Rob Pegoraro

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Fast Forward Live: Apple's New iTunes Service
With Personal Technology columnist Rob Pegoraro
Monday, May 5, 2003; 2 p.m. ET

Fast Forward columnist Rob Pegoraro will be online to answer your questions about Apple's new iTunes music service. Read Rob's review: "Apple Comes Closer to Perfect Pitch." Or check out Frank Ahrens's article on the service, "Apple's Different Tune" (April 29).

He'll also talk about his recent reviews of two new Palm handhelds, "A One-Two Punch From Palm" (Sunday, April 27).

Submit your questions and comments: Join Rob for a live online discussion on Monday, May 5 at 2 p.m ET.

Fast Forward E-letter:

Want to know what upcoming topics are being covered? Sign up for Fast Forward e-letter -- get updated information on personal technology news and product demos. Read past editions of Rob's e-letter online here.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Rob Pegoraro: Hello Washington--are you ready to rock?!

Today's tech topic is Apple's iTunes Music Store, which went online last Monday and, Apple says, has already sold one million songs. We've already got a *lot* of questions already, so let's get the show started....

Baltimore: Hey, Rob.

I'm not sure that Apple will succeed where others have thus far failed, but let me give you a reason why they might succeed and another for why they might fail:

(1) They might succeed because the Music Industry has vastly underestimated the number of people who would very much like to be able to legitimately purchase music online, even if they know that they can get it for free from a filesharing service like Kazaa. (This is the reason why Digital Rights Management is a bad thing, by the way, it won't stop the pirates, and it'll only annoy those who would are inclined to pay by the rules)

(2) They'll might fail, on the other hand, because $.99 per song is still too expensive. The music industry believes that offering music for much less would represent a threat to their profit margins. But they're ignoring economies of scale. At $.99 a song, you think about it before downloading (Do I really, really want the extended version of "Vida Loca"?) At $.25 per song, however, you're basically dealing with impulse buys. You don't think twice before tossing a quarter. I can pretty much guarantee that I'd spend more money (not just buy more songs) if music were just $.25 per song than if it were $.99.

Rob Pegoraro: I agree with you on the first observation--as I wrote in my e-letter this morning (can we get a link to that?), most of my first purchases on Apple's music store were of songs I'd downloaded off Napster years ago; I finally had a chance to pay for them, so I did.

On the second one, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think a significantly cheaper price is politically possible. Music retailers will go ballistic at prices below a buck a song, and since they still sell most of the music in this country, they've got considerable leverage with record labels.

Vancouver, British Columbia: I'm assuming that the expansion of the Apple Music Store to other countries is a question of when and not if. What is your best guess as to the time frame that this will happen within?

Rob Pegoraro: This is one of the most frequent questions/complaints about Apple's music store. When it becomes available in other countries depends almost entirely on clearing licensing arrangements for each other nation, and that is a task whose complexity and inscrutability cannot be overstated.

Walkersville, Md.: Rob, I think the AAC format that the music bought through the iTunes store is encoded in is of a lesser quality than even MP3s, which are just acceptable to me. I don't think I will be buying too much music
because it just does not sound good to me. This is after I tested around 19 tracks. Why do you think Apple chose AAC and what are your thoughts on the quality.

Rob Pegoraro: I think AAC sounds pretty good--certainly better than the average MP3 download off a peer-to-peer service. I think Apple used AAC instead of MP3 because a) it may cost less to license overall, b) it allows for some level of copy-prevention rules, unlike MP3, and c) QuickTime already supported the MPEG-4 format that underlies AAC.

Tallahassee, Fla.: Rob -- if it's okay to ask a non-iTunes, non-Palm related question -- I was wondering what your thoughts were on TiVo. My friends who have it rave over it, but is it going to be the BetaMax of the future? Are there enough subscribers for the service to sustain itself?

Rob Pegoraro: Yes, non-Apple/non-Palm questions are always welcome. All of the TiVo users I know aren't just happy with the service--"besotted" might be a more accurate description.

But I've yet to buy a TiVo for myself, nor do I see myself buying one anytime soon. $12.95/month is another bill that I just don't need in my life. Further, there's no way to share TiVo recordings short of VHS, and right now I would rather see videotape out of my life. I'm more likely to buy a DVD recorder, perhaps one of the upcoming models that include a TiVo-esque hard drive to store video (but which use a free electronic programming guide to schedule recordings, albeit only for the next three days instead of the 2 weeks TiVo allows).

Bottom line--this answer went on for a lot longer than I expected!--I think TiVo's place in the market is secure. But its place in my home is definitely not!

Great Falls, Va.: So do you think this is going to be a big moneymaker for Apple? Or is the Steve Jobs hype machine just blowing hot air again?

Rob Pegoraro: It could become a decent moneymaker, but maybe not a huge one. If Apple only makes 10 cents off each transaction (that's a guess, not a fact), then it just raked in $100,000 in profit for a week. That's not bad for a week's work, although over a year it doesn't add up to a massive bump in income.

