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- - I hate you Itunes. (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-entertainment/107042-i-hate-you-itunes.html)

I hate you Itunes.

I think Itunes must have my house bugged. Every time I say to Grace or Sissy, "Hey, I think I'm going to download __________ from Itunes, and I'll go on and it's there, but it's "album only" or "season only".

Two weeks ago, it was "When She Loved Me" from the Toy Story 2 soundtrack. If you want it, you have to buy the whole album for $9.99. Disney's movie soundtracks are like this all over the place. The one or two songs you might actually want are "album only" and all the crap nobody care about is $.99 a pop.

Last week, I decided I liked a couple of the songs from the Transamerica soundtrack. Both of them "album only" including Travelin' Through.

Today I go on looking for Aeon Flux shorts. I don't care about the 30 minute full length episodes, I just want the shorts that ran as a part of Liquid Television, the little silent espionage thrillers that have Aeon being killed at the end of every episode, then back alive the next with no explanation. The full length episodes are a big step down in enterrainment value.

What do I find? The shorts are "season only" and the longer episodes available individually. And here I thought the whole purpose of services like Itunes was to provide a convenient way to share individual songs to reduce piracy. I'd happily pay a dollar each for Travelin Through, When She Loved Me, and the Six Aeon Flux shorts, giving Itunes a good $8 right there, but I'm not paying $45 for them, $10 for the two albums and $25 for the season set of Aeon Flux. Even at $1.99 for the shorts, that'd be $14 they'd get, which I'd be happy with.

It makes little sense to me. By setting it up this way, they're just driving customers like me away and losing money. Allowing for individual purchase or season sets means that they'd be getting me buying the individual items and those who want the whole season/album buying that. They get the best of both worlds.

Gilda

Here's my theory: if an artist's individual track is sold, it would create a need for a different contractual agreement, whereas a full album sale probably falls under the same contractual rules as if a physical album was sold. This way it's less hassle and cost for the record label.

That and some people would probably just buy the album anyways to get the one song they liked.

At least you can shop at I-Tunes USA. The Canadian store has a much more limited selection.

How can they not sell "Slow Ride" by Foghat? Or "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band?

Oh, and for the record, "When, She Loved Me" by Randy Newman, Aimee Mann's "Save Me" from Magnolia, and South Park's Blame Canada by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, where all totally robbed by Phil Collins' lame Tarzan song for Best Song Oscar.

Especially Aimee Mann, yes. I don't particularly need to hear Randy Newman do anything in particular.

The problem is that iTunes is caught between modern consumers, who are willing to pay for exactly the download they want, and the recording industry, which is locked in a 20th-century album-sales-oriented mindset. They're not managing that balance particularly well. I've never spent a cent there because of exactly the issues you're talking about, Gilda.

If you don't mind skirting a legal gray-area, http://www.allofmp3.com has almost as broad a selection as iTunes, and sells individual tracks for much cheaper than anywhere else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Mmmm. I'm kinda iffy on gray market goods. I know of several transwomen who get their drugs through overseas gray market providors, which may or may not be illegal for personal purposes.

Thank you for the link. I'll consider it.

I can't see spending $10 for one song when I can get ten other songs for the same amount of money. Even if I don't like any of those songs as much as I do the one I wanted, I'm going to get more enjoyment from the ten than from the one for the same price.

I do realize that not everyone is like me, though. Wasn't the original model for music distribution on records based on singles rather than albums? Artists would release singles until they had three or four good ones, then those, along with b-sides and filler would be put on an album to further cash in by getting people to buy the other stuff. It wasn't until the 70's that album oriented lp's became more common.

Gilda

hmmm I'll have to ask the guy who helped hammer out the deal with the iTunes stuff why the shorts are what they are.

we only recently started the iTunes stuff, and I wonder what's going to happen now that we have Urge and the coming foray with Microsofts Zpod.

I read the title thinking it was a thread about iTunes, and not Apple's music store. They're entirely different things. I use iTunes daily and I don't hate it at all. However, I'd never use their online store and removed all the "Music Store" links from iTunes.

I'm sticking with illegal downloading until the music industry catches up to the times. That, or I'll never switch and be a "pirate" for the rest of my days. Haven't decided yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JinnKai

How exactly do I remove all those links? And I agree, as a music playing program iTunes works really well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JinnKai

I suppose I wasn't clear in the title because there isn't a whole lot of room there, but I think the OP made it clear that I am upset with the music store part of Itunes.

Gilda

One thing that pisses me off is that I did a favor for a friend and he got me a gift certificate. Unfortunately my itunes account is American and his was paid for in Canadian. The itunestores aren't interchangable, so he threw his money away.

