I’ve had a few days to play around with iTunes 4.5 and I must say there are some very nice additions to the software. One that I’m really intrigued with is the Radio Charts feature in the iTunes Music Store. There are roughly 1000 radio stations listed, with their playlists included (only the songs that coincide with the Music Store of course). It’s interesting to see some of the variances and variety between say an eastern city like Philadelphia compared to LA or Akron, Ohio for that matter. The iMix feature, which lets you publish your own mix up to the Music Store for people to look at and rate is interesting, and will probaly see it’s most use from people linking from blogs and the like. I for one probably won’t browse through the iMixes very often, as I’m sure the list will become fairly long and you cannot search for iMixes yet. Also ringing in iTunes 4.5 they have been giving away a free song a day (of Apple’s selection of course), today is a remix version of Annie Lennox’s “Pavement Cracks”. Previously they had Foo Fighters, Avril Lavigne, and Courtney Love as free song of the day artists. Another great feature of iTunes is the CD jacket printing feature. You can print just a text listing of tracks on your mix CD or add a mosaic for the cover as pictured above, nice!
On that note, Forbes Magazine has an article with suggestions for the next version of iTunes, namely publishing all of the inside jacket info as well, which is definitely important if you’re buying the whole CD from them in the store online.
And for those who need a little extra documentation, over at FJZone, François Joseph de Kermade has published an iTunes 4.5 troubleshooting guide that answers a bunch of the basic questions one would ask after updating to 4.5. You can get the free guide here.