I have found alot of older stuff, but there just getting started. If it is a bigenough hit, i would not be suprised if in a year or so you will be able to get just about anything.

"The CD can have a poster, special paper, the CD can be cut in a funky shape, grow in the dark, link up with another case, include a book, and other marketing stuff."

Bah. When I go to get a CD there's only one thing I want: Music.

DiscoPopStar: If you poke about and find the age of many of the long-time people here... you'll be surprised. Personally, I consider myself one of the young ones, and I too am a child of the 80s!

But, that's getting slightly off topic - so, I'll quickly amend that: I'm still in love with iTunes radio. None of the problems that Eugenia had over at OSNews.. but then (Nothing against Eugenia,) she winds up having problems with -everything- she tries running on a computer.

Heh - born in 1967 here.... grew up in the 80's! lol

Well, I ran over to Apple's site and gave this thing a whirl. This gets a serious "2 thumbs down" from me...

Thumb 1: content - nothing to see here folks, unless you happen to only want to listen to music that is now or has been in regular rotation on MTV. All major label stuff as of now, and not even complete catalogues of those artists. Into independent music of any kind? Forget it.

Thumb 2: "rights management" - the way I see it, if I'm paying FULL PRICE for my music, I ought to be able to listen to it on as many music dexices as I want to (I have 2 computers, an mP3 player for my bike, another one I listen to when I snowboard, a 20gig unit in my bedroom, and a CD/MP3 player in my truck). Can't do that here, unless you are willing to physically burn your stuff to an audio CD and then reconvert the tracks to MP3 in another application, thereby (hopefully) nixing the "rights management" on the tracks. Oh, be careful though, because you can only burn a track to CD 10 times before you will no longer have access to it. Utter BS in my opinion.

If I buy 12 tracks here, I pay 12 bucks for pure data I am severely limited in my use of.

If I buy the CD, I pay around 12 bucks for around 12 tracks, I have the physical disc, the tracks in an uncompressed format, and I can listen to them wherever, however, and however many times I want.

In the past, end-user "rights managemnt" has been grudgingly accepted either because the consumer was paying for overly compressed data, or paying far less than store-bought CD prices. Neither of these is currently the case, and I am frankly insulted that I am expected to buy something and then have stipulations on how, where, and how many times I can use it.

But hey, if it works for you, rock on, man. I certainly won't be giving these jerks any of my money, though.

See??? That is why CD's will never go out of fashion cambion. You have the music and now you can listen to it where ever you want BUT you got to pay a couple of dollars more, that's all.

Me personally, I still like MusicMatch more, but it is nice to also have iTunes as an option. I still find myself at the store though, wanted the CD. Its just more 'real' to me then other forms.

When I get the CD, I have it. Hard copy and all. If it a download, I got it but not everything.

You know what I mean?

I actually went to buymusic.com, and I think I like it better. At least I don't have to have another specific software to buy songs, play or burn music. But alas, it's for US residents only as well.

Paxx: Except Media Player you mean right? It downloads it into a special format of .wma.

Cambion: You can, right from iTunes, burn a CD that youcan use anywhere just like a regular CD. 

I already have and use Media Player, so it suits me. And Media Player is skinnable.

I tell you weaht though - I /really/ want to live where you guys do, where you're finding $13 audio CDs! ^.^

Hi,

pirate music isn't over yet because:

- this kind of services are not available for people living outside the US. In Europa there is a problem with copyrights (E-Data)
- sometimes 99 cent a song is too expensive, the total CD is sometimes cheaper in the store
- the sound quality is i think not good enough

In Holland there are stores where you can rent CD's for about $3 a day. Buy a empty CD (less then 50 cents), copy it.. voila!
This is still the best option. All the downloading from music, i don't get it....

I've been using buymusic.com for awhile and like it. Hopefully they will get a few more titles in there soon. I'm thinking about giving itunes a try. One of the main things I appreciate so far is that there is no subscription fee, as there is in a couple of other sites.
This is probably the wave of the future for music buying.
I don't miss the 'hardware' of store bought cd's. I can fire up psp and the roxio jewel case creator and make my own.

one thing not so hot about itunes, I hate real player oh well, we shall see.

