Remember when we said the four largest record companies were working together with Apple to add enhanced liner notes and extra media to full album purchases through the iTunes Store? Well, apparently Apple wasn't in on that cooperation. The Guardian is reporting that the four companies' plans for enhanced full albums were rebuffed by Apple, and they are planning to release their own format in competition with the one to be released in the iTunes Store.

The new file format, called CMX, was created by EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner. It will function quite a bit like a DVD, with a launch page allowing for navigation to the related artwork and video portions of the album. An unnamed label representative is quoted saying that the format was initially presented to an uninterested Apple; now, Apple is releasing a competing format under the code name Cocktail.

The format's tentative launch date is set for November, will be for a small number of titles, and only available in smaller music stores and non-Apple players. It is unclear how Cocktail and CMX will be different, if at all, save for the exclusivity of platforms. Apple is largely said to be following up on the format as a precautionary measure, in case it proves to be immensely popular; as they've said repeatedly, their interest still lies with supporting the more lucrative hardware, rather than trying to profit from full album sales. Still, Apple is stepping up to the format battle, and while not on the scale of Betamax vs. VHS or HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, this promises to be a pretty decent fight.

[via Electronista]

Digital music purchases have been dominating the market for some time now as physical CD purchases continue to fall. For Apple, a significant lead over the rest of the music proprietor world is not enough: according to the Financial Times, the company is now working together with the four largest record labels in the business to add new features to accompany digital music purchases through its iTunes Store in hopes of stimulating full album purchases.

[The FT also reports, without hedging, that Apple's "media pad" tablet device will ship in time for the holiday shopping season. According to the paper, the long-rumored iPad is intended as a full-featured portable computer and video & music player, like an oversized iPod touch, including wireless data connectivity but no built-in phone functions.]

Apple has formed an alliance with EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music to bundle whole albums with perks like interactive booklets, digital sleeve notes, and video clips. By doing so, Apple hopes to increase sales of the albums over single track purchases, a sales model that has been immensely popular in the advent of digital music.

The project, codenamed "Cocktail," is intended to recreate the former experience of album-purchasing, where you could browse the liner notes, follow lyrics, and look at the album artwork as the music played. Executives have said that users will even be able to play music straight from the proposed interactive booklets without having to use iTunes. Of course, the main motivation for increasing album sales is to increase profits, as albums have a higher margin than individual songs.

This change is one that should have taken place a long time ago- having to search for lyrics on shady, ad-ridden websites should already be a fading, shudder-inducing memory (though liner notes have been available on some albums, a change across the board has yet to take place). As items like liner notes and photos are possibly the last benefit that physical CDs can offer over digital purchases, this may turn out to be a very serious blow to the CD market. The iTunes Store album add-ons are set to roll out in September.

This is pretty much genius. Like Albert, I have a bunch of "membership cards" in my wallet -- they're those cards with a barcode or number on them that you get from places like the local grocery store, or some other retailer. They're useful to have around, but they tend to pile up after a while, and pretty soon, your wallet gets to be a brick of barcodes rather than anything you'd actually want to carry around in your pocket. Albert's solution was to scan all of his barcodes into the iPhone, front and back, as an iPhoto album. And lo and behold, just like the paperless boarding passes we posted about a while back, it worked. All of the barcodes were scannable, which means no more countless membership cards -- just a gallery in your iPhone.

We've already heard of barcodes reading both on and off of the iPhone, of course, and we'll hopefully see more of this when the SDK drops in just about a month here (maybe, in the future, someone will write an app to generate barcodes from numbers, so you don't even need to get a clear scan). But even without an external app, this is pretty handy solution to clearing up some of the clutter in your wallet. Obviously, for anything important (driver's license, credit cards), an iPhone scan won't do. But just to get the membership prices down at the Jewel-Osco, scanning wallet cards into an iPhone seems to work just fine. Very nice.

[via Waxy]

Here's an interesting twist on the iTunes vs. record companies situation. Radiohead (disclaimer: I'm a Radiohead fan) is choosing not to sell their latest album on iTunes not because their record company is pressuring them out of the deal-- their record company is EMI, and they're more than willing to sell the record DRM free-- but because iTunes is forcing them to break up their album into songs that can be sold separately.