Chicago: Love your column and chats, and also love Apple's Music Store. However, I agree that it's too expensive, not necessarily on a per song basis, but on an album basis. $10 for a protected copy of an album is too much, given that new, unprotected CDs, in uncompressed format, with packaging, art, liner notes, lyrics, etc. are often only $10 when first released, and can be found for only $2-3 thereafter.

I happily paid $4 to get some cheesy Expose songs and a copy of Raspberry Beret, but I don't see myself paying $10 for an entire record if I can get the real thing for almost the same price.

Rob Pegoraro: Where are you finding new CDs for $10? Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and so on always have a few loss leaders for sale at that price, but the bulk of the titles are at the traditional $15 and up level.

Flagstaff, Ariz.: Do you think Apple's music store will stave off the aggressive efforts by the RIAA to enact legislation taxing data storage products to subsidize the member music companies as they have done in other countries?

Rob Pegoraro: Who knows? I gave up trying to interpret the RIAA's lobbying activies years ago. This organization, I just can't understand what it's trying to accomplish sometimes.

Hackensack, N.J.: Has Apple mentioned their cut of the 99 cent per song?

Don

Rob Pegoraro: Nope. I've read elsewhere that about 65 cents goes to the record label (of which a decent part ought to be going to the artist, but who knows?). The remaining 34 cents isn't all profit; Apple's store has got to have an outsize hosting bill each month.

Great Falls, Va.: Doesn't the music industry still have legitimate concerns about copying? You mention the following below, can Apple do anything to stop people from copying a song purchased from Apple to the Internet? Could Apple leave some kind of mark on a CD that identifies the source of a recording that is uploaded to a file sharing service (like burning the Mac's serial number, and IP, MAC, and other addresses among the bits of a CD song recording)?

"As a workaround, you can always burn your purchases to an audio CD, then re-rip them as MP3s (or employ audio-copying tools to convert files directly). (then load them to a Napster-like service)"

Rob Pegoraro: No, Apple cannot do anything to stop people from copying purchased songs to the Internet. Nor can any other service. Any copy-prevention scheme with a prayer of being palatable to paying customers will always leave room for exploits by moderately clever users.

This is because human beings have things called ears that can't process encrypted or locked music; once you unlock the song for playback out the speakers, you can also record that outgoing audio stream for reuse on- or offline.

Cleveland, Tenn.: I am a potential switcher and wanted to know if such bands as Green Day, Blink 182, Dave Matthews Band and Jimmy Buffett are listed.

Rob Pegoraro: Unfortunately, I'm not at a Mac at the moment, so I can't check for sure. I can tell you that DMB isn't included right now. Not sure about the other three. Apple really ought to provide a way for the public at large to check for artists in its inventory, but you can only do that using a somewhat complicated workaround, which I'll try to post later in this hour.

Travelers Rest, S.C.: I would love to see the Myst, Riven Exile and upcoming Uru soundtracks available. Will we see that?

Rob Pegoraro: I have no idea, but it could happen--Apple's store already stocks a sizable inventory of comedy/spoken-word recordings, so if it thinks the market is big enough there wouldn't be anything stopping it from including game soundtracks.

Silver Spring, Md.: Do you see people rushing out to get new Macs, with the launch of this service? I'm sure that Apple is hoping for at least some kind of gain in market share with this new offering.

Rob Pegoraro: Possibly, although I have a hard time imagining people buying Macs just because of the iTunes Store. It might be the one of a few other things that persuade people to switch.

Toronto, Ont.: Do you have any information about how Apple was able to license the music?

I have read a lot about how Steve Jobs dealt with the record companies to get access to the master recordings, but I have not read anything about Apple's discussions with the music publishers/song writers. Did Apple acquire all the rights they need to legally launch the online store?

Rob Pegoraro: Apple has lots of lawyers on hand for things like this. Since record labels do as well, I'm sure that all the proper rights were negotiated and confirmed before putting any song on sale. And I'm sure that this process was no fun at all for anybody involved.

Washington, D.C.: Question relating to previous chats about WiFi. Say you want to provide the service to yourself and neighbors, using a Verizon or other DSL line and an access point on your property. Does each neighbor have to get their laptops configured to accept the individual DSL software, or is all that handled in the access point? Is that what the card for laptops is supposed to do?

Rob Pegoraro: First of all, you might want to make sure that Verizon (or whoever your ISP is) won't terminate your account if you start handing out bandwidth to people outside your home.

Second, any client WiFi computer doesn't need any ISP's software. Once the signal goes out over the access point, the standard WiFi software on any computer is all that's necessary. (I.e., the access point does the actual log-on and log-off with the ISP.)

Somerville, Mass.: There has been much talk in the media about Apple becoming a "digital media company" and deemphasizing computers. Do you forsee an end to Macintosh computers? (please say no)

Rob Pegoraro: No, I don't. All of these digital-media businesses (not just iTunes, but iPhoto online print orders, .Mac and whatever is coming next) are ways for Apple to broaden its portfolio and bring in some extra income.

Nashville, Tenn.: 6 Green Day albums are listed as are 6 Jimmy Buffett albums. No Blink.

