iTunes for Windows is Here

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How many songs do you think Windows users will download by Sunday?
3 million?
5 million?
10 million?
20 million?

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Thursday, 16 October 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

iTunes buffering for previews is gonna be bad for the foreseeable future.

... and Jet is featured in the new iPod ad out today...

Can I admit I like Jet now, or is it even worse now that they'rew affiliated?

― Michael G, Thursday, 16 October 2003 18:27 (twenty-two years ago)

The new version of the store is pretty cool, complete with artist's playlists.

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Thursday, 16 October 2003 18:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Doesn't iTunes owe a healthy amount of its initial success to the fact that Mac file-sharing/P2P programs generally blow? The same can't be said for PCs...I wonder if iTunes for Windows will take off at all.

― Rich, Thursday, 16 October 2003 19:23 (twenty-two years ago)

windows users will download more than 20 million songs by sunday, but it won't be from itunes music service.

― fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Thursday, 16 October 2003 19:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I like this:

Steve Jobs: "I want to sell 100 million song through the iTunes store by April!"

Then: "Umm... we're giving away 100 million songs thanks to Pepsi!"

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Thursday, 16 October 2003 21:37 (twenty-two years ago)

The talk from Mac evangelists sounds good but I'm a bit weary...has Apple learned from the Quicktime Player fiasco (aka the worst video player in the history of Windows software - and that includes that fucking RealOne player) and is it actually decent?

― Siegbran (eofor), Thursday, 16 October 2003 21:48 (twenty-two years ago)

It's just like MusicMatch Jukebox, lots of cool features, but so slow compared to winamp2.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 16 October 2003 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I have no idea how QuickTime performs on Windows, but it stomps all over Real player for the Mac, which is a piece of garbage, and contains spyware.

― Sean (Sean), Thursday, 16 October 2003 22:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Spencer was saying he was finding it slow too, which is bizarre as on my not especially high spec Mac it is snappily fast. I mean you type a few letters in the search box and instantly (no hitting return or anything) the list of songs changes to those that match what you've entered. And that's with well over 3000 tracks in there.

If Apple has fucked up the Windows programming of a program that is far far (I mean there is no question) than any existing PC music jukebox player I have seen then that's a great shame. I mean iTunes is my favourite piece of software in the world.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 16 October 2003 22:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Nick, I don't think the programming is fucked up. It compares favorably with Windows apps that do the same thing, it's just that winamp2 (as opposed to the bloated winamp3) is much simpler for me to use and it's the most transparent.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 16 October 2003 23:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Well to each his own.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 16 October 2003 23:06 (twenty-two years ago)

i don't care about their music store but i'm hoping that it will give me more control over my ipod, most of all = controlling track volumes (??)

― ron (ron), Friday, 17 October 2003 00:14 (twenty-two years ago)

I use a Mac at home, but I installed this on my PC at work today. They have done an amazing job with it, not least with the Rendezvous playlist streaming feature. It was amazing to watch huge amounts of music appear in my iTunes window as everyone else in the office installed it. Fucking awesome.

― retort pouch (retort pouch), Friday, 17 October 2003 01:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha, the Celebrity Playlists are pretty funny too. Michael Stipe likes 'Landslide' from 'Fleetwood Mac Live'! That's the first song I ever bought from the iTunes Music Store!

I want to see MC Pitman's playlist and commentary. Actually, I'd just like to see MC Pitman's album available via iTunes.

― retort pouch (retort pouch), Friday, 17 October 2003 02:51 (twenty-two years ago)

O Christ, Sting's commentary on his playlist is awesome. hahahaaa

Smells Like Teen Spirit (Track 9): "The energy of the Sex Pistols linked with a brilliant sense of melody. Kurt used considerable musical intelligence to carefully construct statements that sounded offhand. Link that skill to powerful energies and you've got something unique. I just wish he'd seen music as a way to heal his soul. I do think he would have gotten to that point eventually."

iTunes. Install it. NOW!

― retort pouch (retort pouch), Friday, 17 October 2003 02:58 (twenty-two years ago)

i had to restore my ipod to get it working with itunes. major disappointment. now am i going to reload all the songs that were on it using itunes? hell no! apparently have to either sync the entire itunes library or add songs manually. so back to ephpod for me. after it is done syncing i will give itunes one last shot to see if i can drag from an explorer window into the itunes ipod icon. but even if that works, it's not really syncing, just letting me add that way.

ephpod lets you choose as many (or few) sync directories as you want. seems much smarter to me

― ron (ron), Friday, 17 October 2003 04:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, already iMusic seems like a big pain in the ass. Ephpod is much more straightforward and intuitive. Took a look at the music store, and it seems awfully thin, though they are just starting. By comparison, AOL's Musicnet has a *lot* more to choose from.

The only thing I like so far: as you rip a CD, it starts playing the tracks as they finish. Otherwise it seems like one of those irritating programs that makes life complicated by trying to make it simple. I was pretty happy with a combo of eMusic, EAC and Ephpod, actually. Too bad someone couldn't combine them.

― dlp9001, Friday, 17 October 2003 04:50 (twenty-two years ago)

i think i will give it a try for a while. i am currently looking forward to when the damn thing finally analyzes all these songs for the sound check volume thingy. having my cpu pegged constanly is sucking

― ron (ron), Friday, 17 October 2003 04:57 (twenty-two years ago)

>Rendezvous playlist streaming feature

at any one point in the day at work right now, there are 3-5 libraries of music available to browse through (the libraries are only available while that user has iTunes launched and running). one guy has all techno, another guy has 2000 songs of black metal, another guy has lots of brazilian pop, one library is all 70's funk with about 5 different Parliament/Funkadelic bootlegs, another guy buys all the latest records (the precise ones you only want to hear once)... it's a lot of fun having iTunes at the office.

― (Jon L), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Apple software is always so bloated that itunes seems quick. Winamp 2 has spoiled windows users. Of course, I can remember that in 1997. winamp was not the bare-bones mp3 player. I think that "winplay" or something, which didn't have playlists, shuffle, or anything, was the choice of people running 486s. So maybe in 6 years intunes will be the ultra budget program that doesn't crash every 10 minutes.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm downloading it now. 20 megs!!!

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

And maybe it will fuck up everything on my computer like windows Quicktime. That'd be lovely.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:31 (twenty-two years ago)

And I love the way mac people get all misty-eyed and futuristic about things that have been on PCs for years. "I'm actually looking at the MP3s of someone in Bangladesh. Thank you, Apple"

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Yay, a program that uses it's own GUI, doesn't maximize properly, and runs like shit on my pretty-good computer. And it requires windows 2000 or better.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:42 (twenty-two years ago)

The brushed aluminum makes it all okay, though.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:43 (twenty-two years ago)

ok i found where you can set up special playlists for syncing, under ipod options. reading the help files has actually been quite helpful! my computer is super busy doing god knows what to the ipod.

― ron (ron), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:58 (twenty-two years ago)

It doesn't do windows standard shortcuts either! (eg shift + arrow keys or mouse clicks) I love the idea of iTunes but it crashed three times in the first hour. I didn't even try to sync it with my iPod before I gave it the boot. Ten minutes later I was back to Musicmatch (and bounced it to the new 8.whatever version just for kicks, no problems there) and happy. I would kill for Smart Playlists, they're mad cool, so I'll just wait for Win iTunes 2 or point release or whatever.

Does it seem clear they pushed this out the door a little early to hit before Napster 2?

― rob geary (rgeary), Friday, 17 October 2003 05:59 (twenty-two years ago)

That Rendevous thing in an office sounds mad cool though!

