iTunes is a digital media player, written by Apple Computer, for playing and organizing digital music and video files. Additionally, the program connects to the iTunes Music Store (sometimes referred to simply as "iTunes" or "iTMS") which allows users to purchase digital music files that can be played by iTunes.
The player has gained and maintained a reputation as being easy to use while still providing many features for obtaining, organizing, and playing music. iTunes is also the principal way to manage the music on Apple's popular iPod digital audio player. The program is freely downloadable and is also supplied with Mac OS X as well as Apple's iLife home-application suite.
iTunes is compatible with computers running Mac OS X, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. iTunes was initially developed on Mac OS 9, but OS 9 support was removed with the upgrade to version 3.
Features
Users are able to organize their music into playlists, edit file information, record compact discs, copy files to a digital audio player, purchase music through its built-in music store, download podcasts, back up songs onto a CD or DVD, run a visualizer to display graphical effects in time to the music as well as encode music into a number of different audio formats.
Playlists
'Smart playlists' are playlists that are automatically updated (like a database query) based on a customized list of selection criteria.
Playlists can be played randomly or sequentially. Random play can also be modified by selecting the play higher rated songs more often option. The algorithm used for this kind of ratings preference play contains a linear relationship among the rated songs, with 5-star rated songs being the most prefered and 1-star rated songs being the least prefered. Unrated songs are the least prefered of all. More information concerning this feature and the algorithm used is available here.
Music library
iTunes stores metadata about the audio files in two files. The first is a binary file called iTunes 4 Music Library that uses its own music library format, independent of the audio format's tag capabilities (for example the ID3 tag). The second file, called iTunes Music Library.xml, uses XML format, allowing developers to easily write applications that can access the information (such as Apple's own iDVD, iMovie, and iPhoto or Freshly Squeezed Software's Rock Star).
Internet Radio
iTunes 1.0 came with support for the Kerbango internet radio tuner service, giving iTunes users a selection of some of the more popular online radio streams available. When Kerbango went out of business in 2001, Apple created its own web radio service for use with iTunes 2.0 and later. As of July 2005, the iTunes radio service features around 200–300 distinct "radio stations" (with a total of over 400 streams, allowing for multiple bit rates), mostly in MP3 streaming format. Programming covers many genres of music and talk, including streams from online stables such as DI.fm and SomaFM as well as terrestrial stations such as Virgin Radio, KKJZ, WFMU, and WMVY. iTunes also supports the .pls and .m3u stream file formats used by WinAmp, enabling iTunes to access almost any stream using that format.
iTunes radio does not support aacPlus, Windows Media, or RealAudio.
Apple no longer promotes the iTunes radio feature, and in fact no mention of it appears on the iTunes website.
File format support
iTunes can currently encode to MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4 AAC, and Apple Lossless, and can play anything QuickTime can play (even video formats, as long as they have audio), including Protected AAC files from the iTunes Music Store, plus Audible.com audio books. In order to play other formats such as the Ogg Vorbis audio format iTunes requires addition of QuickTime components. However, the extensions for Ogg Vorbis does not work with QuickTime version 7 and Mac OS Tiger installed. Apple is working on fixing this problem.
There has been some criticism of the quality of Apple's MP3 encoder, at least with regards to variable bit rate encoding. In a January 2004 double-blind public listening test of six MP3 encoders encoding at 128 kbit/s, conducted by Roberto Amorim, the iTunes MP3 VBR encoder came last. [1]
The Windows version of iTunes can automatically convert unprotected WMA files to other audio formats, but it does not support direct playback or encoding of WMA format.
iTunes does not support aacPlus Internet radio streams as of version 4.9.
Music sharing
iTunes Library songs can be shared over a local network using Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous)—Apple's implementation of the Zeroconf (zero configuration required) open network standard—which allows shared lists of songs within the same subnet to be automatically detected. When a song is shared, iTunes can stream the song but won't save it on the local hard drive, in order to prevent piracy. Songs in Protected AAC format can also be accessed but authentication is required.
Originally with iTunes 4.0, users could freely access shared music anywhere over the internet, in addition to one's own subnet, by specifying IP addresses of remote shared song libraries. Apple quickly removed this feature with version 4.0.1, claiming that users were violating the EULA.
Music sharing uses the Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP), created by Apple for this purpose. [2] DAAP has been reverse-engineered and is now used to stream playlists from non-Apple software.
Just days after the Windows version of iTunes was released, William Zeller, a 20-year-old Trinity College student, wrote myTunes, a program which allows Windows users to circumvent the iTunes restriction and download music from an iTunes shared playlist over a network. MyTunes quickly became popular and is now widely used. There also exists a similar open source Java client, called ourTunes.
