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Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Posted by Roberto
5:31 PM 0 comments

APPLE LAUNCHES ONLINE MUSIC STORE: Apple Music

The iTunes Music Store puts 200,000 songs at your fingertips. It's built right into iTunes 4 and lets you search or browse genres, new releases, exclusives and more. Preview any song for free, when you find a song you want, buy it for just 99 cents. Other interesting features of the new software include support for a new audio format called AAC, or Advanced Audio Code. Songs in this format sound terrific and are supposed to take up less space than MP3 files. Apple digital-rights management software technology called Fairplay, allows creating a custom mix, make a copy of a CD for backup purposes, put a song on an unlimited number of iPods or on other computers. In the case of computers, you're limited to three, which should be enough for a computer at home, a computer at work and the laptop you travel with.

"Consumers don't want to be treated like criminals
and artists don't want their valuable work stolen"
Steve Jobs

The AAC format:
AAC is the MP4 standard, the reason why it sounds better at lower bit rates (compared to MP3) is because the newer compression algorithm allows variable bit rates (the compression adjusts itself depending on the "density of sound"). MSFT also claims better sound quality from its variable bit rate proprietary standard known as WMA. Bottom line is: AAC is the MP4 standard and WMA is proprietary.

AAC and DRM vs. WMA:
Apple extends AAC with their own DRM specification which has been approved by the music companies for online sales. Microsoft's proposed DRM is too obtrusive and has failed to catch on.

MP3 Players:
It is safe to assume that other MP3 Player manufacturers will adopt the standard MP4 AAC with Apple's DRM extensions. Apple is really in a good position!