If, like Chuck, I and other members, you use iTunes to manage your music files, then here is an amazing feature that may be old news to some of you but that is a new discovery for me: iTunes Genius.
If you have an iTunes account and you are willing to allow the Apple Store to access your music library, then here is what the Genius can do for you:
--Playlists: select a favorite title in your library, click the Genius icon at the bottom of the screen, and the software will produce a Playlist of similar-sounding songs that you already have in your library
--Genius Sidebar, Also by this Artist: the software provides, at the side of your screen, a list of selections, available for purchase, for as little as $0.99, by the same artist as the one whose title you have selected in your library
--Genius Sidebar, Genius Recommendations: select a title in your library and the software scans the contents of the Apple Store (over 10 MILLION titles, and counting!) to find similar selections that you might wish to purchase, starting at $0.99
Here is some very interesting additional information from Wikipedia:
On January 6, 2009, Apple announced that DRM had been removed from 80% of the entire music catalog in the US.... Downloaded songs come with song information (name, artist, album) already filled out, though iTunes provides a free service by Gracenote to do this for songs not purchased from the store, although they must be imported with iTunes. Songs that have an entry in the iTunes Store also come with album artwork (Artwork is embedded in the metadata). As of the release of iTunes 7, the artwork can be obtained for songs not purchased from the store for free if the user has an iTunes Store account. Purchased songs do not come with lyrics already typed in to the application's window for them; nor does iTunes provide a service for acquiring the missing lyrics. However, several third-party applications exist to locate and automatically add lyrics to the user's music.*
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*Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store