Rush my money to the record shops

[venta]

I'm at work, I've fortified myself with my morning dose of tea and toast-and-evil, and I still don't quite feel like taking on the kernel locking primitives which are waiting for me.

So instead, I think I'll wax gently wrathful about iTunes.

Those of you who follow the minutae of my life (a) should get out more, and (b) will be aware that I recently downloaded iTunes just to get hold of their exclusive Pixies' single. (Incidentally, apologies to those I to whom I offered an mp3, the continued delay is because bastard Evesham still haven't given my laptop back.)

Although iTunes does offer itself as an all-in-one music solution, I decided I'd prefer to continue using Winamp as my main music player. iTunes' format is proprietory, so I can only listen to Bam Thwok with iTunes, but that was pretty much the only thing I intended to use it for. I played around briefly with it, failed to be able to work out how to generate a playlist, and shut it down.

I'd unset all the "make this my default player" options, but it still started up every time I put a CD in the drive. I closed it every time. One time I failed to close it swiftly, and as I watched, my open directory of mp3s all changed icons. Away went the little orange zigzags of Winamp, and in came the blobby green notes of iTunes.

A quick glance through file associations confirmed it - all my audio format did indeed belong to iTunes. I've got them all back now to where I want them, but it took a while. iTunes was very much in disgrace.

But I thought its online music-purchasing aspects deserved a fair chance. Unfortunately it didn't do what I'd hoped - the music it offers for sale is mostly the mainstream things you could find in any record shop anyway, not the obscure stuff which I'd have thought it would make sense to offer. After all, deleted albums which are now unavailable should be cheap to offer, and people would want them. Fair enough, I suppose, but it was disappointing. As it was to discover that with a popular album, the "known" single is often only available as part of the album, not as an individual download.

Now, every Tuesday iTunes mails me to tell me about their newly available stuff, and to let me know what the free-to-download single of the week is. Two weeks ago, the free-to-download single didn't actually exist when I searched iTunes for it. Last week, clicking on the link from the mail displayed me a crashed page of XML. When I tried later, I got a popup saying the store was unavailable.

This week's mail listed a Barenaked Ladies album among their new releases. Now, a new Barenaked Ladies album is the sort of thing that one could get quite excited about on a Tuesday morning, so I followed the link - only to be told the album wasn't available in the UK store, and they had no details.

So. I am in all ways officially unimpressed. I dunno where the online music revolution is, kids, but it's not hanging around at iTunes.

And now - I realise as I come to fill in the 'current music' field that I'm not listening to anything. So I hunt out a suitable morning album, and discover that once again all my .m3u playlist files are displaying the iTunes icon. Bastards. Fortunately, the Winamp context menus seem stronger, and I'm still offered the 'play in Winamp' option. So I am doing.

And by the way, don't put St Ivel Gold low-fat edition on your toast. Work usually provides us with some form of butter-substitute-for-the-gullible, but this week we have St Ivel. It's an odd texture, and it doesn't melt properly, and it sits on your toast and mixes up with whatever else you're trying to spread on it in quite an unpleasant way. Bah.

Comments

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks. I had a hungering for an iPod while on holiday (a sudden desire to listen to Led Zeppelin) but a less-than-glowing technical review of iTunes helps soothe that itch ;-)

WinAmp is your friend

[wimble.livejournal.com]

My Winamp (5.03c) has a couple of useful options under "Preferences" -> "File Types".

Restore File Associations at start up. This'll do the same thing that iTunes is doing to reset all the associations, but back the way you want :-) (I imagine iTunes has a similar setting, somewhere, and you really want to clear it!)

And "Winamp Agent". Normally, I disagree with running agents, as I don't believe they really do useful things. But this one says:

Winamp Agent can maintain your Winamp file associations and show an icon in the system tray.
Disabling this feature may result in other applications launching when you open media files from Windows Explorer.

I, personally wouldn't run it. But then I don't have a too cooperative iTunes.

[diffrentcolours]

iTunes' format is proprietory

And that's why I won't use it. I can just about tolerate MP3, though I find Ogg Vorbis to be technically and legally preferable, but iTunes means I have to jump through hoops to do perfectly reasonable things with music, like play it on a Linux box or a non-iPod portable player, or burn it to CD. I've heard many tales of woe from Mac-otaku about how the DRM has caused them to lose access to hundreds of dollars worth of music, and I don't think that's a risk I want to take.

[venta.livejournal.com]

.m3u playlist files are displaying the iTunes icon

They still are :(

According to the "file types" dialog (I'm running Win2K), .m3u is a "Winamp Playlist File", to be opened with Winamp. According to Winamp's options, it owns .m3u files, and has the icon set as a grey and black version of the Winamp zigzag.

If I right-click on the icon, I get the Winamp context-sensitive menu. If I double click on it, it opens in Winamp.

So why the bloody hell is it displaying the iTunes icon ? Eh ?

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

> I'd unset all the "make this my default player" options ...

I really want to like Apple but this kind of thing just isn't on. Their **** QuickTime thing does it as well; consequently I won't let it anywhere near my PC.

Oooh, wow, you guys won't like the new Ipod Killer, then

[condign.livejournal.com]

Sony's finally brought out a new answer to the Ipod, the Walkman NW-HD1. Unlike the VAIO version (why Sony made both is beyond me), it's sleek, small, has great user controls, and apparently outstanding battery life. And it doesn't look like a baby-toy Mac.

Downside? It uses Sony's proprietary format, ATRAC. Supposedly sounds better, and it sure did to me in a side-by-side comparison. But you have to convert your entire media library to ATRAC, which then lives on your hard drive, and according to the techies I know over here doubles the hard drive space you use for music. Oh, and downloading copyrighted music from Sony's miserable music store will only play using their player.

I'm sure someone at Sony will get a swift kick and the NW-HD2 will play MP3s, but this first version--if you're tempted, don't.

[condign.livejournal.com]

Incidentally: anyone know how to get music downloaded through MusicMatch to play on a Pocket PC 2003 PDA? I keep getting an error every time WMP (which plays them just fine) tries to copy them over.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. iTunes - as a default Mac application - is just what I need for storing and playing and burning MP3s. The iTunes Music Store is b0rken in exactly the ways which matter to me, and some more you've listed above.

It's *good* to have reasons not to spend hundreds of pounds on an iPod and tunes (-: