The iTunes Music Store is dumb

[Nermal]

Currently, you can only deauthorize a computer if you're using that machine. If your hard drive crashes, you can't deauthorize that machine anymore because the authorization information is lost (unless you backed it up and restore it on a new drive).

Your Mac's serial number seems to be transmitted when you authorise. I've reinstalled OS X a couple of times, and both times forgot to deauthorise beforehand. After reinstalling and authorising again, my iTunes account still says that only 1 computer has been authorised.

 

[Doctor Q]

I think iTMS albums are overpriced. When individual tunes are 99 cents, I think an album's worth of them should be discounted to maybe $7 or $8, not $10 or more. When the album price is the sum of the tune prices, I end up playing each 30-second sample and buying, say, 5 out of 12 tracks - why pay for the whole thing if I'm paying by the song anyway?

I'd like to see album prices drop so you get a good discount for buying the whole album. The record labels would have to agree to this. And then I'd like to see Apple institute upgrade pricing, so if you buy one or two tunes from an album, you can come back later and "trade them in" for the album by paying the album price minus 99 cents for each previous track you bought, as if you bought the album in the first place. That way, I don't have to make a once-and-final decision whether to buy a few tracks or the whole album. (I'm too cheap to buy the album later if I'd have to pay for some of the tracks twice.)

Maybe that doesn't suit Apple's "keep it simple" model, but I would buy more music if they discounted albums more and if they let you trade up, and they would make more money from me in the end.

 

[iindigo]

I think iTMS albums are overpriced. When individual tunes are 99 cents, I think an album's worth of them should be discounted to maybe $7 or $8, not $10 or more. When the album price is the sum of the tune prices, I end up playing each 30-second sample and buying, say, 5 out of 12 tracks - why pay for the whole thing if I'm paying by the song anyway?

I'd like to see album prices drop so you get a good discount for buying the whole album. The record labels would have to agree to this. And then I'd like to see Apple institute upgrade pricing, so if you buy one or two tunes from an album, you can come back later and "trade them in" for the album by paying the album price minus 99 cents for each previous track you bought, as if you bought the album in the first place. That way, I don't have to make a once-and-final decision whether to buy a few tracks or the whole album. (I'm too cheap to buy the album later if I'd have to pay for some of the tracks twice.)

Maybe that doesn't suit Apple's "keep it simple" model, but I would buy more music if they discounted albums more and if they let you trade up, and they would make more money from me in the end.

I don't understand why people want their albums stupidly cheap... $10 is a real bargain compared to what you can get in most retail stores. In my town, one store's CDs range from $20-$25 in price, so like I said, $10 is a steal.

EDIT: Besides, the artist does have to make at least a little money...

 

[quackattack]

It is stupid to buy an album on iTunes. You pay nearly the same price for 128 kbps encoding. If you buy it in a store you get full, uncompressed quality, not to mention a physical CD and cover art. If iTunes went to Apple lossless, or at least 256 I might be interested.

If you are just buying a single, I can see it. Sometimes its worth $.99 to have a song you like, but have no intention of buying the album.

 

[Doctor Q]

I don't understand why people want their albums stupidly cheap.

It stems from the fact that, despite uniform pricing, songs are not of uniform value to a particular individual. iTMS allows me to buy the best (in my opinion) 4 songs from a 10-song album, which a CD store can't do. Those 4 are worth the price I pay, 99 cents each. But the other 6 aren't worth as much to me, so I end up buying only 4, for $3.96. If I got a deal on the album, I might go for it, rather than not buying the other songs at all. If I do, everybody wins: me, Apple, the record label, and the artist, because more tunes were sold.

 

[rendezvouscp]

So will CDs, but with physical media you can open the case, you can thumb through the booklet, you can go, "Hey, I remember this old thing, I was listening to it that one night after I got back from _____ and ______ happened. Those were great times. It's even got my fingerprints on it." Compared to an m4p file, which will have absolutely zero value whatsoever, monetary or otherwise.

Eh, I'm not so sure about this. I know that since I use the iTMS all the time, and I associate songs with memories, sometimes I think "Oh, I remember when I bought this!" I don't know, it's different for different people, but I was never really into CD's, except for their lossless quality.
-Chase

 

[MacFan26]

I've gotten a bunch of songs from the iTMS as well as about 10 albums. I don't find the quality to be bad in any of it. I'm sure it can be better in some areas, but I consider myself an audiophile and I don't really think that it matters that much whether you rip it at a higher rate or get the 128 at the iTMS. Anyway, I have an external drive and an iPod, so there's two backup places for my music right there. It's not for everyone, but they wouldn't have sold so many songs had there not been a market for this. And one of the points is, people are actually purchasing the music, instead of downloading it for free.