Shawn

Rob Pegoraro: Thanks!

(I would consider the lack of Blink 182 a plus. But that's just me :)

Worcester Mass.: I don't understand the 3 computer limit. What is that about? I plan on owning more that 3 more computers in my lifetime, what happens and when to my music?

Rob Pegoraro: The idea is to stop people from sharing music with total strangers--three computers being, supposedly, the maximum number of machines any one person interacts with *at one time.* Not over your lifetime.

When you sell your old computer, you'd "de-authorize" it, then authorize the new computer. You don't have to call up Apple to do this--it's all done from within iTunes.

Silver Spring, Md.: We got the DISH Network's equivalent of TiVO and there's no monthly fee, just a one-time upgrade. Can't say enough good things about it. With a small child we never get to watch programming in its scheduled time, so the ability to watch an original quality recording at a time of our choosing is great. Without it, we'd probably be doing really useful things like reading books.

Rob Pegoraro: Yes, I think Dish has been really smart about this. (One of my old college roommates has the Dish PVR setup and is really happy w/ it.)

Washington, D.C.: Do you think mass PC producers like Gateway and Dell will begin to feel the heat from this apparent success of the Apple Music Store? And do you think PC developers such as Dell will ever 'think out of the box' like Steve Jobs?

Rob Pegoraro: I suspect the answer to both questions is no. Of the major PC manufacturers, Sony is the only one I can imagine getting into the content-sales business (seeing as it owns a record label already). Dell already has a fine business building largely generic boxes; why should it get into the expense of all the additional R&D? (Gateway might benefit from such an effort, but it just doesn't have that kind of cash on hand.)

Washington, D.C.: I found 26 Jimmy Buffet albums. However, it looks as you can't buy the box sets as an album (individual tracks only).

Rob Pegoraro: That happens somewhat often on the store. With most compilations, however, I don't mind a per-track purchase requirement; the odds are I already have a lot of these songs, so this way I don't have to buy duplicates of stuff I already own. The best example of this is Springsteen's 18 Tracks, a condensed version of the Tracks box set that adds three or so other songs. Now I can just buy those three extras.

Winnipeg, Canada: Do you really think that musicians can be supported by sub $1/tune music? The slices seem to get very thin when divided betweeen:
1. Money for the artists
2. Production
3. Marketing
4. Distribution

Rob Pegoraro: That's up to each musician and his/her record label and management. D.C.'s Dischord Records has gotten by for years charging $10 or less per CD, with all profits split 50/50 between label and artist.

Boulder, Colo.: Why did Apple select 128 Kbps instead of higher or choice of bandwidths?

Rob Pegoraro: This is like talking about processors solely in terms of clock speed. Bit-rate comparisons between different codecs are no more useful than clock-speed comparisons between different manufacturers' processors.

Dallas, Texas: Rob, I would love to hear you weigh in on the news reports that some music industry execs are considering hacker -- like retaliatory strikes against P2P users. From what I read, some of the measures include Trojan Horses and worms with the aim to make life miserable for a P2P downloader. Isn't that akin to being a vigilante? How can they do that?

Rob Pegoraro: It isn't akin to being a vigilante, it *is* being a vigilante. I'm sure there are lots of lawyers who would be glad to take the case of the first guy to see his hard drive wiped out by one of these retaliatory strikes.

Herndon, Va.: I'm willing to pay about 10 cents a minute for a decent (128Kbps MP3 or equivalent) compressed audio file. Maybe 20 cents a minute for a high quality one (192Kbps MP3 or equivalent). Why should Pink Floyd's Echoes (23:27) cost the same amount as The Beatles' Her Majesty (:23)? Not everyone is looking for 4 minute pop songs.

Rob Pegoraro: I hear what you're saying, but how else would you price these things? Per-minute pricing would be way too weird. I suppose Apple could charge more for the longer songs--but I'm glad it doesn't. (I might buy a copy of Echoes myself... that was the only song I really liked on Meddle.)

Herndon, Va.: The restrictions on these pay-for-compressed-audio-file services are just stupid. If I can't burn it to a CD, I would not spend money on it. If I can burn it to a CD, I can tape it or make an unrestricted MP3 from it -- I can listen to it anywhere or give it to anyone. All these restrictions do is waste my time. I'm not going to pay money to waste my time -- I can do that for free. It is time for the RIAA to admit defeat and sell us what we want -- high quality unrestricted MP3 files at low prices.

Rob Pegoraro: Sure. But none of the record labels have done so yet. What we do have is a service that, even within its own copy-prevention limits, offers a lot more flexibility than before. Do we ignore it and hope that the record labels do come to their senses? Or do we make a conscious design that, warts and all, it's a fair deal?

That's up to you all. As I wrote in the column, I hope that Apple will continue to try to pound some sense into the labels. They do seem to be learning.... slowly.

Cleveland: Rob,

But if the guy that gets his hard drive wiped out is doing something illegal to have caused it, I don't see where a lawyer could defend such and action. After all, is it wrong to defend what is rightfully yours?

Rob Pegoraro: Right. So when your car stereo gets ripped off, you have the right to steal something from the thief's house?

