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American Idol comes to iTunes

OK, guilty pleasure alert -- I kind of love American Idol. In fact, I have previously referred to it as, "my crack." I even named my MacBook, "Simon" because it was purchased with money I made writing about the show last season (and because I am a GIGANTIC dork). And even though I'm not professionally covering the show this year, I remain a huge fan. Hey, we're all allowed to have our vices, and looking at the TV ratings, millions of other people are just as lame as me.

Last year, performances and "singles" from the #1 show on television didn't come to iTunes until AFTER the season had ended. I don't know if it was because Apple and Fox couldn't work out an agreement early enough (iTunes did feature the Idol Gives Back charity singles/videos), or what, but I have a feeling a lot of potential money was lost by not having performances available on iTunes earlier. This year, iTunes is in on the action from the very beginning.

Starting this week, the audio performances from the Top 24 contestants will be available on iTunes for $.99 a piece. Starting March 11, the full video performances from the the Top 12 finalists will be available for $1.99 a piece. Fans can even "pre-order" performances from their favorite contestants from within iTunes, and those songs or videos will be automatically downloaded the day after the show airs.

iTunes is also providing, in their words, "exclusive direct links from the free streaming performance videos on americanidol.com".

If they follow last year's trend, the contestant's will record their chosen song each week in a studio BEFORE performing live on the show, and that audio file will be available the next day. The video footage will be from the live performance and from slightly different angles than what is used for the television broadcast.

The Top 24 starts tonight, meaning the first batch of downloads will be available tomorrow.

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OK, guilty pleasure alert -- I kind of love American Idol. In fact, I have previously referred to it as, "my crack." I even named my...
 

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sjmills

That's too bad. What a waste of disk space and bandwidth.

February 20 2008 at 5:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CZ

To quote Lord Vader:

NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!!!

February 19 2008 at 4:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nic

I hate music snobs who believe there exists such a thing as 'guilty pleasures', no music is inherently better or worse just because it the singer didn't write it, or got their break by appearing on one of these shows. If I lived in the US I bet I'd love this. I'm so annoyed that the technology wasn't there in 2002 when the UK version of Pop Idol was on, it would have been brilliant to download my favourite's songs each week, even better studio recorded without audience noise!

Writing about entertainment also isn't any worse than writing about computers surely, the vast majority of stuff on here is consumer-orientated and isn't 'necessary' in any true sense, so there's not much difference there.

February 19 2008 at 1:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Nic's comment
Steve

Very well said, I completely agree. Entertainment news is just as worthless as Technology news.

February 19 2008 at 6:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ty

I love American Idol, this is great

February 19 2008 at 1:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
krye

Wow, talk about cashing in!!!

February 19 2008 at 12:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to krye's comment
Nic

talk about 'capitalism'!

February 19 2008 at 3:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ben

aren't the performances for the next few weeks only like 30seconds long or so? that seems like a bit of a rip off for 1$, not to mention how easy it is to get a capture card for your computer and record the full HD broadcast...

February 19 2008 at 12:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to ben's comment
Christina Warren

2 minutes -- and for the videos, I agree, total rip off. For the songs? Eh, you get the full song. If you want to pay $1 to hear someone's quickly produced cover is debatable, some of the MP3's last year were actually pretty good, considering the source.

February 19 2008 at 1:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rene Ritchie

Wow! Actually available from iTunes Canada as well. Free video: "I'll be Your Brother" ~80mb. Quality is fair...

February 19 2008 at 12:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
umijin

So, Apple is selling more bad entertainment (read: US TV Shows) via iTunes.

Uninspiring.

Now if Apple USA was selling BBC programs, that would be impressive.

February 19 2008 at 11:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to umijin's comment
poopninja


They could not sell BBC programs in the US, putting Subtitles on all those shows would be too much mula, Hence they made their own BUTCHERED version of the Office

February 19 2008 at 12:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
poopninja


Look!....Frost!, Seriously I thought TUAW was the only place on the web where one could be safe from trailerpark TV. I sincerely hope your fellow TUAWERS finds a wet sunday newspaper and gives you a proper spanking

February 19 2008 at 11:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to poopninja's comment
mingistech

Trailerpark TV... haha... perfect.

But seriously.... I hate everything about that show.

February 19 2008 at 11:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David

From a marketing standpoint, this is a REALLY good idea. I've often wondered why FOX didn't get in on the iTunes goodness with American Idol sooner. This is what I expected to see a year or even two years ago. Good for them.

February 19 2008 at 11:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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