Thursday, April 29, 2004
Happy Birthday iTunes: iTunes 4.5
On Tuesday, Apple introduced the third generation iTunes Music Store, and Wednesday brought forth even more goodies of delight with the introduction of iTunes 4.5, iPod updates, and even more features for your music listening pleasure.
Yes, I am an iTunes/iPod fan. I believe they are the ultimate musical one-two punch combo. So I gayly went forth to download the new iTunes 4.5 to see what’s what. A plethora of new features and functions to explore, but first let me pause in remose that my most essential need remains un-addressed (better handling of removal media as music storage devices). That said, let me briefly go into some of the things I’m enjoying, and I’ll do a more indepth review later.
Party Shuffle
After you’ve installed 4.5, the first item you notice is the new Party Shuffle function. Party Shuffle is a new playlist that selects songs from your library or selected playlist and creates a blended playlist for house parties, dinner parties, or your own easy listening pleasure. It’s a DJ box, that gives you greater control of your playlist mix.
Let’s say I’m having a few friends over, the goal is to start with a light dinner, tons of finger foods, and lots of good conversation, but I want to gear up the music selection towards the end to some tunes with beats, so that we might go out dancing after dinner, and everyones well prepared. I might prepare a “Dinner Party” playlist, then use that under Party Shuffle. Why? Because, I can preview upcoming songs, add a song to the queue if someone request it (it plays after the currently playing song, without disrupting the remaining order of the playlist), and other flexibilities. Very nice.
iTunes Store Arrows
I’m not certain what iTMS calls them, but you know when your browsing the Music Store, and the song, artist, and album all have that little grey arrow, that allows you to get more detail. Basically if you click on the arrow by the artist, it brings up the artist detail sheet in iTMS, if you select the album, it switches to album view, etc. Well now this function is in your home library collection (the downside/upside) it takes you to iTMS so you can see other songs, albums, etc. by the artist. Very cool.
iMix
It’s easy to overlook this feature, unless you know its there. Now in iTunes whenever you highlight a playlist, a small grey arrow (yes the same grey arrow as above) shows up next to the playlist. Clicking on the arrow will get you an offer to “publish” your playlist to the iTunes Music Store’ iMix area. The features kind of slow right now, due to the millions of users frantically sharing their little hearts out, but I’m certain Apple will adjust bandwidth soon.
The features good as is, but is woefully under-developed. Some fairly simple functions, I assumed would be there are missing, such as group playlist by users, or accessing all playlist by a username, etc. Don’t get me wrong, parts of these features are available, if I go to the iTMS and select iMix, my default view is by Rating, or by Recent, both limit viewing to about 100 iMixes at a time. Considering the millions of iTunes and iTMS users, this will relegate many to the land of the unseen. Good and fine to a degree.
Honestly, I don’t won’t to see “Billy Bob’s Beer Drinking Playlist,” unless Billy Bob has decidedly electic music taste and gets a 4 start rating from more than 100 users. But I may want to find the iMixes plublished by friends of mine or by websites that I visit. Hell, I may want to even see what I’ve published. I’ve published two playlist, the first was to test the service, with my current morning walk playlist. The second was because I made the mistake of not grabbing the url of the first playlist and could not find it after combing through hundreds of iMix pages.
I knew I had seen where I could view other playlist by me (this user), and that the control key would give me the ability to copy a url. So I went back and published, Inspired by the L Word. Twenty songs that either used in the L Word or under consideration by me to create L Word music videos. Thirteen of the songs were published, I immediately captured the url and now can use it to pull up other lists that I publish.
So other quick viewing options would be nice, such as top rated, lowest rated, most visits, least visists, recently added, or perhaps top 100 for each rating level (5 stars, 4 stars, etc.), and searching is a must. A must I say. Also what would be cool is some function like MusicMobs.org or Amazon.com where you can select favorite users, and explore the communities that build up around them. Say that I select a small group of people as my favorites, 3-4 friends, and another 3-4 websites/blogs, and then a few randoms. Let’s say, I chose ”What Do I Know” a nice little website that did a great music list of those songs that you love to hate. I always want to be able able to see what iMixes are added by “What Do I Know,” but would also be cool to explore other people who are tracking the ”What Do I Know” iMixes.
Smarter Playlist
Now smart playlist can use other playlist to be built from. Nice. This allows me to remove my “NOT Audiobook” option, and create a single playlist that contains just music (not audible books or other spoken word albums), and then use that to build random playlist.
Radio Station Charts
Some have consider this a non-feature, but I love it. Yes, it’s odd that I, who does not listen to the radio, would love to peruse radio station charts, but I do, I always have. It’s one of my many quirks. So now on top of Billboard, and local charts published to the newspaper, I can select a radio station in any locale and look to see what’s playing. I’ve always found this a good way to keep current on what’s hot, but also a method for discovering new artist, since I don’t listen to the radion.
Music Videos
Much easier navigation of music videos. Instead of combing through by artist, trying to see if they have a video, you can just browse the available videos.
Movie Previews
Yes, this one is as quirky as reading radio station playlist and charts… I love viewing commercials and movie previews online. I cut them out of videos, ignore them on television, and look for them casually online. I’m a strange girl. I’m a frequent visitor of both Apple’s Quicktime and Movie Trailer sections. So it’s great that I can now view them directly in iTunes.
Free Tunes
For the next 8 days, Apple will release a free song for users to download. After that, the ruor is that there will be one free song per week.
Well that’s it for now, more details about the features I love the most, after I’ve played and let new habits form.
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