Where is the Music "iTunes" store?

[JoeSilver]

$130 a year. $1300 for ten years. Assuming they wont raise prices. That’s a lot of albums. In Sweden an album is about $10. So 130 albums. I don’t know about you but the amount of music I listen to 95% of the time is composed of .. maybe 30 albums, and that’s with a good margin.

Suddenly those $12 a month doesn’t sound like such a good deal.

It's not that simple though. If you know already which albums you want to exclusively listen to for the next 10 years, that's fair.
In general, streaming services allow you to explore music which you wouldn't think of buying, because without streaming you can't even know that exists. Sure, there are also radios for that, and music venues, but the these means are not mutually exclusive. For example, I like to look up artists I've hear on radio programs.
Even when I like an artist or album, it's not a straight decision to buy it, it could be a passing infatuation, and if I bought everything I listen more than once on a streaming service, I would certainly spend more than $12 month.

And I'm not even a huge music aficionado.

That said, it doesn't mean the points raised by or the OP are not valid.
I do think that it's better owning copies than renting them. Incidentally this applies to other media too, like books and movies.

And it raises other concerns.

For example, is buying media only in digital format really safe? You are not guaranteed that the distributor will not withdraw the book, game, movie from their cloud, without warning (in some extreme cases they can even erase it from your device... Amazon is that you?). You don't know how long they will be in business, no matter how "too big to fail" they appear now. So you'd better save everything on hard media.

And yet, even in that case, you are not guaranteed that you will be able to enjoy your purchases if the format becomes unsupported (this is potentially true for any media apart from books, which in fact I no longer buy in ebook format): vinyls are fashionable again, but for how long we'll be able to play LP, CD, VHS, betamax, films? At what cost?

 

[MarkC426]

And yet, even in that case, you are not guaranteed that you will be able to enjoy your purchases if the format becomes unsupported (this is potentially true for any media apart from books, which in fact I no longer buy in ebook format): vinyls are fashionable again, but for how long we'll be able to play LP, CD, VHS, betamax, films? At what cost?

You can play LP, CD, VHS, Betamax for as long as you have the relevant players…..

 

[JoeSilver]

You can play LP, CD, VHS, Betamax for as long as you have the relevant players…..

As long as they work, they're still produced, or at least serviced with spare parts and repair, yes.
But I agree that for the foreseeable span of my life it will still be possible.

 

[Adora]

There is a new market for "alternative" music on CDs and payed digital downloads slowly growing here since a few years and it will hopefully kill the more and more censoring on demand streaming services one day. That's all I like to say about it to keep this thread out of politics.

 

[DrWojtek]

Maybe it's nostalgia, but I remember kind of liking the whole process ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And aside from the first time I did it -- to get music into my iPod -- I rarely ever ripped more than a few CDs at once.


This is the #1 reason I switched over to Apple Music from Spotify. I've got quite a few things that are not available via streaming, but I can still play them from my iPhone, HomePods, whatever. Every once in a while I get a track that plays but comes up matched to some random compilation or soundtrack, but otherwise it's pretty solid.


If I asked my grandmother, she'd say the exact same thing... about the 1940s and 50s. 🤣

Sure. But Im in my thirties.

 

[CharlesShaw]

99% of people never, ever want to mess with a library.
storing CDs/tape/vinyl somewhere in your house, making sure that they are all stored in such a way that the LPs won’t warp and the CDs won’t get rotted, importing them into a music application, making sure the Metadata matches up, making sure you’re using a hard drive that won’t break, and or is backed up properly, deciding which format to store the music in… it’s an absolute process.

Count me among the recently reformed members of that 99%, but I'll always have empathy for those who enjoy the process, or cannot resist the need to research, purchase, install, tinker and upgrade gear of some sort or another.

Today, my library only consists of a small collection of iTunes purchases, mostly for my Apple Watch to play at the gym. Everything else was donated or given to friends. I no longer even own a CD/DVD drive/burner.

In a previous life, with a car, music felt as essential as gasoline. Having lived through AM radio only, AM/FM only, 8-track tapes, and cassette tapes, my highpoint was using iTunes on a white plastic MacBook to create mix CDs for the car.

 

[JoeSilver]

Sure. But Im in my thirties.

Then it's snobbery

I say this because I've gone through the same thing, since you said that the best music has been made between the 60s and the 00s, whereas I would have stopped at the 90s. I also had a thing for music from the 60s and 70s, produced when I wasn't even born or still a toddler.

