In a brilliantly innovative move, Apple founder Steve Jobs created the iTunes Music Store. Even though this is set up with the cooperation of the record companies, it still seems to work. The store has a library of about 200,000 songs available for download at 99 cents each. Once you buy the song, you can listen to it as often as you like, transfer it to your laptop or burn it onto multiple CDs. Unlike the other music services, there's no membership fee and the songs won't self-destruct after so many plays.

I finally tried it out this weekend and, with reservations, I'm a fan.The first reservation is paying a buck a song. I suppose it's a fair price, but it doesn't take long to chew up twenty bucks. Also, I was unable to find anything by the White Stripes, and I suppose there are a few other contemporary groups not in the library. Obscure rock bands, those on the fringe, are not well represented, either. On the other hand, I found a limited number of songs by Billie Holiday, bluesman Alvin Youngblood Hart, songstress Blossom Dearie, and jazz pianist Art Tatum and others.

The interface is the Mac software iTunes, which stores, catalogues, lets me organize the songs in any number of ways. ITunes is easy, intuitive and great to use; in other words, typical of Mac software. It will be available for Windoze machines later in the year. But for now, this might be the push you need to join the alternative side to the consumer computer world.
7:10:59 AM    Comments?()