Usually, I'm all for selling separate songs-- why should I pay for a whole album when I'm only going to listen to three or four songs? But when a request comes from the artist like this, it seems like a different ballgame. I'd like to buy Radiohead's album on iTunes, and if they want it complete, then that's the way I'd want to buy it. But because Apple has fought to keep songs separate, Radiohead isn't selling it with them at all. You might say that I wouldn't feel the same way about other artists, and you'd be right-- if Vanilla Ice required me to buy the entire To the Extreme just to listen to "Ice, Ice Baby," I'd decide it wasn't really worth it.

But my personal tastes aside, the whole thing actually reminds me of Ed Burns talking about watching Godfather on the iPod-- the iTMS has fundamentally changed the way we purchase and consume media. The concept of "album" is losing meaning. For most iTunes purchasers, I'd imagine that's not a bad thing. But artists like Thom Yorke and Radiohead clearly aren't ready to see the album experience disappear, and they're willing to keep their music off of iTunes to fight it.

[via MacBytes]

One of the backend changes that came with the release of iTunes 7 is how the app stores album artwork. The days of embedding album artwork in music files are gone, due in part (I assume) to the purchase and integration of CoverFlow, a flashy new way to browse your albums. Artwork is now stored in a new ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/ folder, but what if you want your album artwork embedded in those files? Users can have any number of reasons for wanting this, such as the Growl notifications that Quicksilver creates when iTunes starts playing something new. Those notifications (as I understand it) are incapable of properly display album artwork unless the image is embedded in the file, so iTunes 7 has created a bit of a conundrum with this new organization feature.

Never fear, however, for Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes is yet again to the rescue. Doug has a handy script aptly titled Embed Artwork that can do just what it says: embed the album art back into your files. This should make things easier on Quicksilver + Growl, as well as if you move your media files to a new computer, artwork in tow.

As usual, Doug's scripts are provided for free, but donations for all his hard work are strongly encouraged.

[via Quicksilver's forums]

The most useful tips are sometimes the easiest to pull off, and this one from ryerye at Mac OS X Hints definitely falls into that camp. It turns out that iTunes' Album column can also sort with "Album by Artist" and "Album by Year." That second option is especially nice, since it's actually a 'Sort by Artist by Album Year.' All you need to do is keep clicking on the Album column to get whichever option you prefer; no extra modifier keys and no obscure tricks, though no documentation either, as far as I can tell.

These days, there is absolutely no shortage of apps that let you control iTunes in one way or another. You can use your PSP, tiny menubar controllers, countless iTunes widgets and now - CoverSutra. Featuring a stylish bezel with loads of control feedback and album art display, CoverSutra aims to give you complete control over iTunes without invading your space. It can even work with the Apple Remote, offering visual feedback without the need to enter something like Front Row.

A 10-day demo of CoverSutra is available, and it sells for just under $13 USD (€9.95). While CoverSutra is a brand new 1.0 app, the developer is promising "plenty of new things in [the works] for you," and upgrades are free until version 2.0. If other controllers such as the über-everything Quicksilver don't quite float yer boat, CoverSutra looks like a great solution for controlling iTunes without interrupting your flow.

Certainly one of the drawbacks to buying music on the iTS is the single vs. album purchase: sure you can buy a song or two from an album, or maybe the hot pre-release single, but what happens if you want the rest of the album later, or when it's completely released? This has been a catch with traditional music distribution methds as well - you can either buy that $3-5 CD single release, or pony up the ridiculous price of $15-20 (and more) for the entire album. I've been hoping someone would devise a digital solution to this conundrum since I bought my first album off the store the day it launched, and Ina Fried CNET has a rumor stating that a solution could see the light of day soon. The idea is that if you've bought a track or two from an album, you can receive credit for those purchased tracks in the form of a lower total album price, should you decide you want the entire thing at a later date.

If this is true, I would hope it could debut as early as January's Macworld '07 event. Ina's right - they're leaving a ton of money on the table without something like this in place, and they have the opportunity of solving an age-old conundrum in offering an appealing and fundamental advantage over the traditional brick-and-mortar method of buying music.

