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Apple Extends iTunes Previews to 90 Seconds Internationally

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I wonder if this is a sign of Apple making progress with non-US labels, possibly meaning that iTunes in the Cloud might be available in some capacity in Europe & other territories at launch. Seems a bit early for me, but one can dream
 
Do we think that this has come about as Apple agree for iTunes Match agreements? It will be interesting to see if the UK gets iTunes Match on time?
 
Lucky you, people in modern world. Apple sells their toys to Poles but there is still no sign of iTunes music/film store in Poland. We pay more having less. This is what stops me to jump on this Apple bandwagon. And omission of USB 3.0 as well.
 
Yay, go Canada.

30 seconds was ok in many cases, but sometimes it would just stop playing at the good part, or the part that you wanted to confirm is the right remix/version/etc.

90 seconds should be great.
 
wordoflife said:
I guess, but I'd prefer to listen to the whole song at least once before buying it
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Download Spotify. Unless your taste in music is as obscure as mine i can almost guarantee that you'll love it. Who knows, you might even end up subscribing. At 9.99 per month (in the US) it's actually a quite nice deal (assuming the US-catalog matches the european one in size).

(And yes, they have an iphone app which not only allows you to stream music to your device, but also lets you access songs while offline - you need to be a subscriber to use the app though).
 
never bought a song off itunes, but I would have thought and assumed you could preview the whole song.
 
firestarter said:
I've just been testing this out - and while there are now some 90 second previews in the UK store, a good proportion still seem to be 30 seconds.

Beatles, Beyonce, Iron Maiden were 90 seconds, ABBA, Queen, Metallica 30 seconds (just some random things I checked!).

andrewh93 - check 'Hey Jude'
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Confirmed. Same here in Finland. Beatles 90 seconds, Metallica 30 seconds. So it depends on album or artist, or perhaps copyright owner.
 
Pendulum are 90 seconds in the UK. I found it last night when I thought 30 seconds seemed to be lasting a long time. Good move.
 
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30 second preview is way to short to tell if a song is any good, especially an 8 min dance track!!

A huuuuge welcome to 1:30 previews!!!! :D
 
I, for one, welcome this change to the iTunes Store.

There are some songs that sound great during a 30 second preview because in most cases it's a portion of the chorus, but after that the rest of the song is trash. 90 seconds gives you ample time to hear both portions of the song, giving you a much better idea of whether or not you're going to like the overall song, which in turn gives more value to your purchases.
 
To be honest, I've mostly given up on iTunes these days except for offers. Mflow (Google it) works nicely enough for me - it's for 'reasonable' iTunes integration, lets you listen to the full track and frankly offers reasonable prices too.


That said - longer itTunes previews can't hurt either.
 
How big is the world?

"Apple seems to have extended iTunes song previews to 90 seconds internationally" =

All the countries with white populations:apple:
 
cause id preview the song on iTunes for 90seconds when I could preview the song on youtube all the way through...
 
1080p said:
It took longer because Apple has to wheel and deal with the labels who are dragging their feet.... trying to figure out a way to extort more money for 60 more seconds of preview...
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If anyone would be extorting money it would be Apple. I'm surprised they don't charge for the preview.
 
To check it on a random selection, I tried the UK store, "59p songs". Of the first 15 songs, 13 are 90 seconds and two are 30 seconds.

I would think that Apple has different servers for playing the previews and for delivering the songs, so they can't just switch this over, but they have to copy 90 seconds from each of ten million or so songs to the preview server, and that takes a while.
 
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divinox said:
Download Spotify. Unless your taste in music is as obscure as mine i can almost guarantee that you'll love it. Who knows, you might even end up subscribing. At 9.99 per month (in the US) it's actually a quite nice deal (assuming the US-catalog matches the european one in size).

(And yes, they have an iphone app which not only allows you to stream music to your device, but also lets you access songs while offline - you need to be a subscriber to use the app though).
Click to expand...

I used the free Spotify for a day before subscribing... I think it's absolutely awesome.. This is what iCloud should have been...
 
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