All Articles Tagged 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!

Big news round Twitter-way, with Apple adding a few more official Twitter accounts, and Microsoft Bing and Google paying for unrestricted access to real-time search Twitter’s firehose of user status posts.

First up, while Apple’s never been accused of “getting” social media, and it may come as a surprise they’re using Twitter at all, it’s not so surprising that — rather than customer feedback, support, or insight into the iron curtain that shrouds Cupertino — these accounts are just news/marketing updates on when the latest music and media hits the world’s most popular download service. (And some seem less than active at the moment). Baby steps?

You can follow them via: iTunesTrailers, iTunesMusic, iTunesMovies, iTunesTV, and iTunesPodcasts.

Also both Microsoft’s Bing and Google have now announced partnerships with Twitter. Bing says:

Were you as fascinated by the 6-year-old boy floating away in a balloon as we were? Was it a hoax? We know that people are going to twitter more and more for information surrounding all the latest chatter. You can now search for what people are saying all over the web about breaking news topics, your favorite celebrity, hometown sports team, and anything else you use Twitter to stay on top of today.

Google says:

We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

Does this hybrid search model appeal to you? Let us know!

[Ballmer photoshop re-used in honor of Windows 7 launch day]

UPDATED: Looks like Google is partnering with MySpace’s iLike and with Lala for their iTunes music competitor. TechCrunch again has the details:

From information we’ve gathered from sources, the new service will be integrated into Google search. Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well (presumably any relevant results from YouTube as well as information already available in Google’s existing music search – example). One source said that Google will organize music searches in a way very similar to the way they do public company stock searches today. Users will also be offered the opportunity to purchase songs for download, we’ve confirmed.

Original post after the break!

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The AT&T Carrier Update (v5.5), required to enable MMS on the iPhone is now live and can be installed via iTunes. Just plug in your iPhone and if it doesn’t pop up immediately, hit the check for updates button.

Note: You need to be running iPhone 3.1, so if you haven’t updated your firmware yet, do that first.

Once loaded, reboot your iPhone and then head on over the Messages app and you should see the new (for the USA!) camera icon on the bottom left.

For more info, see Apple’s support article on the matter, and TiPb’s iPhone MMS Walkthrough from earlier today!

Then let us know how iPhone MMS on AT&T is working for you!

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]

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!

Techcrunch thinks the move of iTunes to the clouds is inevitable. Back in February there were rumors of something called iTunes Replay, that would allow users to store their media purchases — which can easily grow to 10s if not 100s of GBs fairly quickly — on Apple’s servers and then stream them down to iTunes, Apple TV, or their iPhone or iPod touch on-demand.

Nothing came of it at the time. Since then, however, Apple has begun building a world-class data center in North Carolina, and baked a new HTTP streaming media feature into both the iPhone/iPod and the Mac.

With cost of hard drive storage still falling, and 2TB soon being realistic capacities for standard home media centers, do we — or Apple — really need to think about the “cloud” so much?

We do if we use iPhones, iPod touches, laptops… or upcoming iTablet and like-devices dependent on smaller, still more-expensive solid state storage. Sure local copies for backup are nigh impossible for old curmudgeons like myself to even consider giving up, but syncing, deleting, and otherwise managing content can be a pain in our old curmudgeonly nethers as well.

There’s one key area, however, it doesn’t address — bandwidth caps. Sure, they’re not an issue for most people in the US, but they are in countries where internet service is both more expensive, slower, and far more tightly capped. (Like where I am, in the distant realm of Canada.)

And even in the US, if cable and DSL companies start losing TV subscribers to iTunes, those prices and lack of caps might just change as well.

Of course, letting us sync and manage our content over WiFi could and should be an alternative. iTunes and Apple TV can already sync over WiFi, and the iPhone can download movies from the iTunes Store over WiFi. Why can’t the iPhone browse our PC’s iTunes library and transfer media over via WiFi?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. That’s the future. Maybe. This is now. Do you want your iTunes in the cloud?