Just over 200 to date, which is roughly 1 to 2 songs per week. Way cheaper than my coffee habit, and last longer!

Easy to check the total, just look at your Purchased folder in iTunes; unless you have re-installed it or some such.

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Be interesting to see where people get their stuff from generally.

For example, the majority my (2018-album) music collection is ripped directly from my own CDs. I also have a lot of stuff bought from allofmp3, a handful ripped from friends or relatives, and a handful from Magnatune and other, er, sources.

And none bought from the iTMS. Partly coz it's relatively expensive, but partly coz I don't trust DRM to work on my next computer or player, even Apple's not-as-bad-as-most-of-the-others DRM.

Why do YOU use or not use the iTMS?

---
Andy/

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I don't buy from Apple for the very same reason ("don't trust DRM to work on my next computer or player").

Think about it: In 10 years, you buy a new computer, and Apple went bankrupt 2 years ago. There's no authentication server left, and now all your music is - gone. Great, isn't it? :-(

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1. Burn purchased tracks to CD-RW.
2. Import from CD using your favourite (lossless?) codec.
3. Rinse, repeat.

Why is that so difficult?

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difficult? maybe not, pain in the ass? definately yes.
- time consuming
- you end up with either a lower quality compressed file or a larger 'lossless' version of your 'lossy' original
- ITMS seems to sell 128kb AAC's. they are not worth the money, IMHO

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"- ITMS seems to sell 128kb AAC's. they are not worth the money, IMHO"

Have you bought one to try out?

---
G4 Dual 450, 2 GB, 400 GB, using Logic Express with Reason and live guitar, bass and vocals to create a new style of music. Demos will be up soon.

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"In ten years you buy a new computer??? I'm on my fourth Apple in 5 years...besides, I always burn to CD then rip as mp3 for a backup.

I currently have between 300 and 400 songs from itms. Because I have converted some to mp3 to play in my car, not all my m4p files are in iTunes anymore, so I don't have an exact count. I currently don't have any videos from itms.

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Believe me, in 10 years you will have most probably reach your 5 computer's limit.

I've been buying on iTMS for almost 2 years now and I am at 4 out of 5... :-(

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Believe me, in 10 years you will have most probably reach your 5 computer's limit. I've been buying on iTMS for almost 2 years now and I am at 4 out of 5... :-(

Just deauthorize the old computers first! I've done this several times already. It's a simple thing to do right in iTunes! I've also done it when changing hard drives.

I'm still at 2 authorized computers, even though it should have been at 5 now.

Secondly, as other's have said, always backup your purchases by burning an audio CD.

---
G4/Digital Audio/1GHz, 1 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.6 • www.david-schwab.com

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I never buy from the iTMS, because I don't like DRM and I want CD quality audio.

However, it's very useful for previewing songs before buying the (physical) CD elsewhere.

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I'm not sure how many tunes I've purchased... every now and then I burn a CD of everything I've bought lately and then copy it back into the computer as MP3 and erase or archive the originals. 192kbps MP3 is high enough quality for me, and thankfully DRM-free!

Scott

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Isn't there any programm which emulates a CD-burner by in fact writing to an iso-image or a -dmg-file? Just in case that you don't have any CD-R available, then it should be possible to "burn" somehow an Audio-CD-image and grab it afterwards to mp3 from this image. This should even be scriptable...

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You can use an application called Audio Hijack to record the sound of any program on your computer. I have used that on the about 20 songs I have bought from there because I cannot play them in my DJ software (and yes, I realise that the quality is not enough but if you cannot find it elsewhere...).

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D'accord! Burning Audio CDs for backup purpose and converting to mp3 for my convenience (as long as non-iPod devices [mp3-cd players, my DVD, etc...] won't play them). CD-RWs work fine too if one doesn't like "wasting" CD-Rs...

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For valentines day I wanted to create a slideshow of couples in my church and I wanted to use "Moonlight Serenade" by Glen Miller. I bought the song on iTunes and did the iPhoto > iMovie slideshow dealy. And what do I get, but a DRM'd .mov file that will only play sound on my computer. Meaning I couldn't play it on the projector computer. So the song purchase was a waste. I ended up downloading it again off of bittorrent just so I could show it that night. I wasn't distributing the copy, or selling it, only showing it to a select audience. iTMS with their DRM restricted my fair use.

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Playing a song for an audience isn't fair use according to the RIAA, but you could have just authorized the song in iTunes on that machine. You have five computers to authorize, after all.