― rob geary (rgeary), Friday, 17 October 2003 06:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Just tried it for a few hours:

The good:
- looks nice
- the radio window is cool
- the share feature is a brilliant idea
- a bit sluggish but definitely not as bad as I feared
- the Music Store has a fantastic interface
- no crashes yet

The bad:
- the Music Store has nothing I'm interested in
- the interface is horrible indeed. Why won't it maximize??
- the mouse scrollwheel is too slow and screws up the sound
- the library is worthless...is there any way to make it sort on actual filename and folder instead of those notoriously unreliable/incomplete ID3 tags?
- no support for catalogueing MP3 and Audio CDs
- no LAME mp3 encoder
- the play counter only counts fully played songs, which sucks as I nearly always skip the 1-2 minute mixout section of tracks
- no progress bar in the minimized view (this is THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTROL YOU IDIOTS!!)
- no "snap to windows" in minimized view.
- no "always on top" and "minimize to tray"
- it eats 50 MB RAM???

So, it's back to the Winamp 2 & Dapyx MP3 Explorer combination.

― Siegbran (eofor), Friday, 17 October 2003 10:37 (twenty-two years ago)

the library is worthless...is there any way to make it sort on actual filename and folder instead of those notoriously unreliable/incomplete ID3 tags?

ID3 tags are the key to iTunes. Without the library it's nothing special as an mp3 player. If you insist on trying to create a database out of a character string in a filename, then no, it's not for you. But it really is worth getting used to tags. When you're ripping a CD then you can get all the basic info (song, title, artist, genre, hopefully year) off the online database so it's not like you have to type it all in yourself. Yeah, if you're nicking a track off Soulseek or whatever then it might not be properly filled in, but you just get in the habit of adding the info when it comes, if it's not there already. With time, tagging will hopefully become the norm and you won't have to worry so much about other people's slackness.

Personally, I'm mad keen for always filling in the year in for everything, as I love being able to sort songs by age, use this info in smart playlists etc.

― N. (nickdastoor), Friday, 17 October 2003 10:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I agree that proper ID3 tags make things a lot easier, but retagging the many thousands of files (finding out release names, track numbers, years, etc) is nearly impossible. The library/catalog software I'm currently using (Dapyx MP3 Explorer) uses ID3 tags too, but also has additional columns for "folder" and "filename", so you can sort and search by filename AND ID3 tag at will. This should be an easy addition to iTunes (just 2 extra columns!) but it would make the difference between "a big pile of songs" and "a well-structured collection" for me.

― Siegbran (eofor), Friday, 17 October 2003 11:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Keep in mind that even though iTunes on Windows may be called v. 4.0 or 4.1 or whatever, for all intents and purposes is is really v. 1.0, since this is the first release for that platform. Once yor realize this and compare it to v. 1.0 of whatever player you tout as being better, faster, easier, whatever, you'll see that Apple did pretty well. And whining about speed? Try M$ Office on a Mac, Wingeeks!

― DorkStar, Friday, 17 October 2003 11:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Seriously, take the time to do your ID3 tags. It's very easy with iTunes, and it will even sort them into new folder hierarchies for you (if you let it) and it works better than Dapyx Mp3 Explorer because it lets your folder system stay invisible and lets you rely more on playlists. And remember it's an Apple app, so it behaves like an Apple app (minimize, etc), so don't begrudge them their consistency.

― Michael G, Friday, 17 October 2003 12:56 (twenty-two years ago)

so you can't maximize ANY window on a mac??

― ron (ron), Friday, 17 October 2003 14:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Nope, you can't really. Unless you drag the window that big. The Mac OS behaves differently. Its menu functions aren't exactly like Windows and aren't usually contained in the window, but in the "finder", which remains visible at the the top of the screen at all times. Often, it's an advantage, but that's my experience talking.

― Michael G, Friday, 17 October 2003 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

The lack of a maximize function is the only reason I haven't switched to a Mac. (that and a couple G's)

― rob geary (rgeary), Friday, 17 October 2003 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

People seem to think that Apple invented the use of ID3 tags to organize mp3 collections! This has been around on windows apps for many years, I just never dealt with it for the reasons Siegbran is talking about - I still want to think of my music as "files" in proper OS folders. Also, there is no way I'm going to go and re-tag tens of thousands of files...

