All Articles in iTunes

Apple has launched a new sub-section of iTunes devoted to music movies. Why music movies? It seems like while iTunes sells a lot of music, they’re not yet selling as much video and Apple seems to think they can use the music tie-in to promote the movies. (We’ll spare you the iTunes LP-esque “and it will look great on an iTablet!” line this time. Whoops.)

According to Billboard:

One of the first exclusives is “It Might Get Loud,” the documentary about guitar gods Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White, which iTunes will offer from Dec. 8 – 22 before any other outlet. Pre-orders start today. Another is the Kings of Leon concert film “Kings of Leon, Live at the O2″ from Nov. 3 – 10.

Big Music stands to benefit as well, since their music DVDs haven’t exactly been flying off the shelves. Will online exclusives and easy impulse purchases help? We guess that depends on whether you’ll be loading up your iPhone with them?

[Billboard via AppleInsider]

Looks like Apple snuck a little something extra into iTunes 9.0.2 for iPhone and iPod touch users — 180+ app management.

Instead of just mirroring the 11 visible iPhone 3.x Home Screens (with their maximum 180 app slots), iTunes will now let you add even more apps. These additional apps are displayed on grayed-out Home Screens (because they’re not visible on the iPhone — you have to use Spotlight Search to launch them), but in iTunes are otherwise easy to organize and remove.

[via TUAW]

MediaMemo is hearing that Apple Internet exec, Eddy Cue, has been tasked with exploring a $30/month iTunes TV Show subscription service:

A so-called “over the top” service could theoretically rival the ones most consumers already buy from cable TV operators — if Apple is able to get enough buy-in from broadcast and cable TV programmers.

Disney, with Steve Jobs its largest shareholder, pops up as among the first to potentially get on board.

Unlimited TV on your iPhone, Mac/PC, Apple TV, and maybe… iTablet with one monthly fee. You want?

(Re: iTablet, sure would make a nifty announcement to go along with the iTablet, like movie rentals did at Macworld 2008 for Apple TV Take 2….)

Apple this afternoon released a point update to iTunes, bringing the latest version to 9.0.2.

iTunes 9.0.2 adds support for Apple TV software version 3.0, adds an option for a dark background for Grid View, and improves support for accessibility.

Needless to say, according to our friends at PreCentral.net, it also kills Palm Pre webOS sync dead. Again.

Check Apple’s Software Update to get your copy, and let us know if you find any other goodies!

Is Apple charging the big record labels $10,000 to create iTunes LP packages for them, and outright refusing to make the service available to the indies? That’s the allegation Gizmodo brought forward, based on a conversation with one such indie, who heard it from their labels digital distribution manager, who claims to have heard it from their iTunes rep.

Enter internet brouhaha. Some sites are calling the $10,000 fee exorbitant, and the lockout of indies untenable. Other sites are pointing out how much good quality interactive web development costs, and highlighting that Apple has only rolled out 12 iTunes LP’s so far.

Here’s the thing: when Apple announced iTunes LP, despite the fact that they’re using the fairly open WebKit framework to make it, they didn’t announce the specific TuneKit implementation as an open format, they didn’t announce an SDK, and they didn’t say they were offering it to every artist immediately.

It looks to us like this is just a case of Apple being Apple. iTunes LP is an experiment, clearly near-and-dear to them from Steve Jobs on down, and they’re starting with a few, select albums and trying to provide as premium and experience as possible. That kind of development work isn’t cheap, especially when you want to keep the numbers low at first, and it also means it isn’t open to everyone. Heck, it only even works on iTunes on your Windows or Mac PC at this point!

If they’re still nailing down the format specs, creating the development tools, and getting to set to roll out versions that will work with iPods, iPhones, and mythical, still unreleased Apple TV and iTablet devices, then this makes the kind of sense that does. And we’re guessing, when the dust settles and all the above is in place, Apple will open up iTunes LP and roll the format out wide, even to indies, because it will do what Apple really intends iTunes to do — help sell Apple hardware.

Composers, writers, and publishers of the music Apple sells in the iTunes stores are petitioning the government to mandate that Apple should not only pay them their cut of the sale price (which they already get) but should also fork over a performance fee for the 30 second samples iTunes provides to help sell that music.

Now, we’re all for content creators getting a fair cut of the profits — indeed we are content creators here at TiPb editorial — but, a) asking that marketing done to help sell your music be deemed performance that requires payment, and then b) when failing to negotiate that with Apple, asking the government to mandate it?

