{"id":1856,"date":"2004-12-05T18:58:04","date_gmt":"2004-12-05T23:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=1856"},"modified":"2004-12-06T13:51:36","modified_gmt":"2004-12-06T18:51:36","slug":"itunes-out-i-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2004\/12\/05\/itunes-out-i-does\/","title":{"rendered":"iTunes out, I does"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I registered with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/ca\/itunes\/\">iTunes Music Store<\/a>. With the buzz I was getting from users down south, I was expecting it to be like my favourite indie record store, only online. Um, no.<\/p>\n<p>So I searched for artists I&#8217;m listening to right now:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/itunes_joanna_who.png\" alt=\"itunes does not know joanna newsom\" width=\"307\" height=\"33\" \/><br \/>\nAh, I see. It didn&#8217;t seem to have most of the artists I wanted. In all, it failed to find:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Apples in Stereo<\/li>\n<li>Devendra Banhart<\/li>\n<li>The Decemberists<\/li>\n<li>The Holy Modal Rounders<\/li>\n<li>Bob Log III<\/li>\n<li>Neutral Milk Hotel<\/li>\n<li>Joanna Newsom<\/li>\n<li>The Polyphonic Spree<\/li>\n<li>Kate Rusby<\/li>\n<li>XTC<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As you&#8217;ll be able to find at least five of these in the most dismal mall chain store, it didn&#8217;t start off too well.<\/p>\n<p>I browsed the music genres, and was shocked. There was no <em>folk<\/em> genre, but there was a <em>roots<\/em> one which seemed to overlap what I&#8217;d call <em>folk<\/em> and <em>world<\/em>. Confusingly, there was also a <em>world<\/em> genre. Oh, and people, <em>disney<\/em> is <strong>not<\/strong> a genre, it&#8217;s more a malignant\/cryogenically-preserved state of mind.<\/p>\n<p>(I was amused to see the appaling faux yokel band <em>The Wurzels<\/em> listed as <em>roots<\/em>. I guess they are, if you know the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mangold_wurzel\">etymology of their name<\/a>&nbsp;&hellip;)<\/p>\n<p>So I found a RobynHitchcock spoken word track that I hadn&#8217;t heard from <em>Millennium Thoughts<\/em>. I downloaded it, and on trying to play it, it said:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/itunes_auth.png\" alt=\"do not make me authorize this again\" width=\"563\" height=\"238\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I thought that the pretty proprietary interface would at least remember that it was me logged in at the store, and using the same computer. I guess that&#8217;s how paranoid those DRM types are.<\/p>\n<p>Once I was over that, I decide to buy a whole CD: <em>XO<\/em>, by Elliott Smith. Since I knew that the service used a propritary encryption scheme, I figured on buning a CD, and ripping it later. So I selected the tracks:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/itunes_burn_selection.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"390\" height=\"139\" \/><\/p>\n<p>and started to burn a disc. But it assumed I meant all the tracks I&#8217;d downloaded into some &#8220;playlist&#8221;, so now I have a CD with one Robyn Hitchcock track, and all of <em>XO<\/em>. Annoying. Especially when iTunes doesn&#8217;t burn CD-TEXT information to the disc, grr.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder why iTunes uses something very close to the radioactive symbol for the &#8220;Burn Disc&#8221; logo?<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/radioactive_burn_disc.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"56\" height=\"60\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not impressed with iTunes Music Store. The content is woeful, the user interface is contrived, and the tracks are very expensive, and in a proprietary format I can&#8217;t use directly with my MP3 player. I&#8217;ll be giving it a miss in future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stewart registers for iTunes Music Store, and does not enjoy the experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,10],"tags":[1298,104],"class_list":["post-1856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-choons","category-o-canada","tag-fail","tag-itunes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-tW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}