Thursday, October 2, 2008

iTunes sings the blues


iTunes

Mary Wienke
Tavia Young
Ashley Winkler








2. iTunes radio is a simple to use feature of the download program, it is also rather boring. There are few genre categories. And the program though simple is lacking in some umph. Basically, the listener chooses a station and downloads the playlist based on the genre categories. Really you are downloading a segment of a radio station. So the content is prepared for you and you can't really pick what you want to listen to past the genre or radio stations setup. You can't really fast forward through the songs just skip stations like a car radio.
3. The only real interaction you have on iTunes radio is the fact that you can choose your genre and your station. Yes, there is a broader spectrum of stations that you have access to but at the same time they limit you to the same capabilities as tuning in, in your car. You can't choose to skip songs but you can skip through stations with ease.
4. Just looking at the radio feature there is a limit in the amount of content per commercial. In the 20 minutes that we listened to a few of the stations there was maybe one song per 5 commercials. Which is more than the average radio station. And which is also rather annoying. You can tell this is the way that iTunes radio makes there money for this feature. There is no subscription feature for iTunes radio. You can download music directly from the site but not from the radio feature.
5. So there is really no surprise in the iTunes radio genres. We think that the iTunes radio is lacking in substance because iTunes is a program that is meant to be used mainly for the iPod and the storing and gathering of music and videos. Most people probably do not use the iTunes radio service. Honestly, this is the first time any of us have looked at this feature of iTunes period let alone in depth. iTunes does not give the same reverence and in-depth attention to their radio feature as they do to the rest of their program. They really do not have specialty radio programs. We could listen to the same radio programs on the actual radio.
6. There is really nothing unique about this site. It is as if it was just a forgotten feature like the company has not really taken the time to invest in this area of their program. The best feature if you can call it that is it's simplicity. You really don't have to know anything about itunes to listen to and navigate it's radio feature and get to it's music.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree that iTunes radio is less than mediocre, which is surprising to me. As much as I use iTunes I'd never even noticed that they had internet radio & even now that I am aware of it, I will not be very likely to use it. I do like that there are a wide variety of stations to choose from within each genre but there is not as much control or artist information as there is in other sites, like slacker.com.

ABOUT THE BLOG

This is the blog for the TR section of Media & Society, Fall 2008, at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi. The blog will feature postings by students on a variety of media topics.