I didn't think so.

Ashburn, Va.: I bought a Tungsten-C and, while speedy and with a great screen, I still found it heavy (heavier than my Toshiba e740) and awkward. So the question - when will Sony make their Clie TG-50 with WiFi?

Bought a new iPod 30 GB this weekend. Was not sure I would use it for more than trip music, but I've noticed with the limited PIM functions, it's already become my PDA for the weekends. No question - just a comment.

Rob Pegoraro: I think Sony would recommend that you buy an N-series Clie, which has a slot to add a WiFi card.

A few comments from a customer in DC: I picked up a couple of albums off the iTMS last Thursday. Nothing beats the convenience of lounging on the couch in the living room and legitimately buying tunes over the house WiFi.

I, too, am somewhat picky about audio quality and find too many problems with 128k MP3s (sibiliance, pops, etc.) and avoid stuff encoded that way. So far, I've been pleasantly surprised with the 128k ACC encoding

While some albums do represent a discount when purchased as a whole, the savings are often non-existent (they wanted nearly $20 for the remastered _Who's Next_!).

The biggest disadvantage, as a music fan, to buying albums like this online is the utter lack of liner notes and art. While the cover art is indeed available, it's not the sort of thing you'd print out to keep with a burned CD.

I've also had issues playing the two albums I bought, burned on my tiBook to CD-R, on a couple of older CD players (an 11 year old onkyo portable, and my 7 year old JVC car cd changer).

Rob Pegoraro: Thanks for the observations. Do those two CD players have any trouble with CD-Rs in general?

Delafield, Wis.: Why do you think Apple waited for the Windows version, was it to gain some market share in the iPod or computer hardware?

Rob Pegoraro: I think it's for the same reason that some programs are Windows-first or Windows-only: resource allocation. As a business, Apple can't devote an infinite budget to software development; it has to decide what OS to support first, what to support second and what to support never. Since Mac OS X and the hardware it runs on amount to Apple's day job, that had to be first targeted platform. Windows is next. And Mac OS 9 is never.

Wyncote, Penn.: Is there any way to print a CD case sized copy of the album art for the CDs I burn from my iTunes purchase?

Rob Pegoraro: Not until somebody whips up an AppleScript to do the job. I tried cobbling together something AppleWorks and gave up when I realized I'd already spent 30 minutes just making the list of tracks fit right on the back cover.

Rathdrum, Idaho: I have a possible solution to the short songs, which I could give several examples of myself. Some of my CDs have short intro tracks or in-between talking tracks, and I can see how it would be silly to play $.99 for them, so maybe Apple could do a search for tracks under one minute and bundle them with other tracks on the CD.

Rob Pegoraro: Or in that case, you could just buy the entire CD (how many of these 30-second snippets do you actually want to listen to separate from the other songs on the album? Most, it strikes me, exist as a sort of transitional glue between songs)

Baltimore: I'd have to disagree with Walkersville.

An AAC file at 128 bit is higher quality than an mp3 at 160 bit. So you get (slightly) better quality at about a 20% reduction of file size.

For me, that translates to more songs on my iPod.

Rob Pegoraro: Here's a pro-AAC argument...

Boulder, Colo.: Are there any audiophile or technical evaluations of AAC comparing to MP3 and CD quality? With double-blind testing of different bandwidths?

Rob Pegoraro: I've looked around, and all I can tell you so far is that for every study there is an equal and opposite study. The closest I've seen to something objective was the study a reader pointed me to yesterday:
http://www.tnt.uni-hannover.de/project/mpeg/audio/public/w2006.html

Mountain View, Calif.: What I would love someone to implement is an ability to allow me to 'automagically' find legal versions of songs (and their albums) that I already have acquired.

I can go song by song, but what a pain to do manually..

Also, there are a few out-of-print CDs and independents that I've been searching everywhere for. I want to pay for them, but will eventually break down and acquire them if I can't find them.

What hope of finding the out-of-prints online sometime soon, i wonder?

Rob Pegoraro: Somebody did just release an AppleScript to do that today, I think: http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts04.shtml#searchitunesstore

Honolulu, Hawaii: Is downloading music on a free download site like kazaa really illegal? I've never seen any punishment for it.

Rob Pegoraro: If the artist put the music there, of course it's legal. If not, then not.

(I could make this a much longer answer, since there are many instances where, arguably, ethical != legal. But if you want a yes/no answer, there it is.)

Evanston, Ill.: Actually, there are 4 Blink-128 albums. However, searching for "blink-182" or "blink 182" returns no results (whoops!).

Rob Pegoraro: Ooh. That's dumb...

Washington, D.C.: Just wanted to clarify something that people seem to be misunderstanding: file-sharing in and of itself is NOT NOT NOT illegal. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for P2P applications that don't involve the sharing of copyrighted material.

It seems that the RIAA has done a good job of spreading its propaganda and convincnig people that they have fewer rights than they actually do.

Rob Pegoraro: This is correct. A lot of the traffic on P2P networks may be copyrighted material, but these systems can also be used to efficiently distribute files of any kind.

