Tag Archives: itunes

Jonesing for Metallica? Try iTunes!

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I was quite happy today to find out that Metallica is finally offering their music via iTunes. I asked for Master of Puppets for Christmas last year (because I had lost it somewhere) and on top of it, when I tried to rip my “black album” to my iPod I found that it was scratched beyond repair.

I never really was good at taking care of things — thats why I like digital music.

Currently the albums “Ride the Lightning”, “Master of Puppets”, the “Black Album” (Metallica) and “… and Justice For All” are available through the iTunes Music store. I rebought my two lost and “mysteriously missing” this evening, for what amounts to about $12 below what I would have paid for both of them in any other channel, if my math is right.

Three of the four (excluding the black album) have live bonus tracks — a nice value add.

I’m glad to see Lars and the boys finally get their heads out of the sand and realize that they were missing the new wave. I’ve basically refused to replace these albums until I could do it online.

Update – 07/29/2006

When I checked iTunes at the time of this writing, only the four albums mentioned were up there. Now, the whole catalog is up on both iTunes and Napster (I had Jonna check Napster for me).

I like the way this article starts as it expresses the sentiment really well: “It’s official: Hell just froze over.”

iTunes Music Store Faster on a Mac?

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I’ve been meaning to throw this question up here for a while. Is it just me, or is the iTunes Music store a hell of a lot faster on a Mac than it is on Windows?

While I like the convenience of iTunes, I absolutely dreaded hitting the music store on my Windows machine. It felt like it took forever to get any decent results. Since moving to the Mac though, the Music Store responds extremely quickly and I have no qualms about doing searches and browsing around now.

I’m just curious – has anyone else that has both types of machines noticed this behavior, or is it just my mind playing tricks on me?

iTunes Finally Converted to MacBook

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iTunes Converted - Song List

Well, after about two days of file copying, I finally got all of my iTunes stuff moved over to the new Mac. Why did it take so long you ask? I’m not really sure.

Copying between the Windows box and the MacIntosh using Windows File Sharing just didn’t work unattended. It kept failing for some reason. After about three tries at that, I decided to install cwRSync so that I could restart incrementally, but for some reason, this would not run unattended either, and I didn’t want to spend forever running back and forth between the family room and the living room (where my desk is).

Finally I decided to copy my iTunes library up to the Linux server. I started it at about 7:00am and by 7:30-8:00pm on Tuesday the file copy had completed with no interruptions. On Wednesday, I started an rsync from the Linux server to the MacBook. Another 12 hours later and that was complete.

I had heard horror stories about moving this stuff around if you had purchased music and was a little worried that I would have to spend a lot of time getting the machine authorized and stuff like that. Not so. As a matter of fact, I found these instructions on moving your iTunes library with metadata and they worked without a hitch. I now have all of my music on the MacBook. Nice!

I really do like this environment a lot better than anything I’ve used in the past. I’m not clear as to why I had all of the copy failures I had from machine to machine, but thankfully I’ve got the trusty SuSE server to back me up.

iTunes 5.0 released.

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Apple released iTunes 5.0 on Wednesday. MacWorld has an announcement here.

One thing noticeable right off the bat is the new parental controls tab in the Preferences. You can now disable podcasts, explicit material, the music store, and shared content. 5.0 also offers calendar and contact synchronization if you are using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.

Unfortunately, I don’t use either, so these last two things don’t help me a bit. As far as the music store goes, it still feels dog slow to me.

Essential Vai iMix Available on iTunes

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I’ve created an iMix on iTunes with what I think are the Essential Vai songs for people who haven’t been exposed to Vai’s music. Click the link above to download it. The cost winds up being about $12.87 for 13 songs, and gives you pretty much what I think is the essential collection from almost all of his albums to introduce yourself to Steve Vai.

Now I just need to figure out how to sneak all of these into Kelsi’s iPod …

Tony MacAlpine and George Lynch – Tears of Sahara

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Maximum Security As I was shuffling around the iPod yesterday, I hit the song Tears of Sahara, a guitar duet that appears on the Tony MacAlpine album Maximum Security. This song is a duet Tony played with George Lynch. The reason I’m writing this is that I had forgotten how much I really liked Georges playing and this song showcases his really unique style of playing.

I never really quite understood why his playing hit me so hard, but he is another one of those guitarists that when you hear him, you just know its him. His style and sound is completely unique and unmistakeable.

While his playing with Dokken was good, it was his work outside of Dokken that really showed his uniqueness as a player. One exception to this was the instrumental Mr. Scary from the Dokken album Back for the Attack, which was the one instrumental he did in the band that showed off what he could do as a guitarist on his own.

Anyway, hearing this song reminded me of how much I really liked Georges playing. I think this is the coolest thing about the iPod since I got it and started filling it up. Hitting shuffle exposes you to a lot of stuff you’ve forgotten how much you liked.

Tears of Sahara was one of those moments. Such a great song by two really incredible guitar players.

For those with iTunes, you can download the song here. Amazon users can buy the MP3 here (DRM free) for the same price. Its worth the $0.99.