Apple Has All But Owned Digital Music For Over A Decade
Apple was the first company to put your entire music library onto a single, pocket-sized portable player, and they’ve had many years to refine and improve their digital music software and hardware products. Many people, myself included, have become so downright dependent on our iPods that it’s hard to imagine any competitor ever muscling in on Apple’s digital music territory. Yet, nobody is 100% satisfied with Apple’s digital music solution, which is iTunes + Apple devices.
Users Have A Love/Hate Relationship With iTunes
iTunes software updates are so frequent that they were made the subject of a South Park episode, HumancentiPad, in which young Kyle learns firsthand the perils of failing to read the terms and conditions before agreeing to install yet another iTunes update. Like everything Apple makes, iTunes is optimized to run best and fastest on Apple devices, and Apple devices are generally more expensive than competitor products. It’s never fun when you have to set up a new computer, but dealing with the iTunes library transfer or update nightmare makes it that much worse. iTunes purchases have a mysterious habit of suddenly disappearing here and there; never so often or in such a large quantity that you give up on iTunes, but every few months you’ll look for a track you haven’t listened to in a very long time and discover it has vanished. Sometimes you’ll find it’s still on your hard drive and just has to be re-imported to iTunes, but just as often you’ll find it’s disappeared completely.
UDPATED TO ADD: This past June, with the rollout of iCloud, Apple finally made it possible to re-download any prior iTunes store purchases without any time limit (before, you could only re-download purchases made within the past six months or so). This is an improvement, but it would be better still if tracks never disappeared in the first place.
Can Amazon Pick Up The Digital Music Ball And Run With It? Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily Aims To Find Out.
Into this gaping hole of opportunity steps Amazon, with its MP3 Store, Cloud Player, and even Amazon-branded devices designed to play digital music (among numerous other functions) in the form of the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD line. Others have tried, and failed, to bring down the digital music house that Jobs built—even tech powerhouse Microsoft has barely made a dent in Apple’s digital music market dominance. But where others have failed, Amazon intends to prevail.
Today, Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily kicks off an in-depth series of posts that will provide a side-by-side comparison of these two digital music solutions. Many people are looking closely at Amazon’s solution and considering jumping the Apple ship, but feel they don’t have enough information to make a decision. That’s what this series is all about: arming you with the facts you need to do a real—pardon the pun—apples to apples comparison and decide for yourself, based on your specific needs, if Amazon may be a better digital music solution for you. In the series, I’ll be giving you the low-down on each of the following areas:
iTunes vs. Amazon MP3 Store
Amazon’s MP3 Store is every bit as massive as iTunes’, and it bests iTunes in two critical areas. First, the Amazon MP3 Store is designed to better approximate the experience of shopping for music in the real world. Second, its music offerings are generally less expensive than the same songs and albums purchased from iTunes.
In addition to these two considerations, Amazon’s digital music files are all offered in MP3 format, meaning that you can play them on any device capable of playing MP3 files. iTunes began phasing out its DRM in 2009, but all of its (now DRM-free) music content is offered in AAC format. AAC has pros and cons in comparison to MP3, so we’ll take a closer look at that.
Digital Music Library Management
Buying your digital music files is just the first step; you also need to download them, organize them, and ensure their future security and availability. Where Apple has iTunes plus iTunes Match, Amazon has the Amazon MP3 Downloader plus its Cloud Player. Each contender has certain strengths and weaknesses, and you’ll find your preference for one over the other largely comes down to the features you value most when it comes to managing your digital music library.
Digital Music Functionality
In this area, it’s all about music file functionality and device compatibility. Once you’ve bought your digital music, organized it and ensured it’s backed up and secure, what can you do with it? Where, when and how can you play it? Here again, each individual music fan will have his specific dealbreaker and ‘nice to have’ features. This post will explain each contender’s offerings in the areas of digital music functionality and device compatibility.
Devices
How do Amazon’s Fire devices stack up against Apple’s iPad, which is the closest analog device, in terms of digital music? If you own a Kindle Fire, can you ditch your iPod?
Bottom Line: Is Amazon’s Digital Music Solution A Better Choice For You Than Apple’s?
This post will bring it all together and draw some conclusions. Should you make the switch from Apple to Amazon? Should you go “a la carte” and create your own, custom digital music solution made up of the individual parts of Amazon and Apple that suit your needs best, combined? By the time you’re finished with this final post in the series, you should have all the information you need to decide.
Next in the series:
Digital Music Library Management
Series Wrap-Up and Conclusions
There are certainly other players besides ipod. I have used Creative devices for many years and love my Creative X-Fi for small, portable tunes, audiobooks, videos, radio, web streaming, etc. 32 GB. Easy to manage. ITunes is a PAIN (my granddaughter has ipod) in comparison. Of course I am speaking as a PC user, so perhaps the interface is more intuitive and painless for Apple users.
I love my Fire but its limited storage, reliance on wi-fi, and relatively limited battery life makes me continue to rely on my X-Fi for listening on the go. Thousands of songs, a nice selection of books & videos at my fingertips.