It’s do or die for iTunes. The world-famous music program burst onto the scene over a decade ago, completely reinventing the way we buy music. But in that time, the scene has evolved, and while iTunes’ never-ending sales have, well, never ended, it’s clear that iTunes needs an overhaul -- especially since serious, impressive competitors like Rdio are making waves. While we wait for Apple’s much-rumored MobileMe-based solution to arrive, we put together five changes iTunes must make to take the industry by storm (again).
If iTunes wants to stay king, nothing shy of superpowered streaming will do. While Amazon’s Cloud Drive, which stores your media and gives you access to stored music from any computer, is a small step in the right direction, iTunes is going to have to do more than cloud storage if it wants to stay in front of the competition. Subscriptions are a must, but on their own they’re not enough (we’re looking at you, Zune Pass). On the other hand, we don’t just want storage lockers; we want access to all music all the time.
Sure, 90 seconds is a long time, but why not give us a single taste of the whole song?
And speaking of which, 90-second streaming was news when it was first announced, but wasn’t Lala (you know, that company Apple bought) doing full-song previews years ago? Why can’t Apple allow a full-song stream, say once per account, and then revert to those 90-second previews?
Could the iPod app have both our library and the ability to stream music?
This one’s so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve a spot on the list. Of course Apple would make its streaming services available in an app, right? But take a good hard look at the feature-fest that is iTunes on the Mac and PC. Yes, it’s possible a streaming service could be tacked on to another app, like the iPod app in iOS, but too many features can turn any app into a tap fest, and all those features would just slow down whichever app it was added to. A new, dedicated app would be a cleaner, more elegant solution.
iTunes could stand to pinch an inch.
Plenty of people have abandoned iTunes as their primary music player, and who can blame them? iTunes is terribly slow and struggles with large libraries. It doesn’t even have an effective duplicate finder. Yet instead of fixing features and trimming fat, Apple just keeps adding new features to iTunes and feeding the colossal beast. Worse still, anyone with an iOS device doesn’t have a choice but to put up with it. We all come crawling back when our phones need updates or our iPods need new songs. In other words, we’re stuck. If iTunes wants to beat out its competitors, then faster, streamlined software will be an important step.
So boring not even Robbie can save it.
If our brief time with Ping has indicated anything, it’s that nobody cares about Ping. That’s likely because Ping focuses on what music people are buying, instead of what they’re listening to. We want to share recommendations, we want to share playlists and songs, and we want a mix of Rdio’s social networking and Last.fm’s charts. And that’s the kicker--its competitors have already implemented all the features we want from Ping. If Ping’s going to stick it out, it needs to be completely reinvented.
Honestly, none of this matters if an iTunes subscription (or cloud locker) service costs, say, $15 a month, the price of the Zune Pass. If we can get streaming music for $5/month on Rdio, what compelling reason is there to spend three times that (or…heaven forbid…more) to get the same service? Apple might be able to buy the competition outright, but if it wants iTunes to beat them fair and square, it’s going to have to win our wallets.
ROBERTO:
“Lala let you listen to a complete song once before you had to sign up for an account or add it to your collection.”
FLO:
“Winamp does Wi-Fi syncing with my Android phone, so as long as I’m on the same network, all of my on-the-go tunes are up to date with what I’m currently listening to.”
NIC:
“Rdio syncs with Last.fm without annoying secondary programs running. Why can’t iTunes do that?”
PAUL:
“Pandora might be old news, but nothing has introduced me to more music than stations started by a specific artist. If subscriptions do happen, iTunes Genius should take notes.”
SUSIE:
“Every single time I want to get an album on iTunes, bam, there it is on Amazon for around $2 or $3 less. And since I eat a lot of Mexican food, saving $2 or $3 is almost like getting a free taco. Just not from Amazon. Because I don’t know how you’d download a taco.”
RAY:
“Record stores sell me vinyl that I can hold in my hand—and browsing is one of the best ways to discover new stuff. Plus practically everything comes with a download code anyway.”
mknauerii
June 15, 2011 at 10:46pm
Okay so the ipod touch/ iphone is already the perfect music player - it syncs so much better than any other device ive ever had (palm pre was a joke as far as the music app goes) but in my opinion - the ipod app should work like itunes (such as links) to see artists, albums - kinda like iTunes does in the store - it would be a huge improvement over what is already a good app.
and as far as ping - its worthless - i want to post opinions on songs in my profile, and how about a status update (feeling blue, listening to coldplay)???, and why cant i unlike a song (i cant stand taylor swift - yet im forever doomed to have all my friends and followers see that i liked that album)
DJR12
June 15, 2011 at 4:17pm
I've never understood the bloat complaint about iTunes. I have almost 10,000 songs and it works perfectly well for me. Doesn't stagger or stutter whenever I turn it on. It's instant. Streams without problem to my Apple TV. So what constitutes a large enough library to make it slow and choke it? Maybe I haven't hit the limit.
That said, I can see the appeal of separating out book and video management. But it hasn't really been a problem for me.
Streaming I just don't see happening in a big way. The movement in the US is toward tighter restrictions on bandwidth. That just doesn't match well with putting all of your music in the cloud. Basically, storage is still getting cheaper; bandwidth is, if anything, getting more expensive. Moving music from a disk in your pocket to the cloud just doesn't make sense financially, not to mention practically when you consider the problems of streaming. I don't think it's an accident that Apple is offering downloading and not streaming. They know it's a non-starter.
Ping is walking dead. One of the few things Apple's ever done that was actually worse than MobileMe.
Tigerrrrrrr82
June 15, 2011 at 2:36pm
Instead of redesigning iTunes from the ground up, iTunes should just be used as a way to organize and sync everything. They should develop a "lite player" app for macs and pcs to play your music, stream radio, and view videos and a separate app to actually view iBooks (some ability to organize in a lite app would be nice). We don't need an app for ipod/ipad/iphone apps and games because we can't use them on the mac, just use iTunes as a catalog to organize and keep them up to date.
Geoduck
June 15, 2011 at 1:15pm
No interest in streaming but I will wholeheartedly agree with Cut the Bloat. How about this: Divide and Conquer. Break iTunes into about three applications.
iTunes for music, podcast, spoken word, anything with sound.
iVideo for movie and TV and video podcast.
iSomeOtherName for iPod apps, games, books, and other content.Also figure a way to not have to open iTunes, iPhoto, et.al. when I plug in my iPod Touch. It should be able to synch without starting the whole bloody application.