Olney, Md.: Hey, Rob. I was looking at the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 (20 or 40 GB, depending on how my wallet is doing when I decide), and I was worried about its dependence on MusicMatch's Jukebox software. I got a free copy with my laptop, and it's horrible. I see no way to choose a playlist based on genre, the way you can on Windows Media Player, or to save a playlist. The interface is messy, with the "docking" windows that I hate more than frames, and I have absolutely no use for anything but playing my ripped library, since the "radio" function causes an unending cascade of script errors.

I really don't want to spend a lot more for a smaller capacity and a few more features, by which I mean the iPod, but everyone seems to rave about it. What are your thoughts? Other than the software, the Creative Jukebox seems like it has everything I could want.

Rob Pegoraro: I think you should look at the iPod. It does come at a notable price premium over the competition, but it is also an amazing piece of work.

I agree about the MusicMatch software. I know lots of people like it, but to me it's U-G-L-Y. And I could really do without the "buy the full version" nags every time I start and quit out of the app.

Ithaca, N.Y.: Hey Rob. I was wondering if you knew anything about Apple's policy about De-authorizing in situations of catastrophic data loss... Like if my hard drive inexplicably fails one day and I have to reformat, even if all of my purchased music has been backed up, that phantom computer that was wiped out would still be "authorized" for my music and count against my total of 3 computers... Suppose i already have 3 computers authorized and one of them goes down. Would you think if I contacted Apple in that sort of situation, would they resolve the situation by de-authorizing the dead computer on their end?

Rob Pegoraro: I asked Apple about that--what if your computer gets stolen or gets blown up or whatever. Basically, you'd have to call Apple directly for help, and they'd take care of you some way.

Honolulu, Hawaii: How does an unsigned band get listed with the iTunes store? This could be an excellent opportunity for musicians, if it is open to everybody.

Thanks & Aloha,

-Chris

Rob Pegoraro: Excellent question, but I don't have an answer for you on that. I know Apple is talking to minor/independent labels, which it desperately needs to do, but I don't know its roadmap for expanding the store's inventory.

I do hope that when indie labels and maybe even unsigned artists get on board, they can set whatever prices they want and not be bound by the 99 cents/track minimum. I'd bet most indie labels can make a buck at a lower fee (since they don't have to spend $$$ on the usual hit-making machinery), and I think it'd be immensely interesting to see how the majors reacted to that kind of direct price competition.

The customer in D.C.: Neither of my old CD players (car/portable) have issues playing CD-Rs that have been burned on a PC; since the two iTMS albums were the first audio CDs I've burned from my mac, I can't entirely compare.

Rob Pegoraro: The audio CDs it makes, AFAICT, are perfectly generic audio CDs. Did you burn to 80-minute blanks? That might confuse an older player.

Tempe Ariz.: Every song ever written is copyrighted by default. The question is whether the artist has authorized that song for public download.

Tens of thousands of us have.

At www.Garageband alone, there are 64,000 acts, most of which freely share their music and all of which are copyrighted.
EMI has 1,100 acts.

Rob Pegoraro: Exactly: If the artist has OKed a song for public download, it's yours to keep. Giving away music to promote a band isn't exactly a new concept; there's this thing called "radio," for instance....

New York: Rob
I think you're mistaken that Verizon would terminate based on DSL throughput/sharing. Your bandwith is fairly limited by the copper line/plan speed compared to the trunks that are feeding it. Now CABLE companies may take note if their bandwith is at capacity from 2- 4 in the morning. But that's if they are clueful enough to notice.

Rob Pegoraro: Maybe they wouldn't notice/care. But I'd hate to be wrong! Check the terms of your service agreement before becoming your neighborhood's broadband Santa.

Burbank, Calif.: Up til now, Apple has said it won't accept music from artists that want only full albums available... in other words, some artist don't want to have their music sold song by song..... with the numbers being that full albums accounted for 50% of all the first week sales, think Jobs will reconsider his policy?

Rob Pegoraro: I hadn't heard of any such refusal to accept music on an album-only basis--quite a few are sold that way on the iTunes store.

Phoenix, Ariz.: I too am very concerned about the sound quality. I don't mind paying the 99 cents but considering I'm not getting a physical cd package I'm not really saving money. I have a Cadillac EXT with a high-end BOSE stereo system and the 9 tracks I downloaded all had noticeable artifacting, noise and distortion compared to the original store-bought tracks. Can Apple improve the quality setting of the AAC's it uses or is that the best AAC can do?

Rob Pegoraro: That I don't know. I can tell you that the AAC files I downloaded sounded pretty good to me. My most common method of testing was to open an AAC copy of a song next to an MP3 or .wav copy in QuickTime Player, then queue up all three tracks (QuickTime Player can be set to mute the volume of background windows). This way, I could switch back and forth from one track to the other. And when I did this, the differences were really hard to detect in most cases.

Maybe I spent too many hours in front of the speakers at the 9:30 Club or the Black Cat as a younger man, but that's what I observed last week.

