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.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
dan said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
More info on the new lossless codec would be great.
Reply
Koganuts said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
You'll need to download and install QuickTime 6.5.1 to see the Apple Lossless Codec available as an encoding option in iTunes 4.5.
I haven't had a chance to try out the codec yet, and it'd be a bit much to use it for listening to songs on my iPod Mini, but it'd be great for archiving ripped CDs.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
Reply
Koganuts said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
"...but it'd be great for archiving ripped CDs."
Er, rephrase to "...but it'd be great for ripping and archiving CDs."
Reply
James Mohler said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Apple Lossless Codec makes some big files. Perhaps they will be seeling XRaids to home users?
Reply