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 17 October 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Does iTunes have a tag lookup? I downloaded it last night, but haven't had time to play around too much.

Anyway, Musicmatch does, so that's a real easy way to get tags on a bunch of your files.

So far, I find iTunes to be fast, simple and much easier to use than Musicmatch, which has loads of functions but a terrible interface. Plus it works much quicker with the iPod than Musicmatch. And it seems like the library is much easier to use than Media Player or Real (love the text search). So I'm happy.

― Ben Williams, Friday, 17 October 2003 17:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Mac OSX has a maximize button (the green one) in the upper left hand corner of every window, including the iTunes store. Is there something different for the Windows version? Or are we talking about something completely different?

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Friday, 17 October 2003 17:41 (twenty-two years ago)

iTunes is an interesting business idea. It's based on the assumption that marketing can turn pay-to-download into something so COOL that people will be disposed to pay for it... in a world where illegal dowload makes every consumer able to get music for free. It's a big bet. When you sell a PHYSICAL cd at least you have something (the physical item) for which the customer might be disposed to pay a premium price (the fetish value of the item) but trying to differentiate electronic music is a lot more difficult because differentiation has to rely solely on intangibles. The success, marketing aside, will probably depend on other factors: competion (there are lots of people that could jump onto the wagon with minimum investment/effort), legal/technological barriers to illegal download, support from major labels...

I'm curious....

― Simone O., Friday, 17 October 2003 17:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Apple is all about fetish value.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 17 October 2003 19:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Microsoft is all about computers crashing, poor design, slow internet browsers, no vision and daily news reports of yet another fatal security flaw in its operating system.

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Friday, 17 October 2003 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

i've got quite a bit of my tags cleaned up now. but i only have about 2200 files on the computer and currently about 1200 on the ipod. the ipod files are pretty much in order but there are still some stragglers on my hard drive that need sorting through. itunes is actually a fairly powerful tag editor, i'd say. i haven't used these other ones you guys are talking about. I'm putting genres on everything but trying to keep it simple.

one thing i noticed/learned is that the check boxes carry through to all playlists & the library (if you uncheck something in a playlist, it unchecks in the library too) unchecking does indeed remove things from the pod when syncing.

i think i noted a small bug: when i have my ipod attached, i can't go to a column in itunes and hit keystrokes to navigate down the list. instead, it moves the source to the radio and gives an error message.

this program is on the slow side but it's also pretty cool. the tag updating is working much better than i think it would have with ephpod. i remember ending up with lots of duplicate songs when i tried to change tag information after things were already on the pod. could have had some settings wrong though

tried to maximize by right clicking the taskbar but no dice

― ron (ron), Saturday, 18 October 2003 06:53 (twenty-two years ago)

itunes just rearranged my hardrive, i now have 1160 folders. each folder then has another folder with the album title. and in that there is like one song only.

i am not in favour of this product

― charltonlido (gareth), Saturday, 18 October 2003 18:34 (twenty-two years ago)

itunes just rearranged my hardrive, i now have 1160 folders. each folder then has another folder with the album title. and in that there is like one song only.

Pardon? For a sec, it looked like ITunes was acting like a virus. G, how much hard drive space did this eat up?

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Saturday, 18 October 2003 18:52 (twenty-two years ago)

itunes just rearranged my hardrive, i now have 1160 folders. each folder then has another folder with the album title. and in that there is like one song only.

i am not in favour of this product

In the modern world we call this organization.

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Saturday, 18 October 2003 21:55 (twenty-two years ago)

here's the punchline: reinstalled windows today and have to let it sort through the song volumes all over again :( at least all the tagging work is safe within the mp3's

― ron (ron), Sunday, 19 October 2003 02:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Really only worthwhile for yuppie-rockist-full-album-having people isn't it?

