The concept here is that you may browse though lists of Artists and Albums and select the tracks you want. There's no need to buy an entire album at $16.99 just to here the one track that you and your friends care about. Just use a credit card (your parents', one suspects?) and set up an account. Thereafter, each time you click to purchase a track you?ll be charged $0.99. Now, iTunes claims to offer 200,000 songs in their library, and the new iPod designs claim to hold up to 10,000 songs, so clearly an overzealous youngster could quickly sail though his college tuition fund if so inclined, though I suspect film music lovers are a more responsible breed, and can safely withstand temptations like these. Having downloaded these files, on may burn them to CD or store them on hard drives or delete them.

In practice, while the benefits of one-click song shopping make sense for some portions of the music market, for film music fans this bold new experiment in music-on-demand holds some special challenges.

First of all, I'm sure this will come as no surprise, but the hours-old iTunes store is still a little disorganized. Actually, it's a mess. You'll find a handful of film scores, sure enough, alongside the same show tunes and rock "inspired by" albums you would at any mall store. Selection approximates the choice available at your neighborhood Best Buy or Target stores. John Ottman's APT PUPIL is available. John Barry is represented by KING RAT, THE LION IN WINTER (only 3 tracks!), and THE SCARLET LETTER, along with Moviola II. John Williams is represented by CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, HOOK, and RETURN OF THE JEDI.

Second, the idea here is to charge you for each song you download. For soundtrack fans, this presents a few probems. For instance, Jerry Goldsmith has just one album, FIRST KNIGHT, to his name at iTunes. Beware, young shopper, because "Arthur's Fanfare" clocking in at :047 will cost you the same $0.99 that "Arthur's Farewell" at 5:23 does, so choose wisely. In the same manner, the 20th Century Fox Fanfare from RETURN OF THE JEDI will set you back the same $0.99.

Third, there is often a tenuous relationship at best between the Artist and Album categories. THE RED VOILIN is listed under Joshua Bell, violinist. THE LOVE LETTER is credited to "The Love Letter" as Artist, and so on. Many soundtracks are credited to "The London Symphony Orchestra" or, less helpfully, "various artists" or even "soundtrack." Until some coherent standard is worked out, you?ll have to be clever indeed to find what you want.

Now I realize that few who read this will be contemplating purchasing scores his way. The collector's impulse runs strong, so the appeal of building a collection one cue at a time makes little sense. Still, I enjoyed browsing though the new service, if for no other reason than to see how far they have to go to make this new experiment succeed.

This same type of system will also be integrated into retail stores in the not-too-distant future. The concept is that a store will have a web-connected kiosk set up where customers can browse through album track listings, select the exact tracks they want, and then instantly have a CD burned for them containing only tracks that they want thereby creating a commercial kind of "mix CD." I work at Borders and they are already planning to implement this as soon as it is cost-effective and workable.

As film score fans, I think this is a remarkable opportunity if the companies who run the system live up to their claims. The days of missing out on the 1 or 2 score cues tacked on the end of an "Music Inspried By the Film..." are over. If the system works, I would be able to walk into Borders and create a CD made up of Silvestri's Lilo and Stitch score cues, Chris Young's two cues from The Country Bears soundtrack, Silvestri's two heartwarming cues from the Maid in Manhattan score, Fenton's Sweet Home Alabama cue and (just for good measure) David Arnold's two released Godzilla cues. Bada-bing bada-boom you've just got yourself a $16.99 (or so) CD containing film music you would have previously had to spend $80 or so to get a hold of.

Anyway, who knows if these new do-it-yourself CDs will catch on, but I'm kind of excited to see what happens with it.

Hummmm.....

What about the joy of glossy inserts?

I know it's mostly about the music, but I love having CDs on my shelf with great inserts and details about the score etc. etc. I am not attracted to the idea of walking out of my local record store with a CD-R in a black case.

First of all, I read that the songs are going to be compressed at 128kbps. Now I don't care what sort of compression algorithm you use (I think Apple is using MPEG-? AAC,) but 128kbps files are going to contain audible compression artifacts.

Secondly, as Camillu pointed out, there is a certain value in the booklets and having a physical CD with pretty artwork over a load of $.25 CD-Rs in those damn slimline cases.

Where was this epiphany you had about downloads for 99 cents?

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Originally posted by justin boggan:
Now, are these cd-rs? Or does the system make some sort of pressed cd? I remember reading here how some people would buy these 800.00$ things that could make pressed cds and then sell bootlegs on ebay and such and claim they are real pressed promos and then some idiot pays for it. Do we get this?

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Justin, it's just a delivery service, using iTunes 4.0.

You download the clips to your computer, and can burn them yourself.

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Originally posted by jonathan_little:
First of all, I read that the songs are going to be compressed at 128kbps. Now I don't care what sort of compression algorithm you use (I think Apple is using MPEG-? AAC,) but 128kbps files are going to contain audible compression artifacts.