Video
In May 2005, video support was introduced to iTunes with the release of iTunes 4.8. Users can drag and drop movie clips from the computer into the iTunes Library for cataloguing and organization. They can be viewed in a small frame in the main iTunes display or at full size in a separate window. Video support in iTunes is still limited at this point; while videos are distinguished from audio in the Library by a small camera icon, they are still grouped with normal music and organized by musical categories (such as "album" and "composer"). More importantly, iTunes is so far still incompatible with the most common video formats such as .MPEG and .WMV.
iTunes supports visualizer plugins and device plugins. Visualizer plugins allow developers to create music-driven visual displays (iTunes includes a default visualizer, G-Force, licensed from SoundSpectrum). The visualizer plug-in software development kits for Mac and Windows can be downloaded for free from Apple. Device plugins allow support for additional music player devices, but Apple will only license the APIs to bona fide OEMs who sign an NDA.
Podcasting
With the release of version 4.9 iTunes added built-in support for podcasting. Users can subscribe to podcasts in the iTunes Music Store or by entering the feed URL. Once subscribed, the Podcast will be downloaded automatically. Users can choose to update podcasts weekly, daily, or manually. Apple maintains three "official" podcasts: Podfinder (with Adam Curry), iTunes New Music Tuesday, and Apple Quarterly Earnings Call. The front page of the directory also displays high-profile podcasts from commercial broadcasters and independent podcasters. For information on the podcasting feature see external links.
Synchronizing iPod and other players
iTunes can automatically synchronize its music library with an iPod or other supported digital music player every time it is connected. New songs and playlists are automatically copied to the iPod and songs which have been deleted from the library on the computer are also deleted from the iPod. Ratings awarded to songs on the iPod will sync back to the iTunes library and audiobooks will remember the current playback position.
Automatic synchronization can be turned off in favor of manually copying individual songs or complete playlists; however, iTunes supports only copying music to the iPod but not from it, which has inspired third party software for that purpose. It is also possible to copy from the iPod using ordinary Unix command line tools.
When an iPod is connected that does not contain enough free space to sync the entire iTunes music library, a playlist will be created and given a name matching that of the connected iPod. This playlist can then be modified to the user's preference in song selection to fill the available space.
iPod owners in US markets are taken to a one-time page within the iTunes Music store when first connecting it to their computer. This page currently offers a free album sampler from Lava and Atlantic Records where either the whole album or individual tracks can be downloaded. An album sampler from Universal Records was previously available and may still be accessed via a special link on the web.
iTunes supports a number of other popular portable music players with some limitations, most notably the inability to play music purchased from the iTunes Music Store. Supported players include a number of Nomad players from Creative Labs, some players from Rio Audio, and the Nakamichi SoundSpace 2 device. Other manufacturers may also offer integration by way of a device plugin.
Though iTunes is the only official method for synchronizing with the iPod, there are other programs available that allow the iPod to sync with other software players, most notably the ml_iPod plugin for WinAmp, that allows users to manage their iPod content through Winamp, and provides functionality not available through iTunes, such as the copying of music off of the iPod.
iTunes Music Store
- Main article: iTunes Music Store
Version 4 of iTunes introduced the iTunes Music Store from which iTunes users can legally buy and download songs for use on a limited number of computers and iPods. Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store are copy protected with Apple's controversial FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) scheme. To date, over 500 million songs have been downloaded since the service first launched in April 2003.[3]
Some people complain that the tight integration of the iTunes Music Store with iTunes makes the sold music inaccessible to users who use operating systems other than Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows such the Linux operating system, for which no version of iTunes is available. These complaints have resulted in the development of a number of alternative player software as well as published hacks or workarounds that allow customers of the iTunes Music Store to use the audio software or operating system software of their choice. The most notable of these hacks is PyMusique, which Apple has made several attempts at blocking.
Apple recently announced it will be opening iTunes stores in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. This bring will bring the total number of countries with iTunes stores presence to 19. Recently, the iTunes Music Store opened up in Japan on August 4, 2005.
500-million-song countdown
On July 6, 2005, the iTunes Music Store began a countdown towards 500 million song downloads, the largest number of downloads from any single music library. The purchaser of every 100,000th song will receive an iPod mini and a 50 song gift card. The 500 millionth song purchaser will receive 10 iPods, a 10,000 song gift card for the music store, 10 additional 50 song gift cards (to go with the iPods), a trip for four to see Coldplay on their current tour, and backstage passes to meet the band. On Sunday, July 17, 2005, the 500-millionth song was downloaded, and the winner was Amy Greer from Lafayette, Indiana.