― Dan I., Sunday, 19 October 2003 02:46 (twenty-two years ago)

oh i don't know. i'm still coming down on the positive side. i really like the way it works with the ipod, which is probably kind of duh.

i maybe should just give up on the volume thing, but that was one of the things i was excited about re: itunes

my day: install new power supply. computer then won't turn on anymore. buy new motherboard and ram. find out that mobo doesn't support 400fsb/400 memory. go back to store, exchange for 266ddr. reassemble computer. windows installation won't boot. attempt fix with windows cd. works, but still pretty quirky. make backups of c: drive so i can restore documents. reinstall windows. update windows on f-ing dialup (hello). am told that i've reactivated too many times now (not to mention motherboard swap) so have to call the friendly microsoft man on the phone.
WHEEEEEEEE

i wish there was a way to save the service packs and updates as files that you could run later, when doing clean installs. i just did this like a month ago, what a drag

on the plus side i have a cool new mobo with goodies like support for 800fsb, serial ata w/ raid, ide raid, onboard gigabit lan, firewire & usb2

― ron (ron), Sunday, 19 October 2003 05:19 (twenty-two years ago)

lot of good the gig lan is doing me with this dial up connection ;-)

― ron (ron), Sunday, 19 October 2003 05:21 (twenty-two years ago)

What's good: wonderful way to organize your mp3s. I started slow, though, instead of dumping all my music in the library right off the bat. iTunes actually inspired me to delete over a gig of garbage that had been sitting like mud at the bottom of my shared folder.

What's bad: you're playing everything through Quicktime, which is a real memory-eater. I can't do 6 things at once anymore without the song skipping.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 19 October 2003 16:43 (twenty-two years ago)

it isnt that it ate up any harddrive space, there is still the same amount of files, but my music is no longer in the specific way i want it organized, it is in the way itunes wants it organise. i was displeased by this event.

thankfully most of my music is on my archos mp3 player, so i just deleted all my music, and am now copying it back across from the archos in my original folder organization

― charltonlido (gareth), Sunday, 19 October 2003 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Michael Stipe likes 'Landslide' from 'Fleetwood Mac Live'!

actually, that's a phenomenal piece of music...

― stevie (stevie), Sunday, 19 October 2003 20:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I know! That's why I said it was the first thing I ever bought from the iTMS. I would have bought the entire album, but there were (I think) two tracks unavailable for download at the time. Must go back and check if the whole thing is available now.

I was laughing more at the idea of Michael Stipe being into Fleetwood Mac than any idea that Landslide, especially that live version, was anything less than phenomenal.

― retort pouch (retort pouch), Sunday, 19 October 2003 22:52 (twenty-two years ago)

But that's part of why you would use iTunes. I found it a little hard to get used to as well, but then I released that using iTunes to browse through the files was actually faster, more efficient, and better looking than managing all my files and folders by hand.

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Monday, 20 October 2003 01:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Revive

...and patch! 4.1.1 seems way more stable. I think I'm in the club now. Haven't synced it to the iPod yet, I'm still tweaking things, but I will soon. Still hate:
-no 'snap-to-window'/true maximize function
-can't shuffle the library columns to show artist first! we're not all song title first popists, folks
-the stupidly limited amount of info in the greyish 'now playing' window. scrolling cd player type text = dud. stretch that display and let us see what's playing! (artist, title, album plz)
-no scrolling song title in windows taskbar. yes I know I'm running iTunes, thanx

love smart playlists, and generally speaking everything works the way it ought to. I do kind of miss having Musicmatch's playlist window where I would queue up stuff to listen to as I thought of it, but eh, no biggie.

― rob geary (rgeary), Saturday, 25 October 2003 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

im trying really hard to love this cause smart playlists are the greatest idea ever but shit does this ever have some annoying (non) features

im having flashbacks to the ibook that i sold

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

PyMusique - a free windows app that lets you buy music from itunes without the DRM, plus you can redownload songs you've already bought with it for free.

― a banana (alanbanana), Friday, 18 March 2005 16:36 (twenty years ago)

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