All I want for Christmas is for iTunes to get their act together
Amazon knows a little bit about me. They know what books I've bought from them and through their LinkedIn application, they know about a couple of books I didn't buy from them. But they might know about 5% of my reading habits. The most boring 5%, in fact, because it's the 5% I'm willing to wait 3 days for. With this information, they tailor my customer experience when I'm on their website and periodically send me targeted emails based on my buying habits. It doesn't do them a whole lot of good, because the other 95% of my reading habits are the interesting part they don't know about. It's the classic and modern fiction, the poetry, the essays...this is the stuff I would really love to get book recommendations on. But I don't blame Amazon for that. How could I? They know nothing about it.
But iTunes, on the other hand, has no excuse. When I set up iTunes and became an enthusiastic user, I ripped every CD I owned so I could carry my favorite music on my iPod. They know more than just the music I've purchased from them (probably 5%), they know EVERYTHING about my musical tastes. So what do they do with this information? Do they customize my user experience? Well...no. Come on! Tell me they use a Pandora-esque application to acquaint me with new music based on the music in my iTunes. Ummm... Do they at least use email to market to me based on my musical preferences? Wow. This is embarrassing.
