when apple music first came out i thought it was great. in the first two weeks that it launched i was able to save myself a trip to best buy by purchasing all the new releases i wanted straight over the net and get high quality digital music i could then listen to on my iPod, my turtlebeach audiotron (more on that in a bit), or of course my powerbook.
since that i think the service is slipping. most of the new releases i have looked for aren't available on applemusic, or only as the dreaded "partial album". who wants to buy a partial album?
in addition, i think the price is still a little too high for the albums i do want. is it really worth $9.99 for a new release without the media? especially when i could rip it, and turn around and sell it on amazon or ebay for $5-6 if i had the media? the price of a digital music album should be $5.99.
as the story goes, apple makes no money off apple music, it all goes to the wholesalers. apple has apple music to sell iPods. give away the razor, sell the blades. sure.
of course, i also don't like that the songs come in a proprietary AAC format, although i will admit the sound quality per MB is way better than MP3, i love the openness of being able to play MP3s on almost anything. i have my whole music collection ripped into MP3s, and i have 5-6 devices that i play them on, myself.
it seems to be easy enough to get around AAC copy protection though. can't you just burn the album to a CD-RW, then rip it as mp3s? seems to work for me.
One thing I've never understood is "buy a track for 99 cents". I guess there are "single" people and "album" people. I always want to listen to an album in its entirety and only once in a blue moon will I pare a track or two away.
I like the resell on amazon idea!
Posted by: Eric at November 24, 2003 10:42 AM
i think apple's model is actually "give away the blades but sell the razors" if the iPod is the item with any built-in margin (thought i read somewhere it's around 20%). And yes, the AAC format is a pisser because my dorky old Nomad II player, which is ideal for jogging in the rain and all sorts of other iPod-threatening activities, can't deal. the re-rip-as-MP3s CD/RW trick is a fair workaround, but i just don't wanna work that hard to put together ten songs for my morning run.
Posted by: matt at November 26, 2003 08:29 AM
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Posted by: Kim Stan at February 27, 2004 04:15 PM