iTunes Extravaganza

Apple Launches the iTunes Music Store "iTunes(R) Music Store, a revolutionary online music store that lets customers quickly find, purchase and download the music they want for just 99 cents per song, without subscription fees. The iTunes Music Store offers groundbreaking personal use rights, including burning songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listening to songs on an unlimited number of iPods, playing songs on up to three Macintosh(R) computers, and using songs in any application on the Mac(R), including iPhoto(TM), iMovie(TM) and iDVD(TM)."

It's only available in the US. Weird. It's still fairly fun to use. There's no caching on the movies you download, I can see this being a real bandwidth buster.

Apple Introduces New iPods "iPods, which hold up to 7,500 songs in a stunning enclosure that is lighter and thinner than two CDs. The new ultra-portable iPods feature completely solid-state "no moving parts" navigation wheel and buttons; an elegant new dock with audio out for fast and easy connection to your computer or stereo; an "On-The-Go" playlist so users can build a playlist right on their iPod(TM); a customizable main menu so users can promote the features they use most often to their top level menu; and Apple's unique, patent pending Auto-Sync for automatically syncing your computer's music library with iPod. The new ultra-portable iPods are available in three models: a 10GB model for just $299 (US), a 15GB model for $399 (US) and a 30GB model for $499 (US)."

Now does everyone re-encode their CDs to AAC? Which I was looking at anyway.

Fortune has an article about it "Each song is encrypted with a digital key so that it can be played only on three authorized computers, and that prevents songs from being transferred online. Even if you burn the AAC songs onto a CD that a conventional CD player can read and then re-rip them back into standard MP3 files, the sound quality is awful."

"In fact, Warner's Roger Ames is trying to broker a deal in which AOL would adopt iTunes as its music-manage-ment software. "Steve was resistant at first," Ames says. "But now I understand that he's decided to go that way.""