Arlington, Va.: Hi Rob. Just to let you know: iTunes will export a track list in several different formats. The Discus CD-label program will let you import the exported list, choosing which info you want to pull in. You can, for instance, choose track number, track title and timing, and it'll pull the info into a format that you can easily print out in any of dozens of labels from many different blank-label manufacturers.

Rob Pegoraro: Sure, but it would be a whole lot simpler if iTunes offered a simple way to print out the track list and album cover. I'd prefer that my song purchases not come with so much assembly required.

Worcester Mass.: Since the music cartels want to make sure we have paid for the music we listen to, do you think they will help us listen to the music we paid for? I have a big collection of lps, how about them cutting me some slack when I want the same content in a digital format. lol

Rob Pegoraro: Great question! Sadly, I think you will be waiting for a long time to get your refund on the original LP purchase...

San Jose, Calif.: What do you think of the new Rendezvous technology in iTunes 4? It was relesed along with the Music Service. There isn't much discussion of it but I think it's fantastic. I can now share iTunes playlists within my own home network and even over the internet!

Rob Pegoraro: Yes, this is really neat; you click a button in iTunes 4's Preferences screen to share your music, and every other Mac in your house immediately detects that shared music, without your ever having to designate a server address. I haven't gotten this to work across the public Internet, though; it may be firewall issues at either end, but I ran out of time to get it to work.

I just wish you could stream purchased music within your own home network without having to authorize each computer. Whenever somebody comes up with a WiFi receiver for stereo systems, will that box count as one of your three permitted computers? I hope not.

San Mateo, Calif.: If you embed a purchased tune in a powerpoint or slide show, viewers' computers must be on one of your three authorized computers. Isn't this overly restrictive? I mean you can't send your slide show to your extended family, much less send a ppt presentation to your marketing team.

Rob Pegoraro: Hmm. That is one thing I didn't test. I will. Are you talking about iPhoto slide shows in particular?

RIAA's Problem: Even before MP3s, artists weren't able to stop bootlegging of live shows and of unreleased tracks. Zimmerman: Ten of Swords would probably have outsold Dylan's Biograph had it been sold at Tower.

So where is the happy medium? If you put too many restrictions on digital music, listeners get discouraged and turn to pirating. Too few restrictions, and artists can't earn a living. Any ideas, Rob?

Rob Pegoraro: I don't know that too few restrictions necessarily equals rampant piracy. That can happen--I did a column about piracy in the shareware industry a while back--but the question shouldn't be "is piracy eliminated?" anyway. It should be "is this a viable business?" And I think that the right balance of convenience and low price will persuade most people not to bother with piracy--just as Blockbuster makes millions of dollars a year, even though VHS is brain-dead-simple to copy.

Rob Pegoraro: We're running a little over schedule, but there were a few other questions I didn't want to miss.

(If you'd like me to keep going, everybody hold up your cigarette lighters all at once. Or submit more questions :)

Greenbelt, Md.: I really enjoy your weekly column. At the end of your review of the iTunes Music Store, you wrote that "It isn't the best possible way to download music - Apple has plenty of work to do there...." I'm curious, what do you see as the best way to download music, or alternatively, what improvements would you recommend to Apple?

Rob Pegoraro: Simple: Apple must offer the ability to move purchased AAC files onto devices beyond the iPod. This incluces the ability to burn AACs to data CDs, so that I can then play these discs in DVD players and car stereos.

As a bonus, I'd like to be able to stream my purchases to any computer on my own subnet (home or office network).

I know I can always burn them to CD and re-rip as MP3s, but that's really a pain. And it forces customers to think like thieves, which I'm sure is not in the long-term interest of record labels or Apple.

Washington, D.C.: Rob,
I switched from an iPod, which I adored, to a Creative Nomad Jukebox solely because after a year and two replacements there was no way for me to escape a tide of problems with th iPod's battery life. And all the posting I read on usenets said the new iPods were no better. Any idea whether Apple has finally fixed this? I'd go back to iPod if they have.

Rob Pegoraro: Not familiar with these problems--what's gone wrong w/ your iPod?

Chicago: I am plannig on replacing my (Flat Panel) iMac soon but have concerns about moving the music that have already purchased. I dont want to reencode it and I won't have both machines side by side to make them share their music. I have the felling that burning an image of my Music directory wont work. Any ideas?

Mr. E.

Rob Pegoraro: No need even to burn a disc image; just copy those files to a blank CD or DVD, then copy them over to the new machine. ITunes will import them into its library, and you'll have to authorize the new machine for playback. And that's it. (Don't forget to de-authorize the old computer before you dispose of it.)

Delafield, Wis.: Any word on when the Beatles collection will be on? (Maybe it's an "Apple" dispute)

Rob Pegoraro: No idea. I have no clue what the surviving members of the band think they are accomplishing. This is just like George Lucas not releasing the Star Wars trilogy on DVD: If you fail to provide your product in the way that customers want, other people will gladly do the job, but without any money going to you.

Rathdrum, Idaho: Do you think you could do an article on AAC? It seems like so many people are confused about it, and I have heard a lot of audio experts say that it is nearly as good as the CD at 128 kbps. It ought to, anyway, because it's ten years newer than MP3!

