iTunes started out as a small music application designed to organize music, and transfer it on to an iPod, but over time has transformed into the #1 Music Download Store, with over 1.5 million tracks available for download. Apple has set a very high standard of what a music application should be, and continues to push this standard higher and higher with every new release of iTunes.

One of the more popular features of iTunes that some other music applications do not offer is full music downloads. Other services offer subscriptions, and free listening to music, but when it comes down to it, they can only listen to the music on their computer. iTunes charges 99 cents per song, and $9.99 for most albums, though there are quite a few exceptions. They allow for a 30 second preview of the song, before you choose to purchase the song, which is very useful in sampling the music, and choosing what to buy. Once you download the music, you are free to burn it to a CD, transfer it to your iPod, or just keep it on your computer. However, this music is encrypted, to prevent illegal distribution of the music. Payment can be set up using a major credit card, or a PayPal account.

While the Music Shop is probably the most used part of the application, the rest of the application is very powerful, and has some great features. The creation of a playlist is as simple as dragging the song to the playlist. It doesn’t get much simpler than that! You can set up “Smart Playlists” which automatically filter your entire library to create the playlist for you. For example, if you wanted to make a playlist of all your Beatles music, you would type The Beatles into the artist field when creating the playlist and it would automatically add all your Beatles songs to that playlist. Plus if you added more Beatles songs later on, they would automatically be added to your playlist. iTunes also offers free online radio with hundreds of stations across the nation, as well as the ability to shuffle your music, based on different parameters you can enter. With iTunes you can automatically create a CD insert, and label, filled with all the album info, such as Artist, Track Name, and Time. This is especially useful when creating a custom mix, so you can know the order of the songs, and all the information about them.

Overall, iTunes is definitely the superior music application on the market today. The music store is exceptional, filled with a great selection of tracks, and is constantly updated with new music every week. iTunes also offers tons of other great features in the application that allow you to manage your music, and transfer it to your iPod, all with only a few clicks of the mouse. With all this being said, it is no wonder why over 500 billion tracks have been sold, and legally downloaded using iTunes.