[uochris]

I was browsing around and iTunes was really slow doing searches and accessing preview tracks. When I went to buy an album, up popped a screen highlighting new iTunes features.

Browse iMixes
Free single of the week
Movie Trailers
Radio Charts
Unlimited CD burning of songs. Burn any playlist up to seven times.
Play your music on up to five machines. (Mac's and PC's)

They also just added prepaid iTunes cards which are available from Target stores.

There's also a new terms of service agreement that you have to agree to. I don't know exactly what is changed but there is now a blurb about not trying to circumvent copy protection.

[pixelhead11]

Here is a screen shot of what I got tonight

http://www.pixelheadmedia.com/crap/itunes.jpg
Please read and obey the image posting guidelines. This image wildly exceeded our limits. -- tooki

[icruise]

Here is what I got when I followed a link within iTunes. Looks pretty cool. I went to download it, but Apple still has 4.2 on their site.

Please read and review the image posting guidelines. This image significantly exceeded our limits. -- tooki

Hmm... I can't exactly edit the title of the thread to indicate that there are large images inside, now can I? Wouldn't it make more sense for the moderator to do that, rather than snipping images that are very relevant to this thread? Sorry to get pissy, but I took the time to take the screen shot for people, and all.

[Gee4orce]

Cool !

<obligatory Euro iTunes whinge>
...maybe they'll actually launch the store over here so we can actually use it. You know, and actually give them some of our hard earned money, and that kind of thing
</obligatory Euro iTunes whinge>

The Party Mix and Jewel Case things look cool. Good to see Apple keeps expanding and innovating.

[juanvaldes]

lose 3 burn's before deleteing the playlist to gain 2 auth'd computers. Sucks to lose some but I can live with that. more comps at once is VERY important. Got three at home already without a laptop OR work computer.

[kovacs]

WMA support .... no way

[AKcrab]

I want my free Foo Fighters. Where the hell is it?
edit: get 4.5 now
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

[iNeusch]

Wow !! That's great !
WMA is the answer

[AKcrab]

I like the new integration between your playlist and the store. Good stuff!
I think the party shuffle could be better, but it's a start.

[jamesa]

does anyone know whether "Apple lossless format" is actually FLAC. And also, does this format work on ipods?

-- james

[AKcrab]

Originally posted by jamesa:
does anyone know whether "Apple lossless format" is actually FLAC. And also, does this format work on ipods?

-- james

It's just AAC, no? Not sure why it's listed under "new"...
From "help":

If you have a Macintosh computer with QuickTime 6.2 or later installed, or a Windows computer, the default encoding format is MPEG-4 AAC, a new, compressed format that rivals the sound quality of audio CDs.

edit: There is a new import option, but they don't want us to know what it is, i guess.
Files is a .m4a, and about 8x bigger than an mp3. (one single song file i tested)

[Mac Write]

You can download iTunes 4.5 now it is so cool. Smart Playlists still suck

[proton]

Note that iTunes 4.5 can not connect to iTunes 4.2 shared music over Rendezvous.

- proton

[neely]

QuickTime 6.5.1 is also available for download at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download and is needed for iTunes' new lossless format. Claims to improve AAC encoding and do some other stuff, too.

It still says version 6.5 on the QT page as I write this, but the English download is definitely 6.5.1.

[f1000]

Originally posted by neely:
QuickTime 6.5.1 is also available for download at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download and is needed for iTunes' new lossless format.

I hope Apple's introduction of this new lossless compression format is a harbinger of full quality (lossless) downloads from the iTMS. I�d even pay a little more for the option.

I refuse to buy AAC compressed songs.

[Wevah]

First, AFAIK only the Windows version of iTunes 4.5 will allow you to do anything with WMA (correct me if I'm wrong, of course).

Also, AAC is not lossless; the "Apple Lossless" format is (probably) not AAC (again, correct me if I'm wrong...though I would like to know what format it is, specifically).

[Grrr]

Yippee.. Does it play MP3's??

PS, Tooki..

[jb8748]

From http://www.apple.com/itunes/share.html

"Real Fast User Switching

For Mac users, iTunes 4.5 now takes full advantage of Mac OS X Panther fast user switching, so you don�t have to quit iTunes to switch users on your Mac. Even better, you don�t have to maintain two separate libraries, either. iTunes figures it all out, so you can manage your music with ease."

I'm at work at the moment so I can't see how this works but it looks like it could save some arguements...

