iTunes
Perhaps you noticed the little gray box in the upper right corner of my screen.
What?? NO WINAMP?? Yes, yes, I know. Winamp and I go waaaayyy back. I absolutely love how I could perfectly integrate Winamp into anything I was doing. I had a constant playlist that was jumpin’, jivin’, and occasionally jabbing a whale.
So why was it so conspicuously missing from my desktop in that screenshot, while a not-so-sleek gray box with rounded corners took its place.
Yep, iTunes.
I was all over it the minute it was released. I knew it was coming for a long time… and then, one day, it was there in the news: “iTunes for Windows to be released this week” … and they weren’t even lying! It was released that week!
So whyTunes?
1. My iPod.
2. Quickest indexing of mp3s out there.
3. The iTunes Music Store is the only place I could get Ben Fold’s new EPs, Sunny 16 and Speed Graphic, outside of ordering the CDs from a few online indie record stores.
Yeah, it sucks that iTunes’ store is encrypted AAC. (Although the sound quality is noticably better than MP3s… AAC was developed by Dolby, I believe, as a portable high-quality sound file.)
You should definitely take that into account before purchasing any songs. You won’t be able to play them in Winamp without a plugin… and you will only be able to load them onto something like 6 computers. (This is easily hacked, of course, by just burning the files onto an audio CD and then ripping the track as MP3.)
But… for organizing and quick-access playing music, iTunes beats the living snot out of MusicCrash Crapbox.
Want iTunes? Get it here if you don’t already have it.