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MPEG-4 AAC compression is much better than MP3 compression, and a 128kbps MPEG-4 AAC audio file is similar to a 192kbps MP3 file, in terms of lossyness.

192 ain't too bad sounding....

The problem is that unless they release OOP scores, that would be the only reason I would pay to use this. Does anybody know if they have a deal for scores with over 17 tracks or do I pay $25 for 25 tracks of a CD that sells in stores for $14-18?

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Originally posted by Taylor:
Does anybody know if they have a deal for scores with over 17 tracks or do I pay $25 for 25 tracks of a CD that sells in stores for $14-18?

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It seems to be (after browsing around it a bit), that it's $0.99 / per track, or $9.99 / album.

The 2-CD set of RETURN OF THE JEDI SE was $19.98 for the album, cause it's 2 discs.

However, the idea is cool. But really, do we expect all those college students (or 15 year olds who think they are all that) who have no cash to begin with to start forking out a buck a song? People just want stuff for free (if they can help it), heaven forbid the users of Kazaa and Morpheus actually buy a CD...

On a totally different note, I do believe this would help people in the editing business or other kinds of digital media (After Effects or what have you). I mean if they need a temp song or cue for something and don’t have the CD, pay a buck and you have it (if it's in the iTunes store), that’s not bad either. I can think of a few local people here who would go nuts over this, but like everything that is all nice and new…it’s still new, give it a few months to get the bugs out.

My two cents.

--Brian

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Originally posted by Crono/Kyp:
Eh, 192kbs is OK, I prefer my own custom setting. And those people on this board who have heard my encoding skills never go back (Brian's 2nd Shameless Plug for the week)

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The "End Titles" from Alien3 by John Williams? How did that happen?

Frankly, I don't find 192 to be all that great either. The mp3 format is fantastic for portable music, but I prefer encoding mp3s myself, as does Crono/Kyp, as I hate hearing artifacts.

When I am home, however, I didn't spend all this [Censored]ing money on this system only to be putting sub-standard audio on it. Especially now that I've heard some of the possibilities available; the clarity of SACD and DVD-A make CDs sound like Victorla.

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Originally posted by Swashbuckler:
My personal tastes, and I think the tastes of many on this board, will gravitate away from low-quality CBR mp3s.

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Maybe so. But have you actually LISTENED to the audio samples on Apple's service?

I like the idea of downloadble music, but I'll want untill I can get actual CD quality and not near CD quality.

Ahh JJH.....

I'm not gonna waste the perfect comeback on you now, But don't think I don't have it. Oh yes, it's time will come!

No, seriously, Jobs is taking the 'moral high-ground' (a sort of mea culpa for his "Rip, Mix Burn" edict) while simultaneously advancing consumer choice by providing a new-fangled shopping interface with a clean conscience, "Buy, Mix, Burn" philosophy.

I certainly don't think this inital introduction of the iMusic Store Service to be the last word. I expect there will be a great many changes in the future.

But, do I need it?

As a browsing tool, using iTunes 4 is...well, it's terrific (with a cable modem of course). It beats anything currently on the web as far as I'm concerned; I was just sampling some Schubert lieder the other day. Great sound quality through my Harman Kardan soundsticks.

Naturally, the catalogue will grow. It's just a matter of time...and licensing. As for 128 bit ACC downloads, well, even I'm a little leary. Nevertheless, the occassional 99¢ download for one or two tracks ain't gonna offend my ear or audio system, particularly when I take into consideration some of the b...tlegs I still play.

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Originally posted by MWRuger:
PS. Have you priced these Ipods? $300 for the cheap one and $600 for the 40 gig one.
A little pricey like most other Apple products.

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I bought the 20GB iPod two months ago for $909 CAN (taxes included). Yes, it's a litte pricy but trust me it is the best thing I own. And even with the new 30GB iPod at at $50 less with 10GB more I'm still happy with my purchase. Plus, I love the old scroll wheel design compared to the new design.

I love my iPod!

BTW, the new models are 10GB, 15GB and 30GB... there are no 40GB iPods... yet!

I suppose it all depends on how you listen to your music. I listen a lot in my car, which is equipped with a CD player and I have about a half dozen mix CD-Rs that I cycle through it. I typically only use my portable CD player when I'm traveling via air which happens about .25 times a year.

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Trust me... it's great to have 18.5GB of music with you at once. That's about 350 albums in the palm of your hand. There is no need to pack 20 or 30 CD's for the long trip... it's all in a machine that is the size of a deck of cards. Plus, I'm able to create great mixes (playlists) in the iPod. For example, my John Williams mix has 159 tracks. 695 minutes of music. It's great!!!

And as for sound quality... I've encoded my entire collection in 192kbps MP3s. I'm very happy with the quality!!!

-Erik-

I just don't want to spend money for inferior audio quality.

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