Since I use a Mac at work, I have been using iTunes to listen to mp3’s, both local and streaming. I decided to download the windows version at home and give it a shot. I even tried out the music purchasing/download feature and bought an album. It’s pretty cool, a CD that costs $15 can be had through iTunes for $10. Once you download it, you can burn it to disc. The only thing I wish you’d get is a picture file (.jpg) of the CD Cover to print and make a CD case. Not a big deal for $5 savings though.
The biggest drawback to iTunes is Digital Rights Management (DRM), which means you can’t copy the songs to other computers, and it’s not MP3 so it won’t work on a portable player (unless you have an iPod). It’s easy to get around all this though because you cna burn it to a CD and then from that CD you can rip it into mp3 files which don’t have DRM and can be played in a portable player. I have two portables that I listen to mp3s in a lot, one is my car CD player and the other is a portable CD player that reads mp3 and windows media files.
Overall, so far I like iTunes. I’m interested to see what the Microsoft version will be like when they release theirs in the near future. One theory is that Microsoft will try to undercut the competition, so songs will be less than the 99¢ that iTunes charges for a song or the $9.99 that they charge for an album. Microsoft is big and evil, but I personally think Apple is evil too; so I don’t have a problem with one vs. the other.