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Apple Starts Rolling Out 90 Second Song Previews in iTunes

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Apr 12, 2001
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Apple has started rolling out 90 second song previews on iTunes tonight. The offering is presently sporadic with not every album, or even every eligible song on an album, offering a full 90 second preview.

According to a previous letter sent to music labels, Apple intends to offer 90 second previews on all songs longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Songs shorter than this length will continue to offer only 30 second previews.

Apple's email also noted that by continuing to offer their music on the iTunes Store, labels are indicating their acceptance of the new terms. Consequently, any labels who do not wish to agree with the terms must withdraw their music from the iTunes Store.


Article Link: Apple Starts Rolling Out 90 Second Song Previews in iTunes
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/12/09/apple-starts-rolling-out-90-second-song-previews-in-itunes/
About time. I wish you'd be able to preview an entire album once though. I believe one of those streaming services allowed you to do so. Either way I haven't been buying much music from iTunes since the price hike of the songs to $1.29 and basically no new albums at $9.99, it just feels like a rip-off now.
 
This will help allot with trying to determine if the song is the one I actually want or not (allot of times the 30 seconds won't play the part that you actually remember about a song)
 
I wonder if they'll do that with the Beatles. Ninety seconds is more than half of many of their songs.

Greg
 
The terms of acceptance for record labels seems pretty heavy-handed of Apple...I guess it shows how much power they hold now in the digital music industry.
 
suss2it said:
I believe songs under 2 minutes will just have the 30 second preview.
Click to expand...

I looked at my 19 Beatles songs and none of them are under 2 minutes, but 8 are under 2:30, and 11 are under 3:00. So 90 seconds is more than half of 11 of them.

Greg
 
MacRumors said:
Consequently, any labels who do not wish to agree with the terms must withdraw their music from the iTunes Store.
Click to expand...

What? This is bull----. Personally, I think this 90-second preview announcement is nothing out of this world. For all the people who are acting as if this were a kiss from Jesus, SERIOUSLY??? You know all about iTunes and are savvy enough to create an account and download music and rip it and burn it and sync it, but it never occurred to you that you can basically listen to damn near any song (in its entirety!) on YouTube? REALLY? Why is this so magical and ground-breaking? UGH. Gimme a break.

I realize how negative and "trollish" I sound in this post, but I don't care. Anyone can view all of my posts and see that I'm not one to be negative or complain about anything but, seriously, the people that are acting as if this a the best thing ever are just PUTTING ME THROUGH IT!!!
 
suss2it said:
About time. I wish you'd be able to preview an entire album once though. I believe one of those streaming services allowed you to do so.
Click to expand...

I can understand why labels don't want you to stream the whole album because many would avoid buying it if you can just go to iTunes and stream it.

What they could do is allow one time streaming of whole albums once you log in with your iTunes account. This would ensure that you actually only stream the album once AND it would allow genuinely interested customers the chance to know what they are getting themselves into.

I would think all parties involved would be able to agree to this. I know I would love it!
 
Burnsey said:
Took them long enough. I wonder how this would affect sales, if at all.
Click to expand...
For me personally it's unlikely to affect my purchase of songs I've already heard (on the radio for example), but if I'm just browsing (perhaps listening to songs on albums of songs I already own), then I think the longer preview would help me feel more comfortable buying a song I haven't heard in entirely before.

As an aside, I wonder when/if we'll see TV episode previews increased to 90 seconds. For episodes that last 20-60 minutes, you'd think that they could let us peak at more than 30 seconds!
 
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Cougarcat said:
You can just go to YouTube or Grooveshark to stream it.
Click to expand...

I understand this and I actually do this. But, in the argument of iTunes having 30 second previews vs. 90 second vs. full album previews, the solution I suggested is one labels might actually agree to.

Services like Grooveshark aren't exactly supported by the labels. Isn't that part of the reason Grooveshark isn't available on unjailbroken iPhones?
 
Do the labels actually read the terms or do they just do what everyone else does and click accept? I know I have been forced to lie and click that I have read the terms and accePt them inumeral times because their is just to much there to read.
 
smileyborg said:
The terms of acceptance for record labels seems pretty heavy-handed of Apple...I guess it shows how much power they hold now in the digital music industry.
Click to expand...

Right. They did give them no options however, how could labels possibly see this as a negative impact? A lot of times 30 seconds does not suffice the song.
 
Oh yeah? Let's see if it will be any different on iTunes Japan. Believe it or not, iTunes Japan is still DRMed 128kbps AAC, with few being iTunes Plus. Sometimes you think Apple have such power over the music industry. In reality, not necessarily.

iMJustAGuy said:
Right. They did give them no options however, how could labels possibly see this as a negative impact? A lot of times 30 seconds does not suffice the song.
Click to expand...
Well, sometimes it's because whoever did the sample only took the beginning 30 seconds, and in some songs that is hardly represent the actual song. 90sec will at least alleviate this laziness.
 
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iMJustAGuy said:
Right. They did give them no options however, how could labels possibly see this as a negative impact? A lot of times 30 seconds does not suffice the song.
Click to expand...

Very easily. Maybe they hope the best thirty seconds of a song convinces the consumer to buy the song that they otherwise wouldn't have. They really don't care past that. I don't think that's the case (personally, I only buy full albums as that's what I want from the medium), but the argument is there.

Either way, there was plenty of notice given. I'm sure every single label had a contract provision saying that the length of time of a preview could be changed by Apple with a certain amount of notice, which likely was a certain number of days combined with an appointed recipient of said notice whether it was e-mail or physical service.
 
I also see "like" and "post" buttons in the iTunes music store. I don't remember those buttons before. It actually didn't work for me on my iPad but on the iPhone it does. Anyone notice these before?
 
Caliber26 said:
What? This is bull----. Personally, I think this 90-second preview announcement is nothing out of this world. For all the people who are acting as if this were a kiss from Jesus, SERIOUSLY??? You know all about iTunes and are savvy enough to create an account and download music and rip it and burn it and sync it, but it never occurred to you that you can basically listen to damn near any song (in its entirety!) on YouTube? REALLY? Why is this so magical and ground-breaking? UGH. Gimme a break.

I realize how negative and "trollish" I sound in this post, but I don't care. Anyone can view all of my posts and see that I'm not one to be negative or complain about anything but, seriously, the people that are acting as if this a the best thing ever are just PUTTING ME THROUGH IT!!!
Click to expand...


I don't think this is any new grand feature or anything, and I've been using youtube to listen to full songs since I started using iTunes in the first place. Point is, 90 is better than 30, and maybe I won't have to bother going to youtube for some of them when I'm browsing around on iTunes.
 
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