I've been mostly happy with Apple's iTunes Music Store. They don't have the most complete selection, but they have a fairly eclectic one. Just recently I noticed they added in chunks of the 4AD catalog (including some Colorbox) and the Beggars Banquet catalog. Heck, they've even got the Christmas with The Brady Bunch record. The one place where the store has a lot of improving to do is with its customer service.
The other day I bought The Gunslinger from iTMS. I'd wanted to give the whole audio book thing a try (which, btw, is quite nice on long drives). Things were great until about 1 hour and 46 minutes into the first track. At that point whoever was encoding the audiobook must have screwed up. Because for a few minutes, you hear a bit of the second chapter, then things resume where they left off. At first I thought i was just not following the story, but I compared it to the actual text and it is definitely not right in the recording. So, I sent off a help request to customer service. My first reply from them was next to useless. They asked, what OS I'm running, what my network connection was, what kind of machine I'm running, etc. All OS/hardware/connection related things. I looked back over my initial email and realized it might not be totally clear. So I answered their questions and reiterated that it was a problem with the file itself. It exists on the two machines and iPod I played it on. Today I got a second response that told me I could download the file again. Had they gotten a corrected version of it? Nope. Same exact thing. For some reason I don't think they are understanding me. Oh well, hopefully this time around things will be better. All I want is the corrected file or a credit for the purchase price if that isn't available.
Oh yes, and Apple? Audible? To the one of you that produces the actual files. Could you please break your audiobooks up into CD length tracks? It would make archiving them MUCH easier. And it would mean I could take them with me to listen to when in places I can't use my iPod.
