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Works for me

That means I could listen to nearly all of Del Shannon's "So Long Baby", The Beatles' "The End" and "Her Majesty", Wings' "Crossroads" and Elton John's "Goodbye" "Your Starter For" and "Cartier"
 
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divinox said:
I guess, but I'd prefer to listen to the whole song at least once before buying it

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).

IMO the spotify app is useless unless you throw down cold hard "recession" cash. too many good free radio apps to discover new music on to pay spotify every month. icloud and iTunes match will make for killer music management.
 
Maybe Apple are testing their servers for a forthcoming streaming service? seems like a good way of gradual stress testing?

Can't see this coming for at least another year though, and with all the cash that Apple has sloshing around I really don't see why they just did not buy up Spotify and have done with it!

yea if they dont start some sort of streaming service they are going to lose a lot of sales. as of now you can either have under 10 itunes songs for 10 dollars or use spotify and have almost every song for the same price
 
I sell music in iTunes

Hiyall,

I sell children's songs in iTunes as The Magic Crayons which are between 1:20 and 3:08 in length.

I've just been and looked at the sample lengths now provided in the US store and its seems a 2:30 track or greater gives a 90 second preview and if its under that its 30 seconds. We don't have any say in which part of the track is made into the preview clip.

Personally, I am happy to now have the extra length preview as I am selling songs to help teach English, so the more of the song that parents and teachers get to hear the better. I will have to wait a month to compare sales figures though.

I have to say I am not a fan of streaming services as I make next to nothing from them. For example, one play on Rhapsody gets me $0.0091 !
That person might of course go on and buy the song, but I can't check that.

Tim
 
It's about time. I always wondered why they thought 30 secs was enough.
 
I wonder if people actually buy songs only after listening to 90 seconds of it.
Hmmm, let's see if there's a simple way to explain this to you: a lot of songs on iTunes have been sold with people listening to 30 seconds or less. After all, the iTunes Store is the number one music retailer in the world.

Apple will likely sell even more songs with the 90 second previews. This will probably be more helpful for people who interested in music that isn't the standard Top 40 radio stuff (e.g., classical, jazz).

It's about time. I always wondered why they thought 30 secs was enough.
Maybe they didn't but the record labels wouldn't allow for longer previews. Similarly, Apple never wanted DRM, it was the record companies that initially insisted on it.

In any case, the 30 second previews didn't seem to hamper consumer acceptance of the iTunes Store.
 
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Not really sure how much this will effect sales. Don't most people use the preview to confirm its the song they are looking for?
When I preview a song, 90 seconds is enough time for me to know whether I can take a chance and buy it. Sometimes a rock band will have a really lousy intro but a great rest of the song, so 90 seconds helps there. And sometimes the band has a regular intro that doesn't give a taste of the rest of the song.



Sure, why not? You can get a good idea of a song in 30 seconds - I don't think this is going to make a whole lot of difference.

Single songs are pretty cheap.
Not everyone agrees. For me, it's not enough. Many classical music songs that I have seen (and just so you know, I like metal too) are very close to ten minutes and for those songs, 30 seconds just isn't enough.


I guess, but I'd prefer to listen to the whole song at least once before buying it
I prefer the same as well and would add that in spite of that, I don't think it's a good idea. You can already hear many whole songs on YouTube.

I've bought more songs because of the longer previews. Sometimes 30 isn't enough.
Right on!

90 second previews are very important for the discovery of dance and electronic music, especially, as the tracks tend to be much longer than your average pop song. A 30 second sample often doesn't do a track justice so these new longer previews are especially welcome for me.
As long as we get a good feel for what the song is like, then I'm cool.

For shorter songs, shorter previews are ok.

For longer songs, longer previews are needed because the songs aren't short and have more stuff. Often with longer songs, the tempo changes... the rhythms vary, and you can't get a good sense of that in a short preview.
 
I just picked the #1 song off the list. :)

You could have taken another song of 'capital letters ADELE' that fits better to MacRumors:

adeleitunes.png


:D

BTW 90 sec in Austrian iTunes since the MR article was published.
 
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I checked some songs from the 90s and they were 90s.

EDIT: That's not even a pun, true story!!
 
Hooray! Now how about working on music videos.. remember when it was possible to watch a whole music video? Personally, I don't generally, ever, buy videos but it would be nice to get a bit more of a peak considering the price.
 
Do people use the previews to determine if they like the song or not? I would think for the majority of the time previews are played to confirm it's the correct song they want.

On the other hand, 90 seconds is nearly half the song for most songs, so why not...

I buy a lot of the lesser known tracks from well known artists based on previews quite often.

When I just want a known hit tune, I just listen to 5-10 seconds from the preview and buy it.

But the lesser known tracks I like to have 90 seconds preview to base my purchase on. So I strongly welcome this 90 seconds prelisten initiative :)
 
I wish the 90 seconds always started at the beginning of the song. I've purchased two (older) albums this month that were missing the first few seconds from every song. Both times I've gotten refunds, but it's a pain in the butt plus I can't figure out how the songs get ripped wrong like that. For most of the songs, that few seconds missing from the start were at the end of the previous song. But it wasn't true for every song, so even with audio software, I couldn't fix them (and I shouldn't have to in the first place). One album was by CCR and the other by Albert Collins. If I could hear the beginning of the songs, I'd know they were ripped correctly.
 
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).

Thanks for the suggestion, I have Spotify. It's really a fantastic app for streaming music. I don't have my library on all my computers, so this is a nice substitute for listening to music instead of going to YouTube. :)

Hmmm, let's see if there's a simple way to explain this to you: a lot of songs on iTunes have been sold with people listening to 30 seconds or less. After all, the iTunes Store is the number one music retailer in the world.

Apple will likely sell even more songs with the 90 second previews. This will probably be more helpful for people who interested in music that isn't the standard Top 40 radio stuff (e.g., classical, jazz).

I never denied any of that. I wish you (and the other 12 people who downrated my post) read what I actually posted. I was simply wondering if people actually bought songs after listening to a short preview of it, or if they went on YouTube or some other site (after discovering the song on iTunes) to listen to the rest of the song.

I never denied, mocked, or questioned the benefits of a [longer] song preview.
 
Now we just need a preview all button on the iPhone and iPad - like in iTunes, when wanting to preview an entire album.
 
Hiyall,

I sell children's songs in iTunes as The Magic Crayons which are between 1:20 and 3:08 in length.

I've just been and looked at the sample lengths now provided in the US store and its seems a 2:30 track or greater gives a 90 second preview and if its under that its 30 seconds. We don't have any say in which part of the track is made into the preview clip.

Personally, I am happy to now have the extra length preview as I am selling songs to help teach English, so the more of the song that parents and teachers get to hear the better. I will have to wait a month to compare sales figures though.

I have to say I am not a fan of streaming services as I make next to nothing from them. For example, one play on Rhapsody gets me $0.0091 !
That person might of course go on and buy the song, but I can't check that.

Tim

Best post on here Tim. Thanks for the perspective!
 
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finally!
great, as i like long 8min+ dj remixes the 30s preview where somtimes only some basedrum pumping, and i could not identify a track.
amazon is even worse, they start even earlier in an track as in itunes.
another possibility would be to let the artist/label decide where to start and how long the preview is.
btw now please apple improve another itunes flaw:
if a track has a long name at the end there are always .....
(check out for example voom voom - best friend remixes pt.1 - ep)
sometimes it is not possible to see a difference in a track name, and you have to guess which remix this could be.
it is even the same in ipod on iphone.
always..........
edit: to be specific - problem with long track names in itunes store for iphone
 
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