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Glen Miller sold his soul to the RIAA, or at least all his music rights.

You can't play CDs for a group of people either, legally.

Your church group sounds like it needs some musicians to provide stuff for you.

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2,042.

uh-oh.

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Posted this on the main page, but anyway:

I've bought ~600 songs from the iTMS. Recently though, I've had some concerns about the ability to play my music in the future. I know I could just burn my music to CD and then re-rip them to a DRM-free format, but some quality is lost in the process. So I've decided to go back to buying CDs more frequently since they are only a few dollars more and I get the actual disc with which I can do basically whatever I want.

In the past I bought a lot of music from allofmp3, but my bank (Wells Fargo) put an end to that. I received a new Visa check card in the mail from them one day with a letter stating that they had seen some 'unusual' activity on my card, and that as part of their early fraud detection program, they were assigning me a new card number. They also will not verify my card anymore on the site. I guess I could get some other card, but I don't know if it's worth the hassle. Too bad allofmp3 doesn't use paypal anymore; that would be sweet.

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ok. someone tell me why allofmp3.com isn't organized piracy? I wouldn't buy from them. Buy CDs at a used CD store, or buy on iTMS and back it up. Exercise your natural rights to preserve your purchases and strip the -d-r-m-. you can always do that later though... if you back them up. I think it is a certainty that anyone who spends thousands on music will want to keep that music, and how likely is it that the iTMS survives you? So eventually you will have to break DRM.

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someone tell me why allofmp3.com isn't organized piracy?

I agree.

I wouldn't buy from them.

Me neither. I can't justify supporting a piracy racket in good conscience regardless of how negatively I feel about the RIAA, etc. Heck, I'd rather pirate directly without the middleman if I wanted to be "rebellious" that way.

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I'm dying to see something that says 'allofmp3 has mafia ties' that isn't a comment on some forum like this or slashdot.
All real-life investigations have shown they're not violating anything.

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Because they paid the RIAA what it asked for. The RIAA/major labels sold their music at 'bulk' prices to be 'rebroadcast' by Russian companies.
It may be a loophole, but the site hasn't been any closer to being shut down for at least three years now.
Major label artists really don't have any choice but to go indie and release new music that does well. They've already signed all their previous recordings' ownership away to companies like Sony. We all know how their 'creative accounting' works. Labels and middlemen get paid, artists and fans get screwed.

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1346 songs, 3.2 days, 4.68GB I started buying all my music from the iTMS this past December.

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Purchased? None. However, there are 130 songs in my purchased list, simply by leeching off of the free music download of the week.

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"1646" items (a booklet in .PDF came with David Gilmour's - On an Island) making that 1645 songs/comedy since the store opened. Bought my n! copy of Dark Side of the Moon as the first album 5/2/03 @ 9:51 am (still like my mobile fidelity sound labs copy best...)

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I buy only those few songs where I really do only want one or two songs from the artist, usually for nostalgia reasons. Less than 50 songs total so far. I would buy more, despite the DRM, if the quality were higher. I can hear way too much audio-artifacting at 128kbps. If Apple offered the music at 192 (or even 160), the quality would be vastly better.

---
==============================
David Butler
http://www.macmaven.net/
http://www.dhbutlerphotography.com/

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I agree completely. I tend to buy individual songs, letting them aggregate in my shopping cart until it reaches critical mass (5-10 songs), then reviewing it to make sure I really want to waste a dollar on... say... the Humpty Dance. When I want entire albums, I buy the physical CDs. I also have a large (and growing) collection of classical and jazz music, which I never buy from iTMS, not only for lack of quality but also for lack of liner notes (which are often quite extensive for classical and jazz, and a PDF booklet isn't gonna cut it for me).

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"Waste a buck"? "The Humpty Dance" is priceless!

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Wow, someone (one person at this time) has purchased over 4000 songs from iTMS.

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Bought Zero items from ITMS. Been tempted though. Biggest reason for not buying == 128 Kbit. I know AAC is "better" but 128 is just too low. That and DRM. Apple's DRM is tolerable but if they want to sell 128 Kbps stuff I would want less restrictions.



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I rarely buy songs from ITMS, but I often buy TV shows. I bought the second season of BSG, a few of the SNL skits, both seasons of Drawn Together, Adam 12, The A-Team, and a few episodes of Dragnet.

Now if only CBS was working with apple instead of google, I could push them to include Veronica Mars as well, and I'd have a reason to stop torrenting altogether. (No UPN affiliate here, or I'd actually get the tivo out of the closet.)

