iTunes 4.5

I’ll have to sheepishly admit last night was the first time I have ever purchased a song from the iTunes Music Store myself (a new Stereolab track), mostly for the fact they didn’t have any artists that appealed to my own musical taste until recently. And coinciding with my jumping onto the bandwagon, Apple has released iTunes 4.5. The update also coincides with the launch of the third generation iTunes Music Store, now featuring over 700,000 songs from all five major labels and 450+ independent music labels. For the next eight days, Apple is giving away a song from artists including Foo Fighters, Avril Lavigne, Courtney Love, Annie Lennox, Jane’s Addiction, Counting Crows, Renee Fleming and Nelly Furtado.

iTunes 4.5 Features:

Share Your iMix. Post and email songs in your playlists for everyone to see. Rate iMixes from other music lovers to drive them up or down the charts, and discover new music at the same time.

Party Shuffle. Be your own DJ with a playlist that’s always full of songs. Add, delete and rearrange them on the fly to create the best mix for the moment.

Print CD Inserts. Create stunning CD jewel case inserts for your album or mix disc using designer templates for both color and black & white printers.

Discover Music. Find out what’s playing on more than 1,000 radio stations around the United States. Get music and audiobooks related to a movie. See a music video, get the track. Download a free song.

Previews in Playlists and Quick Links. Save store previews to purchase later. Find more music from the artists you love via Quick Links in your library.

Automatically convert WMA to AAC. Convert the music you saved in Windows Media Player (unprotected WMA files) to AAC format.

Apple Lossless. Use the new lossless encoder to import music from CDs and achieve sound quality indistinguishable from the original, at about half the original file size. Plays in iTunes and on iPod.