Great partner to the iPod (iTunes)

Member Name: numpylicious

Product:	iTunes
Date:	11/06/09 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of cool little things like podcasts, and being able to see your most played song

Disadvantages: Lots of updates

iTunes is a digital music player where you can play music and do everything you can on, for instance, Windows Media Player. Its main purpose though is probably for iPod users to transfer music from their computer to their iPod.

iTunes has a sleek, grey design, which is easy to navigate around. The main menu is on the left and is where you can navigate your way around the player.

Obviously you can play all the songs you have on your computer, but you can also play videos and listen to the radio. One of my favourite things to do on iTunes is to download podcasts. They are both free and legal to download, and cover a wide spectrum of subjects. You can learn a new language, listen to philosophy talks, or even comedy shows.

If you have gotten bored of your music, you can purchase songs, full albums and also movies from the iTunes shop. Each song costs 79p (albums sometimes vary in price, but are generally cheaper than in real life) and an account is easy to set up. The downloading is quick, and music goes straight to Music Purchased. This makes is easy to play through all the music you have bought, or the burn a CD of purchased music. In addition to this, there is a free song of the week, every week, which helps up-and-coming artists get publicity. The Music Store is a good place to go if you don't want to buy a whole album, just a few songs, or if you want to find old/random songs&albums which you can't find in shops. There is a search option too, if you are looking for something in particular. If not, you can just browse through sections of styles of music, like Pop or Latino.

Playlists are quick to set up and you just drag songs from the library into them. You can then play straight through the playlist, burn the music onto a CD, or shuffle them in "Party Shuffle". You can also rate each song, and there is a play count of each song, which I find fun because you can see which are your most played songs. There are the options to see your most played songs, recently added songs and highest rated songs. I enjoy making playlists for different moods- "party" songs, Sunday morning songs, summer songs... I probably waste too much time making them but they're fun!

Burning CDs on iTunes is quick and easy. All you do is insert the blank CD and press the circle button saying "Burn CD", but generally a window pops up before that.

A feature I like on iTunes is the Party Shuffle. You have the option to change which playlists are played, or just play songs in the Library. You can also pick if you want the songs that are higher rated to be played more, which ensures that you get songs YOU like played.

If you want to make iTunes smaller, go to Advanced, then Switch to Mini Player. This makes iTunes switch into a smaller player, with less options, but it's good if you're just browsing the internet/doing something else on the computer, and only want to change songs every now and again.

Another little thing you can do if you have MSN Messenger, is to show which songs are playing on your iTunes (or Windows Media Player) on it. I really like this and enjoy looking at what other songs people are playing.

One negative though is that iTunes is constantly updating itself, especially in comparison to Windows Media Player. This is quite annoying and also time consuming.


*This is an edited version of a review I have previously posted on Ciao under the username talia790*

Summary: Great overall, easy to use and not bad looking.

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