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I buy mostly what I can't find in the local record stores, then of course immediately transcode to MP3 to get rid of the DRM.

Its a fair price, just wish the selection was larger and there was no DRM. If I couldn't transcode the songs I wouldn't buy them, I'd get the CD and rip.

Not all of us are iPod fanatics, Stevie!

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I've got 163 songs, but about 120 of these are the weekly free music downloads. Only once did I end up buying music (not off iTMS I might add, but the actual CD) for an artist from the free music download, and that was because of James Blunt's High.

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According to this poll thus far we have purchased somewhere from at least 326820 songs up to at least 490583 songs! (yay for spreadsheets)

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I more than likely will NEVER use it, even as much as I like Apple and their products. Plus, I love music. But I don't like the idea that if I didn't backup my music, I lose it all, even if purchased. That is BS. I should be able to re-download the files at will.

Also, I hate DRM. I don't need some company dictating to me how many copies I can make and for whom. People have been sharing music forever, and I don't want to tell a friend: "Sorry, I'd love for you to take a copy home and sample it, I've already made my alloted number.". Lame.



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People have been able to re-download all their purchased music. You just need to call. They don't guarantee it, however, and that's why you get a message telling you to back up your music. It's not hard to do, especially if you're already backing up everything else that's important. You ARE backing up everything else, right?

I feel the same about the DRM, but since most of my friends have iPods, and there is NO restriction on the number of iPods your purchased songs can be copied to, I don't have the same issue with sharing.

Otherwise just simply burn it to a CD. Is that any different from what you would be doing if it didn't have DRM?

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Hey, the same thing happens with physical CDs. You don't back them up, and they get scratched or lost or shattered, you don't get a new free replacement CD. Plus iTunes albums are about $4-5 cheaper than regular retail prices for CDs, usually.

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I find it funny that sooo many people complain about the 128kbps of the AAC on the iTMS. DVDs that have Dolby Surround sound are the same bitrate, and very few people complain about that quality.

The 128kbps of the audio file is the stereo bitrate (i.e. 64kbps per channel). A 5.1 surround sound DVD is also 64kbps per channel, except 6 channels instead of two=> 384kbps for the whole audio file.

The 128kbps is strictly how much space (bits) per time (seconds) the data takes up. What makes a good encoding codec is "not needing" major bandwidth for good quality, and AAC seems to do just that.

Selling music at 160kbps vs 128kbps requires 25% more file size per song plus 25% more bandwidth to download each song. That is a lot of extra cost for Apple. For the very, very smal percentage of people who can tell the difference between the two bitrates, it isn't worth it.

As far as DRM, I am not happy about it, but without the DRM, the number of songs available on the iTMS would be a lot less, and they would have a lot less customers b/c of that.

Sure I miss not having the CD inserts, but honestly, after owning the CD for a week, I never look at them again anyway.

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"I find it funny that sooo many people complain about the 128kbps of the AAC on the iTMS. DVDs that have Dolby Surround sound are the same bitrate, and very few people complain about that quality.

The 128kbps of the audio file is the stereo bitrate (i.e. 64kbps per channel). A 5.1 surround sound DVD is also 64kbps per channel, except 6 channels instead of two=> 384kbps for the whole audio file.

The 128kbps is strictly how much space (bits) per time (seconds) the data takes up. What makes a good encoding codec is "not needing" major bandwidth for good quality, and AAC seems to do just that."

Sorry -- you seem to be misinformed.

128kbps (64 per channel) of MP3 is VASTLY different from 64kbps per channel Dolby.

It's all in the compression format. Dolby uses AC3 compression, which is lossless. (It retains ALL of the original information.) MP3 is a lossy conversion process. (Much of the original signal is lost.)

The Dolby hardware encoders/decoders found in your receiver or DVD player make it possible to have the same amount of digital info sound much better than MP3. If you listened to a 5.1 soundtrack at MP3 quality, I guarantee you'd notice the difference immediately.

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Don't want to get into a big argument, so just a couple quick points here:

1) iTMS sells its songs in AAC format, not MP3 -- AAC is still lossy, but is a much more complex and superior codec. (In other words, a 128kbps AAC file and a 128kbps MP3 file are the same size, but the AAC will sound better).

2) AC3 is not lossless -- lossless codecs can't get anywhere near the file-size-savings that made MP3 popular and are needed for iTMS or other online stores. From the Dolby Wikipedia article:

Dolby is part of a group of organizations involved in the development of AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), part of MPEG specifications, and also considered the successor to MP3. AAC outperforms AC-3 at any bitrate, but is more complex. The advantages of AAC become clearly audible at less than 400 kbit/s for 5.1 channels, and at less than 180 kbit/s for 2.0 channels.