Rob Pegoraro: I could, but I'm not sure I could add that much about it. Audio codecs are a squishy topic in general. You can't objectively compare them to the original, because the entire point of audio compression is to throw out sounds that you can't hear or notice (it's called "psychoacoustics," in case you need a really long word for your next game of Scrabble). Some people find CDs themselves inherently unsatisifactory. I don't have the ears--or the stereo--to make those distinctions.

Bethesda, Md.: Rob, have you heard that Verizon is lowering the price of their 1.5/128 DSL to $34.95? What impact do you think this will have on the broadband market? Will Comcast match it?

Rob Pegoraro: You've got me. Verizon has raised and lowered its prices several times now, and usually with little public notice. It's like it's conducting an ongoing experiment in broadband price elasticity, to use the appropriate economic jargon. I can't tell you that these Verizon price cuts will last.

Comcast's prices have been more consistent, in that they've inched up over the last few years.

Medford, Mass.: Apple did have problems with faster-than-normal battery draining, but they have released firmware updates recently that they say fixes this problem (I have not experienced battery issues, probably because my iPod is only 4 months old, but my roommate, who has had his for almost a year, said the firmware updates were fixing the battery problems he had been having.).

Rob Pegoraro: A posting about iPod battery-life issues...

Tinmouth, Vt.: Do you think that it is wise to order a ipod now, or do you think that it will be expanded to have new features soon? For example, an ipod phone.

Rob Pegoraro: Nah, if you want to buy one, buy one now. Apple just updated the entire line, so you're probably not going to see another update for the next several months, and maybe much longer.

I'm not expecting an iPod phone at any point.

Chicago: I have read in the iTunes forum at apple.com and in Fortune magazine that the AAC files are designed to have poor sound quality when ripped to MP3 to avoid seeing these on Kazaa, etc. Your review said that you saved the the files as MP3s -- did you notice any quality difference?

Rob Pegoraro: No, none at all. I have no idea what that writer in Fortune was talking about--you do lose some quality when going from AAC-CD-MP3, but it's nothing you'd notice under many listening conditions.

Washington, D.C. : Spent an hour or so (and $50 or more!) with the iTunes store yesterday. It is far far too easy to spend a lot of money. I have questions about the sound quality (fine for iPod use, but not as good as a well-mastered CD) and probably won't use it to buy new music. But I spent yesterday picking up individual songs from artists that I could never justify buying an album from (mostly stuff that is 20-30 years old).

Here is my question: How do I back up my iTunes library so that if I have a catastrophic failure of the OS (as I did once before) and have to wipe the hard disc clean and do a re-install, I don't lose the purchased music? It was one thing when I had to re-install the music for which I owned the CD, but now, where I don't have the source CD, how can I do this easily? I could burn music CDs, but wouldn't that degrade the sound further? Do I have to use an external drive and use up one of the available computers I can have attached to my iTunes music store account?

Rob Pegoraro: (I'm catching up on questions I missed before in the chat...)

Just burn the AAC files to a data CD or DVD. If you move them back onto the original computer, you may need to re-authorize it, but that shouldn't count against your total of authorized computers.

From what I can tell, Apple's copy-management system uses some sort of fixed hardware identifier--Ethernet hardware address or serial number--to distinguish among Macs. I got a confirmation from Apple that I was generally correct in that understanding late Friday evening, but Apple really needs to document this stuff in plain Englsh. Its customers have a right to know exactly what rights they're buying.

Boulder, Colo.: Can we expect that when new albums (CDs) are released (traditionally) on Tuesdays that they will be simultaneously available at the Apple Store?

Rob Pegoraro: Good question. In most cases, I would think yes. In some occasions, you might get a track or two ahead of schedule, if the band wanted to work out that kind of promotion.

Bethesda, Md.: You're clearly an early adopter-- but some of us are less eager about getting sliced up by the bleeding edge. Advice I've heard is to wait for version 2.1 (first update of second version) for non-Microsoft, and version 3.2 for Microsoft. Any thoughts?

Rob Pegoraro: If you want to buy some music, go ahead--this isn't like an operating-system upgrade, which can have serious adverse effects on your computer.

Ithaca, N.Y.: To answer the question about Battery Life from Washington a few questions ago, the original iPods were notorious for a steadily declining battery life. My original iPod got something like 11 hours of battery life initally, but within 3 months it got so bad it wouldn't hold enough charge for one song. I had my iPod replaced on more than one occasion...

Apple claims to have fixed the issue, which wasn't necessarily with the battery itself, but with the software that gauged it. With version 1.2.6 of the iPod software, my iPod got something like 1 and a half hours of battery life, which is great again.

Rob Pegoraro: Another posting on iPod battery life:

Baltimore: Some questions:

1. Do you see this as an opportunity to revitalize the idea of the "single?" When I was a kid (late 60s), the most frequent purchase for me was a 45. If memory serves, it cost about 75 cents. In 2003 dollars, that's even more than Apple is charging, even at $1.98 for the A and B sides. Will record companies warm to this idea?

