mark nottingham

iTunes

Wednesday, 5 May 2004

I’ve got to say that iTunes 4.5 is scary addictive.

Usually, I have a problem in buying music, because by the time I get to the record shop, I forget what I want, and I’m confronted with rows and rows of albums and a lack of patience. The iTunes Music Store helped a little bit because it’s always there (as long as you’re online), but you’re still confronted with the sheer volume of potential selections.

Now, in the newest rev, they’ve got iMixes — user-submitted playlists — that are linked from albums that they contain. In other words, if you look up a song you like on iTMS, you’re one click away from a playlist containing similar songs that you’ve probably never heard, but will like. This one, for example [iTunes required].

Additionally, every album and artist in your library as well as on the music store has a little button that takes you to the appropriate page on iTMS, so it’s easy to discover and explore the links between songs (Hmm, sounds like a job for the Semantic Web…).

So, now it’s really easy for me to find and buy music that I like. The bastards.