James

[voodoo]

Originally posted by Wevah:
First, AFAIK only the Windows version of iTunes 4.5 will allow you to do anything with WMA (correct me if I'm wrong, of course).

I thought it let you convert unprotected WMA to AAC or something, even if you can't actually play the WMA in iTunes.

[Todd Madson]

I did some experimenting with the lossless codec this morning (I'm a musician) and the
resulting files were in the 996 kbps range and they sounded virtually indistinguishable
from my master AIFF files. Very impressive and the sizes were not to be believed (small
if you didn't catch my drift).

There's very little info at Apple's website about this, just that it's there and it produces
CD quality files at massively reduced sizes. Well, yes, but I'd like more info.

The lossless files will play on the 3rd generation iPod units and the iPod mini but not
my original 5 GB iPod. Bummer. I'm amazed there was an update to begin with for my
original iPod.

As far as quicktime 6.5.1 - I bet there's an update later today.

And yes, iTunes does and always has played MP3 files and from what I can see the
windows version is out too.

[chris v]

So. when do we get disk-at-once buring for albums? I've got a couple albums I bought from ITMS that are marred by the blip between songs where the artist intended a crossfade.

The rest of it seems like good news.

CV

[Horsepoo!!!]

Hahaha, the jewel case cover printing is amazing!!!!!

The only thing I find out of place are the movie videos (specifically the movies that don't have soundtracks.) There's no real reason for movie previews to be on the iTunes Music Store.

[typoon]

Nice new features

Automatically convert WMA to AAC. Convert the music you saved in Windows Media Player (unprotected WMA files) to AAC format.

"iMix," a new way for users to publish playlists of their favorite songs on the iTunes Music Store for other users to preview, rate and purchase. iMix creates a virtual iTunes community, enabling users to discover new music recommended by fellow music fans and rate the iMixes published by other iTunes users;

[Gee4orce]

Originally posted by chris v:
So. when do we get disk-at-once buring for albums? I've got a couple albums I bought from ITMS that are marred by the blip between songs where the artist intended a crossfade.

The rest of it seems like good news.

CV

Aparently you can join multiple tracks into one track, yet somehow the individual components retain their own meta data. Haven't tried it, but it could solve this problem for you.

As for movie trailers - I think they fit better on the iTunes store than they do on the Quicktime section of Apple's website :/ And, maybe it's an hint at future movie downloads ?

The mosic video integration is very slick, especially with the relevent song right there underneath the video for you to purchase it. Very cool.

Honestly, walking into a shop and buying a physical disc - that you probably can't preview - is looking more and more archaic every time I go on the iTMS.

[austeros]

"Handy Concept for Concept Rock


Many music CDs contain songs that blend into each other, and importing them to iTunes may create a small gap between songs that interrupts the flow. If you use the iTunes Join Tracks feature, the program melds two or more songs into one, continuous gap-free track. So now you can enjoy listening to classical music, concept rock albums and extended dance mixes without the silent treatment."



If that works, its going to be great. Some songs are just ment to be joined: Pink Floyd's Brain Damage & Eclipse or The Happiest Days of Our Lives & Another Brick in the wall part 2; the beatles golden slumbers-carry that weight-the end

cant wait to try it

[m4rtin]

just stop farting about and make it work for the rest of us....

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:

Honestly, walking into a shop and buying a physical disc - that you probably can't preview - is looking more and more archaic every time I go on the iTMS.

Good point. In fact, people normally go into a shop knowing exactly which CD they want because they heard a song on it before. Not a whole many people go into a shop and buy a CD that they know nothing about (author or song). And like you said, without being able to preview a song, why would someone take the risk of buying a full album they haven't been able to hear at $15+? iTMS lets you preview songs and allows you to buy single songs or full albums.

If I were to suggest something to someone...I'd say, if you know a music band really well and love their music, I think it's ok to walk into a store and buy a hardcopy CD and shell out the extra money. You'll get higher quality sound and a physical and original copy of the album. If you want to casually buy other songs of bands you don't like as much, you might as well just buy them off iTMS for being able to preview and only buy the singles you like.

[RooneyX]

Ah! Movie trailers? Movies? Ah, video iPod! Gimme gimme, I almost bought a blocky Archos thing.

[dreilly1]

Originally posted by austeros:
Many music CDs contain songs that blend into each other, and importing them to iTunes may create a small gap between songs that interrupts the flow. If you use the iTunes Join Tracks feature, the program melds two or more songs into one, continuous gap-free track. So now you can enjoy listening to classical music, concept rock albums and extended dance mixes without the silent treatment."