Integration with other applications
On the Macintosh, iTunes is tightly integrated with Apple's iWork suite of applications and the rest of the applications in iLife. These applications can access the iTunes Library directly, allowing access to the playlists and songs stored within. Music files from iTunes can be embedded directly into Pages documents and can supply the score for iDVD, iMovie and Keynote productions. In addition, any song exported from GarageBand, Apple's music-making program, is automatically added to the user's iTunes music library.
iTunes version history
iTunes was developed from SoundJam MP, a popular commercial MP3 application distributed by the Macintosh software company Casady & Greene. Apple purchased the rights to the SoundJam MP software and hired the three programmers who created SoundJam. The first release of iTunes was very similar to SoundJam MP with the addition of CD burning, and a makeover of the user interface. Apple has added a number of significant features in subsequent versions.
Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X
- 1.0 — January 9 2001
- Original release.
- 1.1 — February 21 2001
- Support for external burners.
- Improved visual effects generator.
- More supported burners.
- 2.0 — November 2 2001
- iPod support.
- Equalizer.
- MP3 CD burning.
- Crossfader.
- Sound enhancer.
- Burns CDs two times faster than before.
- Unicode metadata and ID3 tag support.
- 2.0.2 — November 16 2001
- Language support for French and German.
- 2.0.3 — December 13 2001
- Only checked songs are synchronized with iPod.
- Rio One MP3 player support.
- 2.0.4 — March 20 2002
- Expanded AppleScript support.
- Improved stability and performance.
Mac OS X
- 3.0 — July 17 2002
- Smart playlists.
- Audible.com audio book support.
- Sound check.
- Ratings.
- Play counts.
- Join tracks.
- Playlist importing and exporting.
- 3.0.1 — September 18 2002
- Performance improvements.
- Better support for Mac OS X v10.2.
- 4.0 — April 28 2003
- Music Store support.
- Music sharing.
- AAC audio codec.
- Album artwork.
- DVD burning support.
- Improved searching.
- Beats per minute field.
- 4.0.1 — May 27 2003
- Music sharing only in subnet.
- Performance improvements.
Mac OS X and Windows
- 4.1 — October 16 2003
- Voice notes and On-The-Go playlists synchronization with iPod.
- Support for large library to be burned on multiple CDs.
- Music Store link dragging and dropping.
- Music Store now features Audiobooks.
- Music Store has more advanced Power Search.
- Music Store supports allowance.
- Music Store supports gift certificates.
- 4.2 — December 18 2003
- AOL account support in Music Store.
- Performance improvements.
- 4.5 — April 28 2004
- iMix.
- Party Shuffle.
- CD insert printing.
- Music Store Quick Links.
- Automatic WMA to AAC conversion (Windows only).
- Apple Lossless audio codec.
- 4.6 — June 9 2004
- AirTunes support.
- Minor improvements.
- 4.7 — October 27 2004
- Support for copying photos to an iPod photo.
- Ability to show duplicate songs in your library.
- Performance improvements.
- iPod preferences now part of the Preferences window.
- Ability to search iMixes by name on the iTunes Music Store.
- Taskbar iTunes toolbar, minimize to tray. (Windows only.)
- 4.7.1 — January 11 2005
- Support for iPod shuffle and "Autofill" functionality.
- Disallows play and transfer of Music Store-purchased tracks that have had the DRM-protection stripped by third-party applications.
- Only allows 5 connections per day to libraries shared over a network.
- 4.8 — May 9 2005
- Video support
- Support for new international iTunes Music Stores
- Support for transferring contacts and calendars from a computer to an iPod (Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger only)
- Security enhancements
- 4.9 — June 28 2005
- Support for Podcasting
See also
References
External links
- Apple — iTunes
- InfoAnarchy Wiki Entry
- iTunes Prices Too High — February 24, 2005 MP3 Newswire commentary on record industry's desire to force a raise in iTunes pricing.
- Music Recommendation System for iTunes
- Mobster Recommendation Tool
- iTunes music request form
- iTunes compatible MP3 players
- iPodNN — iPod and iTunes news
- iLounge — a very comprehensive site about iPods and iTunes
- Features lost in iTunes upgrades — Notes some of the feature downgrades in iTunes updates, including tighter restrictions on streaming/sharing and the number of times playlists can be burned to CD. Also discusses some workarounds.
- iTunes Tips wiki for podcast listeners and for podcasters
- Podcast Chapter Tool Tutorial wiki
- iTunes Registry - graphs and statistics of iTunes listening habits