Things are starting to really shape up with the new iTunes solutions.
My wife and I are on the same account, but purchase music that we each want to listen to via our MacBooks or iPhones. Through iTunes, there is no way to download the whole purchase on both machines and finding the right song file to move to the other computer can be a challenge. Especially if there are similar songs on different albums. This really gets to be fun if either of us purchase on our iPhone. We then need to sync to get the song on the notebook, find the file to move to the other notebook and then sync the other iPhone.
As promised by Steve yesterday, the new iTunes gets rid of all of those layers and steps.
Launching the iTunes app on the iPhone this morning, I found the ‘Purchased’ option like in the App Store app last night. Choosing this presents a new page with two tabs to choose from. ‘All’ is for all of the songs I have on my iPhone. Tapping any of these results in a page to see the album or drill down further to the song level (sortable by ‘Most Recent’ and ‘Song Name’. Tap a cloud to re-download a song I had once installed again. There is a ‘installed’ box next to the items you currently have loaded on your iPhone.
As with the App Store change, “Not On This iPhone” gives a list of songs that anyone on the iTunes account owns but I never installed. They are divided down into groups rather than presenting an endless list of songs.
Tapping any of the options gives you a screen of the songs in that group. Tap the ‘cloud’ icon to download the individual songs you want to carry with you. I was concerned when Steve mentioned all of the songs could be shared between devices… I don’t want ‘all’ of the songs my wife has purchased. Being able to just choose the ones I want is very nice.