In my thirties I already stopped listening to new music. I loathed what the mainstream was offering, which looked bland or rehashed. In hindsight, I didn't have the curiosity of looking further.
But I do think that the way experience music in our teenage years and in our 20s is radically different from the way we experience it later (exceptions apply). When we look back to those years, at a later age, a lot of things seem to have happened, as if those decades lasted much longer than the rest of our lives, or were packed with more meaningful events.
The truth is that the intensity of those life experiences and their emotional impact has a huge effect on our personality. And the music we listened to then was the soundtrack of that period of our life, it became profoundly linked to our youth. So... it's nostalgia

Also, the fact that when we're young we can love music made before we were born is not that surprising and doesn't mean that the quality has gone downwards: music that has survived for decades has passed the test of time (remember that a lot of forgettable rubbish was also being produced then, it has just been filtered out from the gold). Once "old music" has become a classic and it has entered the cultural "bloodstream", has been digested, played and rediscovered multiple times. It's much easier to appreciate the old classics than something new, more experimental.

Again, exceptions apply.

 

[Ctrlos]

Whilst I do still buy new albums and stuff from sites like band camp, I still like to trawl charity shops for £1 CDs to rip to MP3. Streaming services have some massive gaps in their catalogues that will never get filled.

 

[ignatius345]

Whilst I do still buy new albums and stuff from sites like band camp, I still like to trawl charity shops for £1 CDs to rip to MP3. Streaming services have some massive gaps in their catalogues that will never get filled.

Aside from small label stuff and things that have fallen into some IP licensing black hole, there's also a period of the late 80s/early 90s where sampling was taking off but hadn't been worked out from a licensing standpoint. (The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique somehow managed to get licensed but De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising did not and isn't available on any streaming platform -- but is available if you find and rip a CD...)

Also Bandcamp is an awesome way to support musicians directly, particularly on Bandcamp Fridays ("monthly events when Bandcamp waives its revenue share and gives all proceeds to artists and labels"). I have a few friends' projects where I've specifically paid for albums there, even though in daily use I just end up streaming them on Apple Music when they land there.

 

[DrWojtek]

Then it's snobbery

I say this because I've gone through the same thing, since you said that the best music has been made between the 60s and the 00s, whereas I would have stopped at the 90s. I also had a thing for music from the 60s and 70s, produced when I wasn't even born or still a toddler.

In my thirties I already stopped listening to new music. I loathed what the mainstream was offering, which looked bland or rehashed. In hindsight, I didn't have the curiosity of looking further.
But I do think that the way experience music in our teenage years and in our 20s is radically different from the way we experience it later (exceptions apply). When we look back to those years, at a later age, a lot of things seem to have happened, as if those decades lasted much longer than the rest of our lives, or were packed with more meaningful events.
The truth is that the intensity of those life experiences and their emotional impact has a huge effect on our personality. And the music we listened to then was the soundtrack of that period of our life, it became profoundly linked to our youth. So... it's nostalgia

Also, the fact that when we're young we can love music made before we were born is not that surprising and doesn't mean that the quality has gone downwards: music that has survived for decades has passed the test of time (remember that a lot of forgettable rubbish was also being produced then, it has just been filtered out from the gold). Once "old music" has become a classic and it has entered the cultural "bloodstream", has been digested, played and rediscovered multiple times. It's much easier to appreciate the old classics than something new, more experimental.

Again, exceptions apply.

You are right. But I never said all music between 60s and 00s were gold. There were a lot, lot of rubbish. Rubbish I haven’t even heard. The difference is today 98% is crap, as opposed to maybe 75% back then. Mixed with 15% great music and 10% legendary.

A large reason for this is that the biggest crap genres of RnB and rap didn’t even exist then. The only great artists I can think of in these genres are early Eminem, Dre, Snoop Dogg, Rihanna and select few others. While there are literally hundreds of artists in this space that produce the most brain dead, uncreative repetetive beats and lyrics you have ever heard. Year after year. All of which are very popular on streaming services.

 

[MallardDuck]

It’s what people do in 2025. Don’t get me wrong I had an iPod and used iTunes back in the day. Once fast cellular data connection was possible that was the nail in the coffin for downloading music and mp3 players. Even from only a cost perspective $10.99 a month for unlimited songs vs $1.29 per song is an easy choice. The only exception I can think of is if you live so far off the grid that you can’t get cellular data.

