Apple launches iTunes 9

Claims are that iTunes 9 would make it easier than ever to discover, purchase and enjoy your music, movies, TV shows, and applications ad iPod touch from Apple's App Store. Plus, Home Sharing now lets you easily transfer songs, movies and TV shows to other computers in your home.

iTunes 9 is a great iTunes release, with innovative features that make using iTunes better than ever and iTunes content richer than ever," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

"iTunes LP, for example, lets artists share more of their creativity with fans and gives music lovers the feeling of being immersed in an entire album with art, lyrics, liner notes, photos and videos."

Here're the nine new features of the application:

1) A new application with an introductory video that launches the first time you open iTunes 9.

2) This new version introduces a number of noticeable visual tweaks in addition to a completely redesigned store. Apple has also given more options to the browser view, which lets you more easily sort through artists and albums.

3) The iTunes Store now has buttons to easily send messages on Facebook and Twitter about your favorite songs and videos.

4) You can actually download songs to your own library if the original buyer enters his iTunes Store password onto your computer.

5) The Genius feature lets you create play lists of similar songs spawned from a song of your choosing. Using Mixes, songs of a similar genre are automatically arranged together into a new section.

6) You won't see the feature right away when you first load the software. You'll need to click 'store' in the menu bar and select 'update Genius' to generate the play lists.

7) Vocal iPhone users have long been requesting the ability to rearrange the placement of apps on the device's home screen using their computers. Adding this feature, the new iTunes also gives more flexible options for synchronizing large libraries with not-so-large iPods.

8) For bookworms, iTunes U improvements: ITunes U, the little-known educational-resources section of the store, is getting more attention. Lecture videos and podcasts now have their own cubby in your library and a more prominent spot on the store.

9) ITunes 9 gets a new option to rip songs using a new high-efficiency encoding setting. HE, as it's called, is billed as a more advanced lossy format -- meaning your music will sound really good without eating up a lot of disc space.

The option is a buried in the settings menu, though. To turn it on, open iTunes settings; under 'general,' click 'import settings;' in the AAC 'setting' box, click 'custom;' now, check 'use high efficiency encoding (HE).'