Nice jesture though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JinnKai

I'm sticking with illegal downloading until the music industry catches up to the times. That, or I'll never switch and be a "pirate" for the rest of my days. Haven't decided yet.

There is a middle ground, you know. You can buy a lot of music directly from the artist now. Maybe not for the huge names but smaller niche/independent artists all have material on their websites for direct sale - but I'm assuming you know this.

I believe that technology will cause the record labels to shrink, if not go away. But don't take my word for it, check out Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" theory. Basically, as technology gives more audience direct access to more artists, there will be less hit records and the proportion will shift to more artists getting smaller pieces of the pie. Who needs a million bucks anyway?

http://www.longtail.com/about.html

Quote:

Biography

I'm Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. I wrote The Long Tail, which first appeared in Wired in October 2004 and then became a book, published by Hyperion on July 11, 2006. You can order it here.

My speaking engagements are handled by The Leigh Bureau

The Long Tail, in a nutshell

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

One example of this is the theory's prediction that demand for products not available in traditional bricks and mortar stores is potentially as big as for those that are. But the same is true for video not available on broadcast TV on any given day, and songs not played on radio. In other words, the potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don't individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may rival that of the existing large market in goods that do cross that economic bar.

The term refers specifically to the orange part of the sales chart above, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The vertical axis is sales; the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the hits, which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century. The orange part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth is coming from now and in the future.

Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumber the hits by several orders of magnitude. Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits.

When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed. And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not).

Our research project has attempted to quantify the Long Tail in three ways, comparing data from online and offline retailers in music, movies, and books.

1) What's the size of the Long Tail (defined as inventory typically not available offline)?
2) How does the availability of so many niche products change the shape of demand? Does it shift it away from hits?
3) What tools and techniques drive that shift, and which are most effective?

The Long Tail article (and the forthcoming book) is about the big-picture consequence of this: how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches. It chronicles the effect of the technologies that have made it easier for consumers to find and buy niche products, thanks to the "infinite shelf-space effect"--the new distribution mechanisms, from digital downloading to peer-to-peer markets, that break through the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar retail.

The Wikipedia entry on the Long Tail does an excellent job of expanding on this.

The shift from hits to niches is a rich seam, manifest in all sorts of surprising places. This blog is where I'm going to collect everything I can about it.

So, JinnKai, in the future you probably won't be paying as much to the middle-man, should you decide to pay at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by krwlz

//snip...And I agree, as a music playing program iTunes works really well.

I'd disagree quite strongly to this statement. Of all the music playing programs I have used iTunes is at the bottom of my list.

Recently I ripped a bunch of new tracks (yes I am aware iTunes ripps) and when I tried to import them to iTunes...nothing happened. iTunes was just ignoring me. For about 20 minutes I tried dragging tracks to my library, one at a time, many at a time, then I tried the import feature... nada. Finally in a fit of pique I opened Windows Media player and opened the tracks there and what happened?

"Windows Media Player cannot play this track as it appears to be corrupted"

Well halleluia! Finally a fucking answer. Why couldn't iTunes just tell me that?

I hate iTunes, I hate you more than I love taffy.

Yeah, it's really the music industry you should be hating. They are the ones that designate tracks to be sold as "Album Only" in the iTMS. Because they know the rest of the disc sucks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_marq

Well I will agree there. I usually rip with other programs as well. And there are a few formatts that iTunes doesnt recognize/ refuses to recognize.

You know man, money is behind this, they want you hooked on iTunes, and to stick with iTunes.

As far as the sound however, I find it far superior to anything else I've used in conjunction with my middle of the road sound card, and higher end stereo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gilda

Bittorrent Gilda. Bittorrent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hardknock

Bittorrent Gilda. Bittorrent.

I don't know what that is. Would it work with my Ipod?

Gilda

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gilda

I don't know what that is. Would it work with my Ipod?

Gilda

Since you're not interested in piracy...BitTorrent is not for you.

BitTorrent is a file-sharing protocol used by people to share music/movies/programs over the Internet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by onesnowyowl

Since you're not interested in piracy...BitTorrent is not for you.

BitTorrent is a file-sharing protocol used by people to share music/movies/programs over the Internet.

Ah. No thanks.

I think for me it's mostly that I work in a field where the integrity of intellectual property is paramount, and I can't see myself violating someone else's intellectual property rights for my own convenience.

Gilda

Aha!

Aeon Flux is now available for download on Amazon Unbox (downloadable DVD quality tv shows and movies) with the individual episodes all available, and at a much higher resolution than iTunes. I have found my new source for downloading tv shows.