I haven’t tried it yet, just browsed around a bit looking for songs by Billy Joel and Pearl Jam, for instance and I did find both. I had to wait quite a while for iTunes to add Billy Joel and Pearl Jam still has a paltry selection on iTunes from what I can see so far.

Robert McLaws loves the new music store but says several things that just don’t make sense, first of all why the fuss about iTunes being a fat client versus the web-based MSN music store? I love the iTunes interface and the way that Apple have integrated song playback, cd burning, music purchasing, etc into the client is just seamless. I also think the quote about having to download the fat client is useless as it’s really no big deal to download it and it installs without a hassle. If he’s complaining about people who are on dial-up or something like that, then I don’t think they will have a lot of fun downloading music in the first place let alone iTunes.

One of his other points is that Apple is locking in customers to it’s proprietary AAC format. First of all AAC is NOT proprietary. It is based on an established and openly published standard (mp4 i think I haven’t checked). The DRM aspect of Apple’s AAC is something that Apple have themselves added to it to please the music industry. So who is the proprietary format here? WMA!! Windows is really the one that is locking it’s customers into a proprietary Microsoft-only format.

I’ve also read that songs purchased from the MSN music store will be 160 kpbs VBR (variable bit-rate - which is good). This has been used to assert that since Apple’s AAC is only 128 kbps, it must be inferior, but this is not the case. These codecs are different and even though 160 is a higher number, it is still possible for Apple’s AAC to sound just as good as WMA. The only way to really find out is to listen to it in person and from what I have heard from the Apple store so far AAC sounds absolutely superb, but we’ll see about WMA, I will try it out soon. I don’t think I will be able to tell much difference personally.

Note that I’m not anti-Microsoft, it’s just that I think those comments by Robert are way off. MSN Music doesn’t even have Audiobooks yet or Gift Certificates for kids or even iMixes. I do have a feeling that Microsoft will catch up soon, though and then perhaps once again Apple will have innovated only to have someone else out-do them. Is it possible? Yes, very, but only time will tell.