iTunes 9 - What's New?

iPods have changed the way we interact with digital media, especially music. Though everybody is aware of the iPod's success they usually forget the role played by the software platforms called iTunes in its success. Without the iTunes client the iPod and the iPhone would never be what they are now. Now that I've got your attention to talk about iTunes, lets see what Apple has included in the new version of the media player and manager that brings your mobile music and communication experience together. Apple has always been constantly innovating and including new features into its iTunes app, with version 9 it has yet again included some interesting features. Lets take a look at the most significant features and improvements in this version of iTunes.

Remember the joy of buying the special edition CDs, with all the useless but cool extras - think, booklets of artist info, lyrics additional images! its all now available on digital downloads, courtesy of iTunes LP. iTunes LP available with select albums brings with it a special material i.e. cover art, animations, lyrics even band photos, performance videos etc. What makes the whole idea of these bonus materials cool is the way that they are presented, think of them as mini websites designed for an album with all content that you can possibly put in like videos, behind the scene shots, photos, lyrics (with funky animations!) and trivia.Now buying music digitally need not mean that you lose all the fun of bonus material that you used to get with CDs.

It's all cool and great to put all your music in one place and have them sorted and displayed with gorgeous cover art interface, but what about having music when and where you want? Most modern households these days have more than one computer, be it a laptop or a desktop or even a netbook that is used. So what if you have bought some music from the iTunes store on the machine in your bedroom and there are some friends over and you would like to share it with them. That’s where Home sharing comes in handy, with iTunes 9 you can now share iTunes libraries with upto 5 computers within a household. So just enable home sharing on your bedroom computer and you can access your music library from the iTunes client running on your Living room machine.

Just as the iTunes LP adds more value to the digital music you buy, iTunes extras adds all the additional material that usually comes with the DVD version of movies to the digital download. Now you can enjoy behind scene views, commentary, chapter selections, trailers, photos and more with your Itunes digital movie download. In fact, I bought most movies on DVD special editions because they carried bonus material with them that I previously could not get with digital donwloads. Now that iTunes Extras brings this part of the DVD as well to the movie downloads, just another reason to clear out my DVD shelf.