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iTunes song previews will be extended to 90 seconds in US store

by Chris Rawson Nov 2nd 2010 at 10:00PM

Music site Symphonic Distortion reports Apple has sent word that song previews in the US iTunes Store will soon be extended to 90 seconds, up from the 30-second previews the store has featured until now. The only caveat is that songs must be longer than 2 minutes, 30 seconds in order to get a 90-second preview; shorter songs will stay at a 30-second preview. Makes sense.

The extension in song preview lengths was reportedly supposed to happen earlier this year, but the complex state of licensing issues in the music industry reportedly held up the process. Either those issues have been resolved, or Apple has decided to play hardball -- the new licensing agreement basically states that by keeping their music on the iTunes Store, labels agree to allow 90-second song previews. Any label that doesn't want 90-second previews of its songs must withdraw its music from the iTunes Store under the new licensing terms ... and since doing so would do serious damage to the bottom line of most music labels, it looks like 90-second song previews are finally here, and hopefully here to stay.

[via Mac Rumors]



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Music site Symphonic Distortion reports Apple has sent word that song previews in the US iTunes Store will soon be extended to 90 seconds,...
 

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13 Comments

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Tom

I see itunes gift cards on http://4saleusa.com/ emailed worldwide !

November 10 2010 at 12:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
pkd155

Instead of extending it to 90 seconds they need to let people preview the whole song one time and than have 30 second previews like some other services do.

November 03 2010 at 3:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
AppleZilla

Fantastic. Now just sell Apple Lossless files and you will have a customer for life.

Their 256 AAC files are encoded very well, but I would like the full experience.

November 03 2010 at 1:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
slakr007

The thing I miss the most about LaLa was the ability to listen to an _entire_ album, start to finish, once when logged in to the site. 30 seconds is crap. 90 seconds is crap. LaLa was awesome.

November 03 2010 at 10:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mattcutler

Awesome, now after the preview I can be sure if I want to purchase the song from Amazon or not.

November 03 2010 at 9:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
AGS

sweet! and i think you can still pull over the previews and turn them into ringtones. right?

November 03 2010 at 9:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mark

I wish they would start the preview at the beginning of the song instead of somewhere in the middle. That would also be nice. 90 seconds is a great start on fixing previews however.

November 03 2010 at 7:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gillan

umm... what?

November 02 2010 at 10:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eric

This is great for all those songs that are under 90 seconds... as long as you're okay finding them in the store every time you want to hear them.

November 02 2010 at 10:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Eric's comment
Robert

Re-read the post. It says that songs shorter than 150 seconds will still have a 30-second preview.

November 02 2010 at 11:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
milkmage

FTA: The only caveat is that songs must be longer than 2 minutes, 30 seconds in order to get a 90-second preview; shorter songs will stay at a 30-second preview. Makes sense.

November 03 2010 at 12:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave

I'm all for this. I've bought songs in the past that have amazing hooks but the rest of the song is kind of crap.

November 02 2010 at 10:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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