apple's music store

the integration of apple's music store with itunes is fantastic. giving things a spin, i've bought three albums (elvis presley's elvis ’56, massive attack's blue lines, and morcheeba's charango) and one single (johnny cash's cover of nine inch nail's "hurt" from american iv - the man comes around).

i bought the johnny cash single after hearing the song in the opening scene of last night's boston public. the original is great, but cash's cover is incredible. i had to do a little bit of digging with google to figure out what the song was, and who did the cover. it would have been a great example of the sort of shop-from-your-television service that has been speculated about for years.

so far, i still have more of an album mindset than getting excited about buying singles. there's a small amount of irony in having bought a full elvis presley album, given how singles-oriented the music industry was during that period of his career. but with 22 songs, the whole album for $9.99 was a better deal than individual songs for 99¢.

i'm impressed with apple's music service. it will be nice to see the catalog fill out, and i'd really like to see the price come down a bit. (but given the convenience compared to hitting a music store that sells used discs, the price really isn't bad at all.)

here's something apple really needs to add to the service: letting you buy music for someone else. that would be so much cooler than an amazon wishlist.