2. Apple's DRM is easy to take, but it's still DRM. What happens to my file in 20 years when Apple has mutated sufficiently that none of my then-current computers/players can unlock the file. Have I been snookered, of is a buck a fair price to pay for the use of the song until then?

3. Has Apple made any commitments to the speed and quantity of additions to the catalog?

Rob Pegoraro: 1) Yes. I don't think singles have any future in stores, but they make perfect sense online. They might make *more* sense as freebie promotional giveaways, though.

2) Tough question. Since you can always take the song out of the DRM world entirely by re-ripping it as an open MP3, AAC, Ogg or whatever, you're never going to be trapped by this service (this is why having unlimited CD burning is very important).

3) Commitments, no. But it says it's going to continue adding songs and artists, including from labels not on there now. (This morning's press release said 3,000 or so songs would be added this week.)

Washington, D.C.: Seems to me that the combination of iTunes on Windows (coming), the Windows iPod and AAC audio (together with Apple's Fairplay Digital Rights Management (DRM)) puts a big dent in Microsoft's world domination plan with Windows Media on copy-protected CDs (where you have to run Windows to listen to music on a computer). What do you think Microsoft will do?

Rob Pegoraro: I don't know what it can do. It's already giving away Windows Media technology on the cheapest basis available (I think it's free to implement in hardware). What it can't overcome is the music and hardware industries' own skepticism about letting one company control their means of distribution.

Greenbelt, Md.: What are the implications of downloaded muisc as a commercially viable method of ditribution? By this, I am wondering if the AAC format will stay viable or will consumers see faster changes in format? Will music formats go obsolete as fast as our computers?

Rob Pegoraro: If they do, then music-service developers will *need* to offer their customers a simple and reliable way to "upgrade" their recordings (one that doesn't involve buying new copies of everything). There's only so many times I'm going to buy a new copy of every CD in the shelf.

San Mateo, CA: San Mateo, Calif.: If you embed a purchased tune in a powerpoint or slide show, viewers' computers must be on one of your three authorized computers. Isn't this overly restrictive? I mean you can't send your slide show to your extended family, much less send a ppt presentation to your marketing team.

Rob Pegoraro: Hmm. That is one thing I didn't test. I will. Are you talking about iPhoto slide shows in particular?

Me: Yes. It was a bummer.

Rob Pegoraro: Again, hmm. That's something that the software should warn you explicitly about. (I mean, it would be better not to have that sort of idiotic restriction at all, but if you're going to go that way, at least be straight up about it.)

Sandy, Utah: Why can you only broadcast your songs bought from the iTunes music store only on the two other authorized computers, when you can broadcast songs bought elsewhere to many more computers? What is the logic behind that? If you've bought a song, it's bought! Does it really matter from where? Also, with music sharing, I've had to turn off my firewall in the Sharing System Preference for other people to play my music. Do you know if I could keep the firewall on, but just open a port for iTunes to use? If I could, what port would I leave open?

Rob Pegoraro: On your first point, I agree one hundred percent. I think it's the record labels who need to be convinced on this point, not Apple.

On your second point, you don't need to turn off your firewall (nor do I recommend doing so!). Open port, um, 3869 (I think that's right, but check on MacInTouch.com for sure), which is the port used for Rendezvous networking. That worked fine for me over a local network. I couldn't get it to work over the Internet, although having an AirPort Extreme base station/firewall in the way may have complicated things.

CD Land: Probably the oldest question in the book, but....

I am emphatically not a techie audiophile person, but I like music and have a pretty decent CD collection. Are all of these new technologies going to make my CDs obsolete? (I know you can download music and burn CDs, but it seems that more and more people are using other types of devices.) If in 5 (or even 10) years my CDs are in a box in my closet next to where my LPs are, I may have to resort to violence.

Also, I would like to second the complaint about copy protection. I admit I sin occasionally, but it's at the level of burning a copy of a favorite CD for my mother. If the new methods of distribution (and CD copy protection) stop me from doing so, I will be unhappy. Do the record companies really want to stop people like me?

Rob Pegoraro: Yes, the CD might very well one day be replaced by direct digital downloads. (If you've priced CD racks lately, that may not be a bad thing--they must be the most expensive form of storage, at $/megabyte, available.)

Apple's store does let you make that mix CD for your mom, and with many fewer hassles than competing services (no hassles at all, if you haven't already burned 10 copies of that particular mix).

Atlanta, Ga.: Rob, why do you think that the AppleMusic store is causing SUCH an uproar/positive buzz/negative backlash if, as so many naysayers like to try to point out, it's only a "niche" web store?

Rob Pegoraro: This'll be my last question [house lights come on]. It really surprised me last week to see co-workers coming up to me to talk about all the music they've bought on the Apple store. *Nobody* has ever shown remotely comparable enthusiasm for the other services.

Yeah, it's a niche, but that's where a lot of interesting stuff starts in the technology business.

Rob Pegoraro: And that's all the time we've got. Thanks for showing upt today--drive home safe!

- R

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