Much has been said about Apple’s new Music Store. 99 cents / song, with DRM-enabled AAC audio files. This DRM allows you to play the song on up to 3 Macs (not computers). Unlimited CD burns, unlimited iPods. The debate has been fun on various community-based Web sites (Slashdot and other Mac-evangelist sites). Now it’s time to chime in on my opinions since they’re the only ones that matter anyways.

99 cents / song - Yeah you can pick out the songs you want. You can even preview them all for 30 seconds before you buy them. Just remember one thing: until we hear otherwise, the artist still only gets their regular percentage. The music-deal was with the Big-5, not every artist under the sun. Now take out the wholesaler and retailer and replace them in the equation with Apple. The record companies are still lining their pockets and the retail chains lose out on sales.

Outstanding sound quality - AAC is not standardized. In fact, the AAC codec doesn’t provide for DRM, either. Sure the files will be able to play on every player under the sun (eventually) and you can encode them to MP3 … oh wait, you can’t. You could cheat and burn the .m4p files to an audio cd and re-rip, but that’s silly. Let’s not forget DRM, either. So instead of going after the real "thieves" (and I use that term VERY loosely) who use Limewire or IRC to get their music, they instead HURT their honest paying customers by treating them like "thieves" and selling them DRM-enabled files.

Faster and more reliable downloads - No argument here. Even Rendevous-iTunes is fast for sharing.

I think this new service is a step in the right direction. Apple gets the big picture. People who don’t have the time to /msg leetz0r|xdcc xdcc send #1 will love this. For the rest of you, please indulge in Tim O’Reilly’s thoughts on piracy and remind yourself that Steve Jobs referred to this service as "a legal alternative". I’m still waiting for "a legitimate alternative" - one without prices that are still gouging to the consumer (and line the pockets of the true "thieves") and Digital Restrictions Management that prevents honest customers from having "unlimited personal use" of property they OWN.