Welcome to the blog of Can Sar, a Stanford CS major. This blog is made up of my thoughts on Computer Science and the computer industry, as well as ever exciting tales from my life.
Apple released lots of cool new music stuff today, and I'll cover all of it.
Let's start with the iPod. Good to have 30GB models now, 20 was too little for me to consider buying one. The same goes for upgrading to a 15GB and 10GB model. The design is very elegant and the docking station is great. Now the iPod can really be something that you connect to your computer easily and then just take with you, without any cables.
iTunes 4 is amazing! I have not tried using the music service yet, but music streaming over Rendezvous is amazing. I live in a dorm and iTunes 4 was made for environments like this. Right now 4 people are listening to my music, and it gives me an incentive to download and rip even more, to get more listeners. People going offline can be a problem, because the music stops, but it is not too bad, and there is really no way Apple could do anything about this. I'm amazed that it took only a few hours to get so many people here to listen to each other's streams. I would have prepared to be able to download songs as well as stream them, but this would have put Apple in a dangerous position. Now iTunes helps with broadcasting the list of people's songs, allows everyone to listen to them, and can then be combined with an ftp server or some Rendezvous sharing utility to download songs.
Over the long term, the music service will of course be most important. Apple has achieved something that no one was able to achieve until now. Songs can be downloaded for 99 cents, used on up to 3 computers and burnt to CDs. The only restriction is that every play list can only be burnt 10 times, which is not a problem for normal users.
Right now it only works with American Credit Cards, which is a problem for me, because even though I study at Stanford, I only have an Austrian credit card. The service is going to be released there eventually as well. There are also rumors that the service will come to the PC and possibly AOL.
The fundamental thing in determining how revolutionary this will be is whether independent bands and artists will be able to sign up. If so, then the Record Labels will finally have to step into the background, and the artists will be able to decide how to release their records. Labels will still help some artists gain publicity, but for the majority of musicians, this will make it easier to distribute their music and become popular.
I hope Apple will do this, if so, it will indeed be revolutionary.
yes the itunes service is an incredible distribution tool for artists and the consumer. So many albums today have one or two good tracks the rest just filler. Purchasing individual songs is a great way to weed out the mediocrity, thanks to itunes you no longer have to shell out 18 dollars for a 15 songs album just to hear the one or two good tracks.
Posted by tom on December 10, 2003 09:35 AM