert these downloads to mp3? Adam said yes, but that doesn’t make any sense to me as it will throw out all DRM.
• The price isn’t quite so right yet…. People will be willing to buy individual tracks at a buck a piece, but just about every whole album I have seen is going for \$10. To the mall-shopping \$18-a-cd kids that might sound like a deal, but when I can go to Newbury Comics or Twisted Village and pick up a brand new, tangible CD for \$12-14, it doesn’t sound too appealing. Hopefully Apple is just trying to put on a little black dress and get the labels to drink the Kool Aid. In order for this to be really successful they need to bring the price down (even on the single tracks).
• Apple needs to get the PC version together stat. Of course, before that happens, it would be nice if I could actually BUY A SONG! They didn’t seem to be ready for the flood, or just didn’t seem to be ready period. I tried buying several songs and met with no success.
• Being able to preview every track available is fantastic. The way it should be.
• The indies aren’t that well represented, but that’s what eMusic is for (at least for now…)
• Mr. Bungle is well represented. This is a good thing.
• I want one of the new iPods, but i’m not bitching and moaning about it.

That’s all for now. Possibly more later once I can actually give the damn thing a test drive.