KEY POINTS:
What is it?
It's been around for a couple of years but inexplicably unavailable to us until now. Apple's iTunes.com music store finally opened its doors locally in early December allowing us to download music that's compatible with the country's most popular portable music player - the Apple iPod.
What makes it tick?
The raging success of the iPod, apart from its minimalist, user-friendly design, is how well it works with the free iTunes software that manages your music collection and with the iTunes music store. It makes Apple a one-stop-shop for music, which will frustrate those who favour other download services but makes it really simple for those who don't care about the technology, but just want flexibility in how they buy music.
What makes it cool?
The iTunes system is clever - everything is managed from within the software, which is available for Apple Mac computers and Windows-based PCs. You can copy all of your own CDs into iTunes to build a music collection to play on your computer or transfer to your iPod. You can also browse the iTunes store by artist or genre, using your credit card to pay for individual tracks or whole albums. Downloading is reasonably speedy on even entry-level broadband connections and the songs are then integrated into your iTunes collection. Copyright protection limits the number of computers you can play back the music on which is a bugbear for many but designed to stop you giving away your music collection. A huge range of local and international podcasts are also available for download through iTunes and the bulk of them are free.
It's not really that expensive because ...
At $1.79 a track or $17.99 for an album we pay more than the Americans for music bought from iTunes. But Top 40 albums usually sell for $25 to $35 at high street retailers and singles typically cost $3 to $5. Apple runs a virtual music store so can cut out much of the cost of delivering music to you and there's no physical CD and packaging to boost the price. If you can live without the liner notes for your favourite band's latest album, you'll take to iTunes.