I don't have access to iTunes here at work to test this out on, but if this is just part of the import process, then iTunes has had this for some time now. What you do is signal what tracks you want joined before you import, and the encoder will turn it into one long track. Which while it solves the problem, is not very elegant. It also doesn't solve the problem with iTMS music.

I've encoded all of my music in Linux with LAME's --nogap option. Since LAME has been ported to OS X for quite some time now, I've been working on a script to do the gapless ripping properly on OS X, but haven't had much time to pursue it lately.

I installed winamp on an old PC at work, and it has a buffering option in it's output plugin that plays back these gapless MP3's without a hitch. I am truly boggled by the fact that iTunes doesn't have this. (I would have installed iTunes on the PC at work if it did...)

[mamamia]

Originally posted by Todd Madson:
I did some experimenting with the lossless codec this morning (I'm a musician) and the
resulting files were in the 996 kbps range and they sounded virtually indistinguishable
from my master AIFF files.

The term "lossless" is a term of art in the digital music world. It has a very specific definitiion: no data loss. It uses a more sophisticated algorithim to compress the data comprising the music into a smaller number of bits and bytes, but does not alter the music itself (unlike mp3 or aac). You could compress and uncompress between a lossless codec and something like aiff or .wav a thousand times, and the resulting files would be identical every time.

for instance: one can write the number 32 a number of different ways.
1) 32
2) 2^5
3) 16x2
4) 8x4
5) 4x4x2
6) 2x2x2x2x2

you can go back and forth between the number 32 and the any of the other examples a thousand times, and the results will still be the same: 32.

my point is that, unless apple is fabricating its claim that this is a lossless codec, the two files you tested would contain the exact sanme digital music information, and would therefore be identical (assuming your computer has the capability to run the codec in the first place). your statement that the music sounded "virtually indisinguishable" implies that there was some difference between the two. this is simply not possible if it is a lossless codec.

sorry for being such a pedant. just thought i'd set the record straight as we enter this brave new world of lossless audio.

[C.J. Moof]

Originally posted by proton:
Note that iTunes 4.5 can not connect to iTunes 4.2 shared music over Rendezvous.

- proton

Yeah, I just verified that. I find that both surprising and annoying.

[delete]

The printable songlist is very nice but woh, that type is large.
Maybe they figure you'll be reading it in low light?

[quadgrande]

This feature seems new and not announced. When you fast user switch, iTunes keeps playing. It used to stop in deference to the new user.

[funkboy]

Five computers can now play purchased music... yay! They listened to some of us with too many machines in the house.

Anyone know if this fixes the problem with Windows machines and burning to certain DVD-Rs? My friend is totally distraught over the fact that he can't burn his purchased music with his new DVD-R. I told him I'm sure the new version will fix the problem.

[typoon]

Originally posted by quadgrande:
This feature seems new and not announced. When you fast user switch, iTunes keeps playing. It used to stop in deference to the new user.

Nope it's announced. It's on the itunes site as well.

[johnt519]

One other thing that is missing... while the new Party Shuffle dealy is pretty cool, and you can pick which playlist it picks songs from - you can't use a playlist that you have that is a shared playlist from another system! So you can't Party Shuffle if you have some friends over, with their iBooks, on your wireless network.

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Compilation grouping is awesome, but it doesn't appear on the iPod...

[Eug Wanker]

So, we Canadians can't download the free song.

Originally posted by Todd Madson:
I did some experimenting with the lossless codec this morning (I'm a musician) and the resulting files were in the 996 kbps range and they sounded virtually indistinguishable from my master AIFF files. Very impressive and the sizes were not to be believed (small if you didn't catch my drift).

Of course, that's the whole point of lossless encoding. There is no loss of data. It is 100% identical to the original AIFF. You could re-encode the song from AIFF -> AAC --> AIFF 1 million times and there would be no loss is quality.

Also, a compressed bit rate of 1 Mbps is not surprising, considering the original files are only 1.4 Mbps.

[typoon]

Originally posted by funkboy:
Five computers can now play purchased music... yay! They listened to some of us with too many machines in the house.

Anyone know if this fixes the problem with Windows machines and burning to certain DVD-Rs? My friend is totally distraught over the fact that he can't burn his purchased music with his new DVD-R. I told him I'm sure the new version will fix the problem.

They also dropped the amount of Disks you can burn before having to remix the play list. From 10- 7 Not really a big deal.

[fortepianissimo]

Originally posted by Silky Voice of The Gorn:
Compilation grouping is awesome, but it doesn't appear on the iPod...

Hm... can you explain a bit what this is about?

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Originally posted by fortepianissimo:
Hm... can you explain a bit what this is about?

With the "Group Compilations while browsing" pref is checked (in General), Compilations are grouped together at the top of the Artist list, and artists that only appear in Compilations are removed from the main Artist list. Unfortunately, the iPod (mine is a 20gig 2G) doesn't have this option, even after updating the firmware.

[intake]

Originally posted by johnt519:
One other thing that is missing... while the new Party Shuffle dealy is pretty cool, and you can pick which playlist it picks songs from - you can't use a playlist that you have that is a shared playlist from another system! So you can't Party Shuffle if you have some friends over, with their iBooks, on your wireless network.

Grrr, just found this as well. I use my iBook to stream all of my music from my tower and then push it to the stereo. I guess Party playlists is not going to get used here until this feature is enabled. Sending feedback to Apple as this is just stoopid. Maybe it will make an appearance in iTunes5.

[MOTHERWELL]

Originally posted by Silky Voice of The Gorn:
With the "Group Compilations while browsing" pref is checked (in General), Compilations are grouped together at the top of the Artist list, and artists that only appear in Compilations are removed from the main Artist list. Unfortunately, the iPod (mine is a 20gig 2G) doesn't have this option, even after updating the firmware.

This may work in an iPod sw update?

[typoon]

Can we make this a Sticky? I'm sure we will al lbe finding new features/bugs for a good while to come with 4.5

[southtdi]

I wish apple would add one feature to iTunes that I have been wanting.

I want the ability to move the library, playlist, or even song form authourized computer to computer. Good example of this is I have both a powerbook and a G5. I could keep teh library on my G5 for streaing to my stereo and when i go out of town (always take the PB) I could could tranfer the playlists, or songs, or even the entire library to that computer. This would be handy for when I find new CD's and import them or just to keep the library up to date.

I use the ipod all of the time but have found many reasons to keep the libray at hand too. As much as I have thought about it I cannot find how this would cause any problems with copyright since you still only have one copy of the song. It is just mobile between computers as well as the ipod.

Very important part is the ability to intergrate the different playlists or song back togther to make a full library at will.

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Originally posted by MOTHERWELL:
This may work in an iPod sw update?

As I said, I updated the firmware. Nada.

[funkboy]

Originally posted by southtdi:
I wish apple would add one feature to iTunes that I have been wanting.

I want the ability to move the library, playlist, or even song form authourized computer to computer. Good example of this is I have both a powerbook and a G5. I could keep teh library on my G5 for streaing to my stereo and when i go out of town (always take the PB) I could could tranfer the playlists, or songs, or even the entire library to that computer. This would be handy for when I find new CD's and import them or just to keep the library up to date.

I use the ipod all of the time but have found many reasons to keep the libray at hand too. As much as I have thought about it I cannot find how this would cause any problems with copyright since you still only have one copy of the song. It is just mobile between computers as well as the ipod.

Very important part is the ability to intergrate the different playlists or song back togther to make a full library at will.

It's a great idea for home use, but what about at a college? I mean, I like the idea of free songs for everyone, yeah... but then everyone on the LAN could get the files from everyone else's computer. The only files not allowed to play would be the FairPlay songs d/led from the iTMS.

I wish more people at my college would use iTunes...

[kman42]

Can someone explain the second part of this; the part about maintaining two separate libraries?

"Real Fast User Switching

For Mac users, iTunes 4.5 now takes full advantage of Mac OS X Panther fast user switching, so you don�t have to quit iTunes to switch users on your Mac. Even better, you don�t have to maintain two separate libraries, either. iTunes figures it all out, so you can manage your music with ease."


kman

[typoon]

Originally posted by kman42:
Can someone explain the second part of this; the part about maintaining two separate libraries?

"Real Fast User Switching

For Mac users, iTunes 4.5 now takes full advantage of Mac OS X Panther fast user switching, so you don�t have to quit iTunes to switch users on your Mac. Even better, you don�t have to maintain two separate libraries, either. iTunes figures it all out, so you can manage your music with ease."


kman

Before with mulitple users each user would have there own Music library folder. now I believe that doesn't happen.

[typoon]

Has anyone tried the WMA - AAC conversion yet?