iTunes Browser Concept

I’m a pretty heavy iTunes user. And with my music collection, the “browser” is the quickest way for me to browse and navigate to the music I’m looking for. But the browser doesn’t always use space efficiently, and it doesn’t display album artwork. By comparison, the iPod and iPhone provide rich navigation in a single column and display album art in list views. So I made the video above to show how iTunes could benefit from a similar interface. I think even light iTunes users could benefit from this because it makes browsing iTunes much more like browsing the iPod. I hope you enjoy it, I recommend watching it at full screen or in HD.

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MTV's The State Now Available on iTunes

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The first season of The State is now available on iTunes! Hopefully this will pave the way for Mr. Show, Upright Citizens Brigade, and other great sketch comedy from back in the day being added to iTunes as I proposed in one of my first posts. I've already downloaded the episodes and can't wait for more to be added.

iTunes should Play DVDs

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Title pretty much says it all. I don't understand why iTunes doesn't play DVDs. I loath having to launch another program just to watch a DVD, I should be able to do it from iTunes. I'm not saying Apple should ditch the standalone DVD player app in OS X, but iTunes should be able to handle DVDs as easily as it does CDs.

No iTunes Subscription Model for Music, but What about Videos?

Recently Steve Jobs has again denied the possibility of a subscription model for music on iTunes, but conspicuously made no mention about a subscription model for videos.  "People want to own their music," he said.  What he means by this is that while many music subscriptions offer unlimited downloads, the catch is that when you end your subscription all the music you downloaded becomes unplayable.  So essentially, customers of these plans are just renting music.  While the concept of renting music may be unpopular, renting videos is something that everyone does.  And Jobs made no mention about the possibility of a subscription-based model for iTunes videos that would essentially allow people to rent videos.  A subscription plan for iTunes videos could be widely popular; even with the same people who would never want to rent music.  I've written about the need for an iTunes subscription plan for videos here and here, and now that the iTV is out I still maintain that a subscription plan for videos is inevitable.

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iTunes Subscriptions (Reprise)

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After Apple announced that videos would be available on iTunes, I wrote about the need for a subscription plan on iTunes. Now that Apple has announced the iTV, a subscription service is even more necessary, as the iTV and a video subscription plan would be able to compete with services like Netflix. In fact, if the iTV does have a built-in hard drive, a iTunes subscription plan will almost certainly be available. The big question is how would it be priced: based on the number of videos out at time like Netflix does? Or would they just offer a single "all-you-can-download" subscription. The latter seems more likely as there's such a varied amount of content on iTunes. After all it would really suck if the movie you wanted to watch didn't download because you forgot to delete a music video, or SNL sketch.

Of course, in a perfect world, Apple and Netflix would partner and to deliver access to the entire Netflix library via the iTV. As convenient as Netflix is, I hate having to wait for my next DVD to arrive by mail...

iTunes 7: They did it!

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Last week Apple released iTunes 7 and it features not one but TWO enhancements previously described on "They should do that," needless to say I'm delighted. The first, and more hyped new addition is browsing by album artwork. The second new feature, which hasn't gotten as much attention, is that iTunes purchased music can now be transfered from an iPod to a computer. This means that if your computer hard drive dies, but you had all your purchased music on your iPod you haven't lost it. Woo hoo!
Apple iTunes Album View and Cover Flow View
Apple iTunes Sync both Ways

iTunes Week Recap

Subscription Model for iTunes Video Store
More Sketch Comedy on iTunes
Browse by Album Art in iTunes
Transfer iTunes Purchased Music from iPod
iTunes Lossless Downloads
iTunes Needs Tags not Genres

Subscription Model for iTunes Video Store

As much as the iTunes “Multi-Pass” and “Season Pass” for videos are great new purchasing options, a true subscription model for videos may still be preferable. Sure purchasing 16 episodes of the Daily show for $10 instead of $32 is great, but who really wants to own every episode of a daily TV show (even if it is as awesome as the Daily Show)? iTunes should offer a monthly subscription plan for videos, similar to the other music stores’ subscription model for music.

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More Sketch Comedy on iTunes

Apple is definitely on to something with selling Saturday Night Live sketches on iTunes. They should quickly expand to selling sketches of other beloved and short lived sketch comedy, such as The Ben Stiller Show, Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show, and, of course, The State. iTunes and the iPod could be the best thing to happen to sketch comedy since Lorne Michales.

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Browse by Album Art in iTunes

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Album artwork has been largely peripheral to the experience of using iTunes, and it's time for this to change. Simply being able to browse artists and albums by CD covers would begin to restore what has long been a big part of enjoying music and artists, and is still largely lacking in digital music.

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Transfer iTunes Purchased Music from iPod

This is a simple one, iTunes purchased music should be able to be transferred from an iPod. If I accidentally delete a song file, or my hard drive crashes I should be able to restore any iTunes purchased music back to my computer from my iPod, that just seems fair.

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iTunes Lossless Downloads

The current generation of iPods maxes at 60GB, and a 100GB iPod by year's end seems more than likely. With such high capacity hard drives, song file size is quickly becoming an afterthought to most consumers. After all, who's really counting after 10,000 songs. So I'm surprised that Apple still hasn't become the first mainstream digital music store to offer lossless downloads, especially given their recent product announcements and the growing popularity of Apple Lossless format.

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iTunes Needs Tags not Genres

As much as I enjoy using iTunes, I'm perpetually frustrated by how to organize my music with it. To be fair, I have similar problems when I arrange CDs on a shelf or in one of those 200 CD nylon cases. My preference for browsing through music is looking at set of albums with some thematic connection. Currently the best way to do that in iTunes is by browsing by "genre." However, with so much new music crossing genres or existing squarely between two or three genres, this rarely works well (the whole notion of a music "genre" is a bit of an anachronism if you ask me). For instance you can have a genre for soundtracks and jazz and Latin, but that doesn't help at all when you come to the "Buena Vista Social Club", a soundtrack for a film about Cuban jazz. What would make much more sense is if multiple tags (or labels) could be applied to each song instead of just a single "genre."

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iTunes Week!

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So in an attempt to get a whole bunch of ideas out at once about iTunes, I'm announcing this to be "iTunes Week" here at theyshouldothat. Check back all this week for new ideas all about iTunes.

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