Nice to always live and travel where there is ubiquitous high speed internet at low cost. Also must be nice to not worry about licenses getting pulled, tracks remastered and ruined, and have everything you want already in the library.

For the rest of us, while streaming has its place, so does buying online, and so does owning physical media.

I agree with the OP: Apple has made buying and owning media quite difficult, and is seems intentional: e.g. the ongoing rumors of portless iDevices, the inability to use Siri to play music out of a local library on a mac, the horrible performance if you try to browse a home library from an iDevice, and the Siri on iPhone having ongoing issues with a complete inability to play music from a local library (or having it start playing something completely random, like audiobooks).

Do I stream? Sure, in the car, on headphones, and other lousy audio devices when I am in cell phone range. Do I buy music on the itunes store? Sure, when it's rock/pop and I don't care about sound quality, but still want it available offline permanently.

But when I want to *listen* to music, on real speakers driven by a real amplifier, that's always from either lossless or physical media.

 

[MallardDuck]

Interestingly, I've just received a CD I bought on eBay via the post, and I'm now trying to work out how the hell you rip it into Apple Music.

Don't use apple music to do it. Use XLD instead, then import the files. Vastly superior product (and it'll do apple lossless).

 

[Boeingfan]

Don't use apple music to do it. Use XLD instead, then import the files. Vastly superior product (and it'll do apple lossless).

Thank you for your reply. I just have one question; what is XLD?

 

[Boeingfan]

Nice to always live and travel where there is ubiquitous high speed internet at low cost. Also must be nice to not worry about licenses getting pulled, tracks remastered and ruined, and have everything you want already in the library.

For the rest of us, while streaming has its place, so does buying online, and so does owning physical media.

I agree with the OP: Apple has made buying and owning media quite difficult, and is seems intentional: e.g. the ongoing rumors of portless iDevices, the inability to use Siri to play music out of a local library on a mac, the horrible performance if you try to browse a home library from an iDevice, and the Siri on iPhone having ongoing issues with a complete inability to play music from a local library (or having it start playing something completely random, like audiobooks).

Do I stream? Sure, in the car, on headphones, and other lousy audio devices when I am in cell phone range. Do I buy music on the itunes store? Sure, when it's rock/pop and I don't care about sound quality, but still want it available offline permanently.

But when I want to *listen* to music, on real speakers driven by a real amplifier, that's always from either lossless or physical media.

Great post.

It's a reminder that solutions are driven by problems, and there are lots of clever people around.

When cassettes were mainstream the player technology innovated with some fantastic features; my favourite was the auto gap detection that meant you could rewind or fast forward the track to the next gap between songs, so you didn't have to keep pressing stop, FF, stop, play, stop, FF, play, stop, RW, stop, play 😄

Some turntables had those stackable album shafts so you could put a few albums at once on it, and when the arm reached the centre it would lift, retract, the next album would drop, and the arm would resume playing from the beginning.

CD player tech evolved to fill a need for hours on end of music with the likes of multiple-CD holding platters and cartridges providing the solution.

Doesn't it make you wonder if Apple et al keep pushing towards streaming that we may find hardware reappearing reminiscent of these technologies, because enough people are fed up with the 'take it or leave it' approach. These Pioneer ones bring back memories, and hours and hours and hours of music.

 

[TheIntruder]

Thank you for your reply. I just have one question; what is XLD?

X Lossless Decoder

 

[Boeingfan]

X Lossless Decoder

Ah! Thank you so much.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I told my 9 year old daughter that modern music is terrible and she said no it’s not. I said name one good modern band and she said AC/DC 😂

That’s obviously down to my impeccable taste and me being an amazing parent!

But joking aside I still think it’s hard to find good music today, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist.

Ed Sheeran, Luke Combs are the only 2 that pop in my head that I quite like..

I think country music, Rap and pop music just isn’t the same anymore. I’d argue the auto tune brigade has had an impact on this as well. Plus writing isn’t as good. Again all just my opinion

Before autotune, it was synthesized vocals that were killing music.
before that it was multitracking that killed music.
there will always be some technological invention that’s called the “death of music” and yet music sticks around.

 

[boswald]

Count me among the recently reformed members of that 99%, but I'll always have empathy for those who enjoy the process, or cannot resist the need to research, purchase, install, tinker and upgrade gear of some sort or another.

