iTunes Musicstore Switzerland is open

May 12, 2005 on 12:48 pm | In Miscellaneous |

Okay, so the iTunes Music Store for Switzerland has opened, but I”m only partially happy with it.

Good aspects:

• great search function
• very easy to use (any other shop we had so far in Switzerland was so difficult to use it was turned completely useless)
• adding tracks automatically to the “purchased music” playlist so one can easily distinguish the proprietary files from free files
• nicely designed sites for featured albums and artists, e.g. Ray Charles
• unlimited burning to regular music CDs - without this feature I wouldn”t buy a single song

Bad aspects:

• Only one - but a really bad one for me: too much mainstream music. I am currently looking for music by Tsushima Masaki, Tony Esposito, and Tillmann Uhrmacher - neither is featured in the iTunesMS. Well, they will gradually expand the list of featured songs, but I”m still rather a pessimist on this one.

Ironically, the Swiss iTunesMS doesn’t even feature all music currently in the charts, e.g. “Lift u up” by Gotthard - good song currently ranking on 3rd place, but nope, it’s not available. How is Apple trying to make money when they don’t even go the easy way and sell music from the charts?

The first two songs I downloaded from the iTunesMS are “Drive” by The Cars and “I drove all night” by Celine Dion. Looks like I am ready to get in touch with the sensitive side in me after killing braincells with DI for the last two weeks.