Suggestions for an iTunes facelift

Posted by Ajit on March 15, 2006. Comment

In the world of online media distribution, iTunes is a giant. A lot of its success is because of its media managerial role for the iPod. On its own, iTunes is a wonderful software, in my opinion probably the best platform to manage and buy music online.

But since I have started TickleBooth, my reliance on iTunes has slowly transferred from a purely entertainment standpoint to an app that I need to do serious work. In its new role, some of iTunes limitations became quickly apparent.

So here is a list of the changes/updates I would like to see in iTunes:

Pages within the iTunes store need to load faster. Cannot understand why it is so slow? I can load a month-long archive of BoingBoing before a single page with iTunes connects. That is simply not acceptable.
Multiple tabs within the Store. If I want to check out several podcasts I should be able to open the links under many tabs.
I don’t need a full-fledged browser but a mini browser would be nice. Similar to how the RSS reader app NetNewswire implements their mini browser. So if I were to click on the link “go to podcast website,” the page loads in iTunes.
Change the name! For many, the iTunes is becoming the center of their living room. It is not a just for music app or store anymore. Anthing from music videos, television shows, Podcasts, short films can be found in the store. The name needs to reflect that. What about just iTune?
On that same note why is it still called Music store. Why can’t we just have “Store”?
The store should also contain feature length movies. I am guessing that the announcement of such a feature is coming any day now.
Subscriptions. I still think selling songs for Â¢99 is better than subcriptions in terms of business and for the consumer as they get to own copy (if you can overlook the DRM limitations). But there is a need for a cheap subscription fee.
Make subcriptions work so that it gives a chance for people to listen to music that they are not neccesarily not going to buy.
Let it expire within a certain date rather than require the device to be in contact with the store. If you miss a song you will buy it. If you don’t you will download it again.
The Daily Show is now available as a subscription. We can assume that this will carry over to other shows which is great because television shows are perfect match for the subcription based model.
Better search within store. Search meta tags, search original site, search for lyrics, better display of the search results. Currently searching in iTunes store is quite primitive.
When you subsribe for a podcast, iTunes indicates all the files that the podcaster has placed. Maybe it would be best if it just indicated 10 at a time or something better than listing all of it. It could be simple as just having better preferences.
Add and modify tags to any file in your iTunes would be cool.
Don’t forget radio or live streams. Use streams to bring sports, concerts and other live events.