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Why iTunes 4 is inadequate
Here's the rant I sent to Apple:
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Hi! I am a big fan of Massive Attack, and am pleased to see you feature them in your "Exclusive" section in the "Music Store" section of iTunes4.
However, I cannot decide whether to buy the new exclusive album or any tracks from it, because your 30-second preview is not a reliable indicator of what a song is actually like.
For example, I bought the CD by Massive Attack "Protection" when it came out. I own this, so I know that your 30-second preview does no justice at all to the songs.
"Better Things" is a perfect example. Tracey Thorn doesn't start singing until 1:09, but by :30, your clip is over and you never get to hear her sing! I should think her beautiful voice would be a great selling point! Also, why is "Protection" the song not featured for download from the "Protection" album by the same name? That's the very best song on the whole disk, and it isn't there at all. Even if it were, the preview would do no good for it, either, because for this song, Tracey doesn't start singing until :41, which is 11 seconds past your preview clip.
If you want to sell songs, you need to put in the extra work to grab the part of the clip that is most likely to get the listener's interest.
-c
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Hi! I am a big fan of Massive Attack, and am pleased to see you feature them in your "Exclusive" section in the "Music Store" section of iTunes4.
However, I cannot decide whether to buy the new exclusive album or any tracks from it, because your 30-second preview is not a reliable indicator of what a song is actually like.
For example, I bought the CD by Massive Attack "Protection" when it came out. I own this, so I know that your 30-second preview does no justice at all to the songs.
"Better Things" is a perfect example. Tracey Thorn doesn't start singing until 1:09, but by :30, your clip is over and you never get to hear her sing! I should think her beautiful voice would be a great selling point! Also, why is "Protection" the song not featured for download from the "Protection" album by the same name? That's the very best song on the whole disk, and it isn't there at all. Even if it were, the preview would do no good for it, either, because for this song, Tracey doesn't start singing until :41, which is 11 seconds past your preview clip.
If you want to sell songs, you need to put in the extra work to grab the part of the clip that is most likely to get the listener's interest.
-c
no subject
Very difficult, sound sampling. It's too time consuming to hire actual human beings do it, so most companies just grab the first 30 seconds of every track. In some cases, they write a program which grabs a 30 second clip at random. I worked for a company once that did sound sampling for MANY THOUSANDS of CDs. It was really tedious. We were constantly fixing the sampling machines. The senior programmer wrote an application which scanned songs, analyzed them, and sampled "points of convergence" -- most often the verse/chorus. He was a genius, a Russian from Moscow, and we were all pretty sure it was the best sound sampling application ever invented anywhere in the world. I was really surprised to learn that Apple didn't lease his samples. Go into Strawberries anywhere in Providence and listen to the samples -- those are his.
no subject
The weird thing about Apple is that all their other clips sound intelligent (not just from the beginning of the song). I think a few songs just slipped through.