April 28, 2003

FIRST REACTION: ITUNES MUSIC STORE.

Okay, I just got online. It took a few hours – I guess their servers were getting swamped. Having seen it, my first response is… that’s cool. This is the future. It works perfectly. The streaming AAC audio sounds great. I’ll post some screen shots tomorrow for Windows users, so you can see what you’ll be getting later this year.

An ITunes Music Store infomercial is available online.

Jobs also showed ads and an infomercial that included testimony from people such as Bono from U2, Wynton Marsalis, and Alanis Morrissette.

Apple’s Music Service will be available to Windows users:

The iTunes Music Store is Mac only at first, but will be available to Windows users by year’s end.

APPLE MUSIC SERVICE NAME:

The iTunes Music Store.

is in progress. MacCentral is offering a live report of what’s happening. Afterwards this same link should still work to give you a summary of the event.

Steve’s talking about a new encoding format, AAC:

Jobs also introduced iTunes 4, which supports AAC encoding alongside MP3 because “it sounds a lot better.” Jobs said it was the “state of the art” audio codec.

Every song is “pristinely encoded” and some sound “better than CDs.”

I believe AAC may sound better than MP3, but I doubt it sounds better than the uncompressed file from the CD.

The Apple music service will offer one-click downloads. You can use iTunes to “browse” the entire music store by genre, artist and album. Apple is offering music tracks not available anywhere else, including Bob Dylan, U2, and others.

.....There are free 30-second previews with every song on the service.

.....Apple has made deals with the big five music labels and we have over 200,000 songs available.

Now this is exciting. Up until now if I want to hear new songs I have to go to Tower or Barnes and Noble and hope there’s a headset free. Now we’re going to be able to do this any time we want, and download tracks on the spot.

WHAT’S THE RIGHT PRICE FOR A HIT SONG?

Today Apple is expected to announce their new music service. Last week I asked, if a new track by an unknown band is worth 99 cents, what’s “Hot in Here” worth?

Here’s what I think:

• An MP3 of a new track by an unknown band is worth 25 to 50 cents.
• The MP3 of “Hot in Here” is worth around $2.
• The full uncompressed music file of “Hot in Here” off the CD is worth 4 or 5 bucks. Easy.

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