The Summer of Music

posted on april 29, 2003, tag: tech

Yesterday on my lunch break I went up to the Apple Store in SoHo to watch Steve Jobs' presentation of Apple's new music ventures. I know, I know—geeky. I'm fine with that. I embrace it. I was actually excited to go. The whole day at work I was counting down the minutes. And it was worth going.

I think it goes without saying, if you've ever seen Jobs speak, that he's a charismatic guy. He's also a hell of a salesman. The presentation was great, and the new products even better. I think if they had had new iPods in the store right that moment, they would have sold one to almost every person in the crowd watching the broadcast (myself included).

I've been waiting to buy an iPod for months now. The new iPod design, new sizes, new prices... all perfect. And even better, they're right in time for my birthday (May 15, of course). Now I'm counting down until Friday when the iPods will be in stores so I can go and get a hands-on impression of them before buying one in a few weeks.

And, of course, there's iTunes 4. With the new iTunes Music Store (applemusic.com) built right in, AAC encoding and the addition of cover art, iTunes 4 is exactly where this program should be (see image). I must say, this makes not having a high-speed connection at home even more depressing. The music store is a fantastic idea, and actually works the way it should, too (see image 1, image 2). My only fear is that having one-click buying is dangerous for people like me (I've purchased several things from Amazon just because I could one-click them). I could potentially end up one-click buying myself into bankruptcy. So far I have resisted buying random crap, but I'm sure I will.

Currently the store has 200,000 tracks, and Jobs claims they're adding more daily. I think once this number gets higher, this store will become intensely useful and popular. And, Apple claims, it will be coming to PCs by the end of the year (as well as iTunes!).

Yesterday was an exciting one for digital music (and me).

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