Today, my library only consists of a small collection of iTunes purchases, mostly for my Apple Watch to play at the gym. Everything else was donated or given to friends. I no longer even own a CD/DVD drive/burner.

In a previous life, with a car, music felt as essential as gasoline. Having lived through AM radio only, AM/FM only, 8-track tapes, and cassette tapes, my highpoint was using iTunes on a white plastic MacBook to create mix CDs for the car.

I remember the days I had to use a cassette adapter for my Walkman to get my CDs to play in my car. I remember driving through very unsafe conditions to get to the record store to buy the new album from the artist I listened to along the way. Nowadays I prefer streaming because I can make my own little radio station, but a part of me wishes I could go back in time and stop myself from giving away all my CDs.

 

[MallardDuck]

Great post.

It's a reminder that solutions are driven by problems, and there are lots of clever people around.

When cassettes were mainstream the player technology innovated with some fantastic features; my favourite was the auto gap detection that meant you could rewind or fast forward the track to the next gap between songs, so you didn't have to keep pressing stop, FF, play, stop, FF, play, stop, RW, stop, play 😄

Some turntables had those stackable album shafts so you could put a few albums at once on it, and when the arm reached the centre it would lift, retract, the next album would drop, and the arm would resume playing from the beginning.

CD player tech evolved to fill a need for hours on end of music with the likes of multiple-CD holding platters and cartridges providing the solution.

Doesn't it make you wonder if Apple et al keep pushing towards streaming that we may find hardware reappearing reminiscent of these technologies, because enough people are fed up with the 'take it or leave it' approach. These Pioneer ones bring back memories, and hours and hours and hours of music.

View attachment 2522187

I had one of those! And the car cassette adapter too!

 

[WebHead]

What software are people using to rip a CD to their computer other than iTunes or Apple Music?

I do a lot of converting from WAV to AAC. Thanks to Core Audio you can transcode by right-clicking on the files in the Finder itself (for bitrate etc it will use the settings already specified in AM).

 

[Boeingfan]

I had one of those! And the car cassette adapter too!

I've always loved hifi gear, and early in the 90's my wallet met the Yamaha EQ-630 Graphic Equaliser, and I still have it. The amount of lights and level meters got me in, I could not only listen to my music but see it as well! Beautiful pieces of kit, IMHO.

In the linked video I put my EQ-630 on top of a Pioneer GR-777 I bought from eBay.

 

[MallardDuck]

I've always loved hifi gear, and early in the 90's my wallet met the Yamaha EQ-630 Graphic Equaliser, and I still have it. The amount of lights and level meters got me in, I could not only listen to my music but see it as well! Beautiful pieces of kit, IMHO.

In the linked video I put my EQ-630 on top of a Pioneer GR-777 I bought from eBay.

Oh nice one, the warmth of the classic Yamaha and Pioneer gear is something I really miss. When my old one died, I discovered they’d been bought, and it wasn’t the same kit, so I switched over to Denon. Really nice, but not quite the same (side benefit though is that it’s not like running a space heater in the house!).

There’s nothing like full sized gear and speakers, especially when playing my SACD and DVD-A collection. Floyd, Gabriel, Brubeck, Beethoven, Doors…it’s like standing in a rainstorm made of sound.

Kind of a shame that Apple hasn’t embraced quality - Jobs was an audiophile - they’ve focused on making it convenient.

 

[jchap]

In 20 years we'll all be listening to AI-generated music anyway, for double the price.

While AI-generated music might become more prevalent, there’s a world full of musicians and people who crave authentic music created by human beings who would disagree with you.

 

[MallardDuck]

While AI-generated music might become more prevalent, there’s a world full of musicians and people who crave authentic music created by human beings who would disagree with you.

Agree. I feel the same way about autotune. Sharing the experience with the artist is a big part of why I enjoy music. AI art is fine for advertising, but I’m not hanging it on my walls.

 

[iHorseHead]

I have Apple Music. My subscription ended on June 12, yet I still somehow have access. I'm waiting to resubscribe just to see how long the "grace period" lasts.

I do buy music too, as I have a flash mod iPod 4th gen monochrome. A few others too, but the 4th gen is what I use most.

I actually bought two used CDs recently. One was a third the price of buying on iTunes, and another was not available on a streaming platform.

I have an old iPhone 5s with my old account that I no longer use. I paid for 250gb icloud storage and for apple music and I just removed my cards and I haven’t paid for anything since 2018. I still have access to all the storage and apple music on iOS 12