iTunes UK - Its alive!
 

iTunes UK was launched this morning.

Just bought my first track
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...temId=15450932

79p per song and its yours, not rented like the others. Class! Tracks being added constantly, it still looks good and its only been on for 20 minutes. :D:D

Woo Hoo! Says Jack
Ouch! Says my credit card.

I upgraded to 4.6 this morning but it still says that Music Store is not available in your country.

Do I need to make any other settings changes to access this?

Cheers

Because its not "officially official" yet you have to click the store, then scroll down to the bottom. There you will see a Choose Country thing.

This will become automatic once the rollout is complete.

Excellent, cheers for the tip!!

Anyone know what quality the downloads come in?

New Beastie Boys album is a quid cheaper (if you buy the whole album) than the CD equivelant at CD WOW. Although it is a different, cleaner version.

Stefan

I downloaded an Ian Brown track
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...temId=15450932

and the quality is very, very good. If I were you I would try downloading one track and see what you think. Get "We Got The" its a class track. :D

Link for "we got the"

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...temId=15134320

You crazy guys paying for mp3's :)

Good Karma :)

Better quality.

Less Hassle

Friend of mine said they were comparing the ITMS in the UK vs the US and unless there is some updating problem, the content on the UK site seems to be less than on the US site.

Typical that the UK get's it before Canada though!

There are a few tracks missing so far Markus but I think they will resolve it soon enough, I remember when the US store first went up there was only about 10000 tracks, I'm sure it will be full soon enough.

very nice

just wondering if i need anything yet

mmmm now let me think..

oh yes about £300 worth..damm

should sound fine when i get my airport express

:)

Would rather pay 79 cents with today's exchange rates :)

Do the tracks still come in the Apple (AAC?) format?

Yup still Dolby AAC. :D

can you change them to MP3 once you have them?

Is anybody else having problems accessing the Music store? I can't get into it at all.

There were some problems before connecting but I think its been resolved now. Everyone logging in as soon as they got home.

No you can't change to MP3 as such, but you can burn unlimited CD's ;)

Steve Jobs was interviewed on News 24 tonight.

Asked why it's more expensive in the UK that anywhere else to download a track or album? UK charges highest tax and make them include it in the price so you don't now how much it is :(

Asked why they have seperate launches in each country? the majority of songs have different companies who own rights to sell the track in a particular company. So, if someone in Germany downloads a track, they need to work out who gets paid. It could be an entirely different company in the UK, US, rest of Europe. There's no database with this info, so they had to work it all out with the record companies, hence the delays in launching sites.

It's never as simple as it appears. A step in the right direction though.

Stefan

Hope you get a receipt for every track you buy - or you could still end up in the sh1t.


If you downloaded an album of overnet say. Then made e-mail receipts from Apple Itunes would that be the same.

Also why is it people think that copying CD's degrades the quality, only compression does that, as its digital to digital. e.g. if I copy a word file from cd to cd does the word file quality degrade - no !!

Have heard a few hi-fi "experts" bandying this one about.

It depends on what format you use doesn't it. You could use Apple Lossless or Microsoft Lossless *shudder* if you wanted but you would end up with uncompressed 20 meg files per track. AAC is a very good quality compressor, developed by dolby so I don't think anyone will complain about sq in iTunes.

I don't understand what you are talking about on the receipt thing though. You download the track, play it, its yours.

those links dont work for me :(

ermm Bittorrent :confused: If you don't have a Reciept your collection just looks like a heavy Kazza user :D

Paying for music :rolleyes: next you'll be telling me you don't have Shrek 2 on DVD WITH 5.1 surround

iTunes knows what's purchase music and what's not. So you don't need a receipt.

As for paying for music, I can't see why people don't want to. You did before this new fangled interweb came about and you should now. I know how pissed off I'd be if someone started ripping my designs without paying for them.

Before MP3's hit the scene and everyone started sharing them, they just used to copy the original CD. It's been around since the first CD Writers hit the streets.

Before then (although I'm too young to remember well enough), I'm pretty sure there were plenty of hooky cassettes floating around.

What about a subscription-based service. You subscribe to iTunes annually and then you just stream as much music as you want. You don't need your own personal CD collection, just use the whole iTunes database a bit like tuning into your own jukebox over the net.

Stefan

Yes there were obviously bootleg copies of everything flying around before but nothing like the frenzy that is now where everybody downloads music. I like the idea of being able to access any music at anytime, but people should really give credit to whoever gave them the track. Personally I have used p2p's to sample tracks, if I like it I will buy a proper copy.

I don't like the subscription based ones. I, like many others, have a "music collection" songs that I own. That I can keep and listen too whether connected to the net or not. They are not very good if you want to take some tracks out in the car with you, or burn a mix CD.

I can see why it would suit some people better than the collection, but I can't imagine having to go to a site, then find my song, start the stream so I can listen to it. I'd rather just turn on my iPod/CD player/Mac and play the track I want to hear straight away.

You could still achieve this as long as there was a net connection. It's not something that's in the near future, but there's no reason why you couldn't have a wireless net connection anywhere in the world. Bit like mobile phone technology. There's no reason why you can't have a net connection in a car. OK, maybe the technology isn't here to achieve it, but the theory is sound. People still listen to radio, so this is just an idea of extending that type of listening to something you can tailor to your own tastes. You do the same thing on an iPod, I'm just saying the playlists could be stored on an Internet source rather than on everyones local iPod.

Personally, I still buy CD's coz I like proper music collections rather than just a list of files on a PC/Mac.

Stefan

About flippin time. I've not listened to music off a CD in about 5 years. MP3 player in the scoob and a pukka unit in the lounge. As soon as I get a CD, its ripped at a decent quality and stored away.

What does get on my t!ts is the gimp companies that are starting to "protect" their music by cutting tracks into hundreds of pieces and putting special software on the CD to play it on a PC so you cant made nice rips without resorting to electronic "violence".

My damn media, I've payed the dosh, let me do what I want with it ffs... GRRR

Been using US iTunes since it launched to preview music before buying it. Time to test out AAC on my players :)

BTW, if you're trying it out and it says "not launched in this country yet", just register and it works. I dont think they're updated that page yet.

Jules

Jules before you do, make sure your players support AAC. Some don't.