Imagine Nike demanding a shoe store pay them to display Nike shoes on the wall. Strangely, in the reality we live, typically you pay for advertising, you don’t get paid for having your product advertised (if so, we’re going to get some TiPb signs up in Times Square and have NYC pay us a bundle).

Getting back to the fair cut of profits — creators have historically gotten shafted and we get that. But they’ve historically gotten shafted not by Apple or other online, or even brick and mortar retailers, but by Big Media (in this case the record labels). If the creators want to go after them, want to rectify the bad deals and swindles of the past, we’ll get the popcorn and spicy drink and cheer them on.

They also want performance fees for downloads, which is equally stupefying, since buying a song electronically is not analogous to Apple performing it, but to buying the CD. If Apple were to hold a live streaming concert on Apple.com, then, yes, performance fee.

Okay, maybe we’re being too one side. Maybe Apple is an easier, trendier target, and if Big Music won’t pay artists what’s fair, maybe Apple should be forced to pay unfairly. And if they are, maybe Apple should turn around and charge the artists 110% marketing/brokerage fee for putting the samples up to encourage sales…

Now excuse us, we’re off to bill Amazon for the cover art and sample pages they’re using to sell our pulp novels…

[via CNET]

Along with iPhone 3.1 and the new iPod nano, iTunes 9 was the big news at Apple’s It’s only rock and roll but I like it annual music event. And for iPhone and iPod touch users — our focus here at TiPb — a large part of that 3.1 update (see our iPhone 3.1 walkthrough) comes from iTunes 9.

Last things first, no, it wasn’t re-written as a 64-bit app, or in Cocoa for the Mac. (Get of our iLawn!) However, with iPhone and iPod touch users firmly in mind, let’s take a look at the new features we did get…

Read the rest of this entry »

At Apple’s annual special music event, this year dubbed “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” they announced a new, old-style album-centric offering called iTunes LP. The image painted was of a young Steve Jobs, grabbing his bike, riding to the music store, buying the latest Dylan on vinyl, racing home, putting it on his turn table, and then lying back and listening, while pouring over the album art, liner material, lyrics, and other extras.

Fast forward to the era of CDs, and ultimately iTunes and digital downloads, and extras became less common, as did buying entire albums. For lazy artists who made one or two good songs and loaded the rest with filler, well deserved. For true artists who wrote albums like epics, like symphonies in multiple parts, well… the listener was the one missing out.

Admittedly, when we first heard about iTunes LP, code-named Cocktail, we worried that Big Music was trying to force Apple to force us to buy those lazy, filler-filled albums, and maybe even sneak DRM (Digital Rights Management) back into our freshly-liberated iTunes.

Turns out that young Steve Jobs and his Dylan album was closer to what we get with iTunes LP than a Big Music lock down scheme. And thank goodness for that.

Web developer Jay Robinson (via Daring Fireball) has taken a closer look at iTunes LP, and provided lots of great details for those interested in the format. Like what?

• The iTunes LP files are ITLP format and rather large (~500MB)
• They’re in 720p, (which is confusing for smaller display sizes like on some laptops, but might make sense on Apple TV, or dare we say, an iTablet“>iTablet?)
• iTunes LP visualizer
• Internal structure uses WebKit (the foundation of Safari) for rendering, HTML 4.01, CSS, and Javascript.
• And best of all — DRM-free! (YES!)

Check out Robinson’s full write up for a lot more on the new iTunes LP format, and if you try it out, tell us what you get and how you like it!

Wow. Apple’s iTunes Store now has a Facebook Fan Page. During today’s It’s only rock and roll, but we like it special music event, Apple announced iTunes 9 and said it allowed users to share via Facebook. Apparently you can share some love for iTunes right back.

And if you do, you can get 20 free songs by indie artists. The process sounds hecka convoluted, but TUAW takes you through it admirably.

Let us know if you become a fan, and get your music!

Yes folks, given the release of iTunes 9 today, our sibling site PreCentral.net rushed out to check and surehawtdang, Palm Pre sync is deader than dead dead… again!

Will Palm, also again, pick up this latest, brick filled gauntlet from Apple and re-enable Pre Sync, maybe on the molecular level this time?

Sigh. We hope they don’t. Their resources are better spent, you know, making the Pre and Pixi even more spectacular. But given the odd father/son issues between Jobso and Ruby — and for the sake of fun internet soap opera everywhere — they probably will.

Game. Back. On.