Now that I’m a remote editor for O’Reilly, I have the pleasure of being able to listen to my collection of music without fear of annoying anyone other than my wife or cat.

It also means that I’m using the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) more often. Of course, my way of justifying my purchases is to make them with an airline card in the hope that the CDs I buy through the ITMS now will go toward miles for another trip to Hawaii. Which of course leads to the whole point of this blog entry: Features I’d like to see added to the ITMS.

So here goes…

Song purchase = credit toward buying that new Mac you want
Buy 10 songs or a full CD and get $2 credit toward buying a new Mac, or some other purchase through the Apple Store. Sure, you’d have to buy 1000 CDs to get a down payment on that G5 you’ve been drooling over, but still, getting some credit toward buying new gear would be sweet. (Another option would be to use some sort of point system and combine that with purchases made through the Apple Stores, both online and retail.)

Bookmarks
Everybody who uses ITMS knows about New Music Tuesday’s. You get an email telling you about the new songs and artists that have been added. Great. You go and listen to a few, but by the time you hit the fourth or fifth or tenth, and you want to go back to an earlier choice, you might be on to something else, or distracted by the phone. It would be great if you could bookmark songs that you like as you’re listening to the previews without flagging them for purchase. That way, you could go back later, listen to them again, and then decide whether or not to make the purchase or dump them from your bookmark list.

Wish Lists
And if you can add a Bookmark, why not let ITMS customers set up Wish Lists, sort of how Amazon.com does?

You flag a song that you want to add to your Wish List, which you can then send to friends and family members via email so they can purchase the songs for you. Sort of how you send a list of CDs to your Mom so she can buy something for your birthday, except now she can just flip a switch and buy it for you through the ITMS. You’d receive an email from Apple, saying that so-and-so purchased such-and-such for you, and then the songs would download to your Mac the next time you launched iTunes.

Credit for returning an unwanted track
Say you purchase a “CD” through the ITMS and you realize that you only like three or five of the cuts on the “disc”. You’re stuck with them, just as you would if you purchased a CD, but at least with a CD you could take them to a local music store and trade them in for credit toward your next purchase. But then you lose the three or five songs you like. Not a win-win for anyone.

But what if you could take the extra cuts you don’t want from a “CD” you’ve purchased through the ITMS and return them and get credit toward your next purchase? Granted, I’m not sure how the crediting would work, or how Apple could verify that you’ve actually deleted a track from your system, but this would be kinda neat.

ITMS Credit Card
Going back to my thought of using my airline card to make purchases on the ITMS to bank miles for a much needed vacation, it makes me wonder if there could be an ITMS Credit Card on the horizon as well. Purchases you make with the card give you credit toward purchasing music on the ITMS or purchasing an iPod and their many add-ons.

All this makes me wonder how long it will be before we have a QuickTime Movie Store (QTMS).

Anyhow, these are just some random thoughts. Let me know what you think, or if you have other suggestions. Also, keep in mind that you can send feedback on iTunes and the ITMS directly to Apple via the iTunes –> Provide iTunes Feedback menu option.

Now it’s time to get back to work and stop dreaming about Hawaii (which could lead to another ITMS purchase).

Share your thoughts here…