Real Player? You mean Quicktime?

paxx, yeah...sorry, lost my head there.
Well, the whole experience has been pretty painless. Installed the software, bought a couple of albums, burned them to CD. The UI is a little slow (as others have pointed out), and having to rip the CD so that other players can recognize the music was a bit much, but all is well. Streaming radio sounded great. I'd recommend the package.

Well... I can see where it would be reasonable for nonpublished artists to get their work out and make a little money. But 99 cents a shot... sharing it with Apple and RIAA... they won't see a dime or penny as the case might be.

Anyway... as long as RIAA is vent on suing little girls whose mom is on welfare for thousands of dollars and just being moronically and seriously greedy... I won't even buy an individual song with this method or even the actual CD.
I used to download lots of individual songs to hear... then go out and buy the CD. Now I won't do it.

I can't believe the amount of misinformation i'm seeing here.
most albums are 9.99, regardless of how many tracks are on the album. there are a few exceptions, such as if there are less than 10 tracks, then it's 99 cents per song still. You can play these files on 3 computers, 2 ipods, and burn unlimited cds of the tracks..

I'm no apple zealot, but i'm glad they've brought iTunes to the PC. No one has mentioned the sharing music aspect.. if you are on a network, you can share your music over the network (other people stream, not download) off your computer.. here at college we have about 15 different shares open to us with more growing as more people discover itunes.. itunes is great

Change the world? Excuse for pirating music is over? I don't think so... it's a great player and I like it, but the store only works in US for heaven's sake and they don't seem to plan opening in europe (or elsewhere) in the near future so this might change the world if your idea of world is the USA... for us in EU, the excuse for pirating music is still alive and kicking.
Don't get me wrong... I have nothing against paying for music downloads... but what the hell am I supposed to do when the service is unavailable for me?

Pardon my typos in my earlier post

I believe what many who dislike the service are having a problem with is as much the principle involved as the physical implementation of the service.

However, there is a silver lining here - I have found a great use for Itunes:

I can preview a track on Itunes, then surf over to Duffelbag.com or drive to my local independent music store and buy the CD based on liking the preview tracks! Or just queue it up in **** free file sharing app...

The silly thing about all this is that anyone CAN burn the tracks to CD and then use another app to rerip them to MP3, then manually enter the tag information... but why would I bother? Before I'll do all that, I'll simply download a high-quality MP3 for free from one of the many file-sharing networks out there, or just buy and rip the dang CD. Less hassle, less typing.

Again, it's simply an end-user choice: if you buy music from Itunes, you are agreeing to purchase something that the seller effectively limits your use of. For a variety of reasons, I choose to not purchase such a product. Of course, the ethics of every choice of action I have detailed here are questionable... but we are dealing with the real world here...

And the argument can be made that Itunes PROMOTES music piracy by letting me listen to music, find that I like it, and with literally 3 mouse clicks go get it for free, all from my desktop.

Go figure

What happends when they start putting chips in our brains? Next thing you know you wont need a recording studio you just generate it and share it. therefore lets get out of the stone age and start making music free , use money for nanotechnologie devellopement instead hehehe

i think i will stick with downloading from the usenet, and burning my own cds.

To someone up above who said you can only burn a purchased song to CD 10 times... this is absolutely untrue. The reality is that you can only burn a specific playlist of purchased songs 10 times. However, move the songs around and then you can burn it another 10 times, etc... it's nothing more than plastic-wrapper thin protection to keep people from mass producing a "CD".

I really don't think that anyone is going to come along with an online music store that has LESS copyright protection than what iTunes offers. No one is going to sell MP3's that one person can buy and then copy to 100 friends.

btw, mormegil, sorry to hear you don't like your Dual G4. I just purchased a new 'close-out' Dual G4 1.42 and am very pleased. Well, other than the fact that I wish it looked like my old G4 Cube.