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Quote:
"Sorry -- you seem to be misinformed.
128kbps (64 per channel) of MP3 is VASTLY different from 64kbps per channel Dolby. "

First of all, This is exactly my Point!!!! People have no reason to blame the 128kbps of the music store. Dolby is 128kbps and sounds great. If they blame anything it should be the AAC encoding, not complaining that it is only 128.

Secondly, I didn't say anything about mp3 vs Dolby. I never mentioned mp3 in my post. AAC and mp3 are different. mp3 is mpeg 1 layer 3 and AAC is mpeg 4.

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a couple of points:

- i can hear the audio artefacts at 128kp AAC, even though it is better and an equivalent MP3.

- i rip cd's at either 192 or use the variable bit rate set to 200-or so. The files end up 40% bigger than an ITMS 128kp file, but the sound is far better. i find the bass is much better defined and the treble seems tighter.

- oh, and doesnt the surround sound system use tricks so it doesnt have to have 6 tracks of 64kb, by recording the 'differences' between tracks??

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I've bought no music off the iTMS, and most likely never will. I listen to the streaming stations on iTunes for my music and am satisfied with that. But I've bought 1 episode of a TV series-the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, Lay Down Your Troubles. That worked out well enough I may buy more episodes of my fav. TV shows.



---
The MacNut
Owner, ClarisWorks/AppleWorks Email List
http://awlist.macnuthome.com

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In the space of roughly two months, I purchased just over 100 songs, enough I would have called myself an addict. However 3 of those tracks were corrupted during download, and iTunes support staff ignored all my emails.

If I get a obviously defective CD I can exchange it for new. With Apple's no refunds policy, and ineffective support staff, I'd rather pay more for the added security. I can always rip the CD to Apple's file format minus DRM if I want.

---
Sometimes the Wheel spins faster than the hamster runs.

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Depending on whether I use the low end, mid point, or high end of the ranges, macosxhints' readers have spent somewhere between $651K and $1.044M at the music store (I used 5,001, 6,500 and 8,000 for the 'over 5,000' bucket). This also assumes standard pricing of $.99 per song...

The average number of songs purchased per respondent is just over 307, or about 100 a year.

-rob.


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the iTMS Canada is a poor stepchild compared with the US store.

no TV shows, no PayPal support (I don't have a credit card due to university debts from years ago) missing canadian artists.

I know they've missed several impulse purchases just due to no PayPal support in Canada.

as for others worried about the DRM, and as others have pointed out, it is very easy to just burn your "purchased" smart playlist that is now part of iTunes to CD as plain data, or as Audio CD (I Do both because I'm a packrat) once it's on Audio CD, you can easily re-import as whatever format
(in my case 192kbit Mp3 because I have a car stereo that only reads regular audio or mp3)
yes there is some quality loss, but for most users it is hard to notice... when they can't even tell the difference between audio CD and 128 kbit mp3 (I personally can tell the difference between 128kbit mp3 and AAC with some songs, not all, I import from the audio CD at 160 kbit or 192 kbit to be most comparible with the 128kbit AAC)

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Nice. You do know, however, that you are missing the variables
of videos, short movies, and TV shows. I know the question says
music but I am sure that there are hints users who don't
download music but download other things, and were compelled
to do the poll anyway. So your figures are skewed a bit.

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As a fellow Canadian, I definitely agree that the U.S store is leaps and bounds ahead of ours (although I'm pretty sure that every other non-US country feels the exact same way...us Canadians take it more seriously due to the geographical closeness to our iTMS superiors).

While TV shows aren't on our store yet, and there are the odd songs that aren't in our store, I generally buy about 3-4 albums a month and a few random songs. You're right that the lack of PayPal does suck, but in your VISAless case, you may want to consider just buying the music cards and topping up your account (this works well for me as a way to monitor/limit my spending a bit more than just going nuts on the credit card).

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- JKrahn

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I haven't purchased any songs off of the iTunes Music Store. I only purchase
physical media, generally CDs.

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I'd have been curious to see a more granular breakdown of the 1 to 100 range,
maybe 1-10, 11-25, 26-50, 51-100.

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I can't buy from Mexico, or with credit card with address in Mexico. :(

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Whoever voted 5000+ songs, are you serious?! I think your just joking around.

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