Marktopia

This has been around for awhile, but I finally got around to testing it and have to agree that this does make music even more enjoyable.  The link is courtesy of MacOSXHints.  If you use iTunes (and if you arn’t, why not?) I would recommend setting this up.

I am finally getting around to testing out the Amazon MP3 store, as referenced by Techory (among lots of others) last week,  and figured it would be best to compare experiences with iTunes as well. For this I am planning on purchasing 2 albums, one from the iTunes store and one from the Amazon store. Pricing, availability and features will determine which I buy from which. The two albums are

• Chicane - Far from the Maddening Crowds (chosen by recommendation of Ben Arnold)
• Immaculate Machine - Fables (Chosen because allmusic.com says they are similar to The Shins)

Chicane - Far from the Maddening Crowds

I decided to start with iTunes and did a search for Chicane. I did not find the particular album I was looking for from the artist, so I tried a search on the album name, also to no avail. I then tried the Amazon store and also did not find the album. iTunes did have a number of Chicane albums, whereas Amazon only had one song, so in availability, iTunes does win, however no music purchased.

Immaculate Machine - Fables

I searched Amazon first, hoping to give it a win, however Amazon could not find the artist at all. I then tried iTunes and we had success finding the album for$9.90 for 10 tracks. Note, I didn’t buy it because I listened to some of the 30 second samples on iTunes and didn’t care for it. Sorry Immaculate Machine.

Since the first two attempts were wins for iTunes, I figured I should go for something for sure on Amazon.

Office - A Night at the Ritz

I searched for Office and was successful in finding the band, however Amazon didn’t have A Night at the Ritz in mp3, just a CD purchase for $12.99. To be fair, I then checked iTunes and found the album right away at $7.99 for 14 tracks. I did buy this cause it was a deal, and after entering in my password to iTunes, the album was bought.

Determined to try the Amazon store, I decided to browse their selection of Indie& Lo-Fi to find something to get. After some searching, I decided on

A Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters

for $8.91, the same as iTunes. I should note that previewing music was a piece of cake from the Amazon interface, just as easy as iTunes.

I tried the 1-Click download and had to install the Amazon Downloader, which I did. I was pleased to see that the instructions worked with Firefox and not just Safari. I downloaded the .amz file and it automatically opened in the Amazon Downloader and started downloading.

As each file completed, it was automatically added into iTunes for me. One disappointing part is that it also didn’t get added to the Purchased playlist. After added, I checked the ID3 tag info and it was all there, at least as much as iTunes includes. It also has good quality artwork, important in this Cover Flow world.

Conclusions

I have to say that with my small sampling of albums, I was rather disappointed by Amazon. Their interface is not bad, and the lack of DRM is nice, however for someone like me who has drank the juice from Apple, it just isn’t as nice as the iTunes Music Store experience. I was actually really surprised at this because I had really high hopes for the Amazon store, but when it doesn’t have as much music as iTunes and it doesn’t integrate quite as nice as iTunes, it will be tough for them to knock down Apple.

ITunes: Categorize iTunes tracks based on star rating

It is kinda funny that this was posted on Lifehacker today. This afternoon I got interested in using some of the iTunes Smart Playlist features due to an article about a Do-It-Yourself Smart Radio Station, so I decided to check out some automatic rating programs. They didn’t really work, which sucks when there are over 10,000 tracks to rate. So now I am stuck back with unrated songs and am not sure what to do, if anything, with ratings. I am open to suggestions about how you use ratings or if you use them at all.

iTunes has announced the pre-sale of the upcoming Smashing Pumpkins album. As many of you know, I am quite the Smashing Pumpkins fan, so I clicked Pre-Order Now last night. So far I have been impressed with the Tarantula single and am anxious to hear the full album.

Along the lines of music, I have been working through my Not Listened To playlist on my iPod. When Rebekah and I merged our iTunes libraries last year (now almost 60GB strong) I had made a playlist, descriptively called Mark, of the music I want on my iPod along with a smart playlist that had all of the music from Mark that had a playcount of zero. However, I found myself listening to the same stuff over and over, so now I just sync the Not Played stuff to force myself to listen to everything at least once in alphabetical order by Artist. This has actually been nice because I am getting to listen to some stuff that is good but I forgot about (Blur, I am looking at you). I still have about 10 GB to go, but that is down from 13 GB.

After the great feedback from Frank on the last entry, I thought I would post another informative consumer report. This time I am reporting on the iTunes Music Store from Apple. I checked my account today and found that I had authorized 5 computers to play my purchased music. I know of 3 for sure, but I am lost as to the last two. Because one of my authorized computers was my dead home desktop, I had 3 computers I could not deauthoize, so I decided that it would be worth my time to try and get all of my computers deauthorized and start over. I went to Apple’s web site and sent them an e-mail through their iTunes Customer Service form. Here are the contents of my e-mail:

I was wondering if I could clear all of the authorizations for my account. I work in a job where I had logged into a couple of computers and they were then reloaded so I cannot deauthorize them. I also ran into a problem with my home computer crashing so I cannot deauthorize that computer either. I would just like to remove all authorizations so I can start from scratch with the computers that I do use. I will stay logged out of my account until I hear back from you.

I then received an automated response back within a few minutes saying the following:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting the iTunes Music Store.

We respond to all email requests in the order in which they are received. This is generally within 48 hours of arrival. Please do not resubmit your customer service request, as this may delay our response to you.

The catalog of songs grows every week. Visit often to preview the latest:
Sincerely,

The iTunes Music Store Team

Now I know the 48 hours from the Help Desk can be sooner than the posted time, so I was anxious to see how long this would take. To my suprise, I received an e-mail just over an hour later saying the following:

Dear Mark,

Thank you for contacting the iTunes Music Store.

We have manually deauthorized your registered computers from the iTunes Music Store. You can now reauthorize the computers that you intend to use.

To protect our customers’ privacy, we generally do not perform this service. However, in this case we have made an exception. If you plan to sell or stop using a computer, be sure to deauthorize it before you no longer have access to it.

The catalog of songs grows every week. Visit often to preview the latest:
Sincerely,

The iTunes Music Store Team

Everything was a success and I am happy to say that iTunes has impressed me once again. Kudos.