I guess the times certainly are a changin', as the man Bob Dylan himself has hopped on board with Apple and the iTunes Music Store to offer an exclusive pre-order ($13.99) of his upcoming new album, Modern Times, which lands on August 29th. Ticketmaster has even tossed their hat in, just like with the Red Hot Chili Peppers promo back in April, and is offering a pre-sale ticket opportunity for select dates on Mr. Dylan's tour to fans who pre-order the album.

Now if that isn't enough Bob for you, Apple has also created a digital box set simply called 'The Collection' which boasts 800 songs, but be careful using that one-click purchase option: it's $199, and also lands on the 29th. "Bob Dylan is one of the most respected poets and musicians of our time, and he is a personal hero of mine," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, calling this opportunity a "a real thrill for us."

Modern Times (iTMS link) is available for pre-order today, and fans who purchase it will receive a Ticketmaster code by email which can be used to get in on that pre-sale at Ticketmaster.com starting August 30th, while the tickets go on sale to the public September 9th. More information can be found at bobdylan.com, as well as ticketmaster.com/bobdylan.

The iPod is the 800-pound gorilla of the DAP industry - there's no doubt about it (well, almost). In its 4+ years of existence, the player has quickly won owner's hearts because of its ease of use and seamless iTunes management experience, amongst other reasons. I personally have owned one of every generation of iPod since the original 5 GB model with the *gasp* mechanical scroll wheel, before all this fancy touch wheel stuff you young whipper-snappers are spoiled with today.

In all this time, however, the iPod's famously simple UI has more or less remained that way - staggeringly basic. While I personally am no fan of devices that add features and options simply for the sake of claiming 'it has more', I'm starting to think that there are a few areas that the iPod's UI and experience are in serious need of an update. Music (and video) collections are getting larger, people are interacting with their devices and the libraries on their computers through increasingly new (and truly useful) ways, and I think the iPod needs to catch up with the times.

Tired of browsing the (often late) New Release emails from the iTMS to find out whether an artist you actually care about has released a new album? Sick of adding an 'Artist Alert' for each of the hundreds of artists cataloged in your vast library? Well pound those keys no more, frustrated iTMS shopper, for the newTunes widget has arrived. This widget tells you when new music you actually care about has been released by watching for new and upcoming work from the artists already in your library.

Don't you love it when computers actually do the work for you, instead of creating more work for you to do? newTunes is freeware and can be had from Apple's Dashboard downloads section.

We blogged the iPhoto mini widget back in December, and since then it has received quite the feature update and face lift. The widget is now resize-able and just plain sexier. In addition to being able to browse all your iPhoto albums complete with image counts, you can now set the current image as your desktop wallpaper with a single click. The little gear icon you see offers the ability to open the current image in four apps: Preview, Mail, Safari and a custom app you can define on the back of the widget.

The iPhoto mini widget is free and available from DashboardWidgets.

In the most recent iLife '06 software update that Damien mentioned, iWeb understandably received the largest bump of new features and bug fixes; after all, it is the latest to arrive at the iLife party. Considering that I've been pretty vocal about my gripes with this otherwise fantastic addition to both iLife and .Mac, you can imagine my enthusiasm for Software Update to work its magic asap.

After tinkering with the new features in iWeb 1.1 like blog comments and drop-dead simple photo album page creation, I thought I'd post a quick review of what's new, as I think iWeb is finally starting to fit into its role of a strong, WYSIWYG 1.0 application from Apple.

It's great to see that when the Peppers (finally) decide to commit to something, they really dive in: iLounge is reporting that on May 2nd at 6:30 pm local time, Apple Stores in the U.S., Canada and UK will hold listening parties for the band's new album, Stadium Arcadium, set to land on May 9th. The stores will play all 28 songs from the new album and will be giving away a limited number of iTunes cards so fans can download the new single, "Dani California" (iTMS link). Let's also not forget that pre-ordering the new album enters you into a contest for a logo-engraved, 60 GB Chili Peppers iPod, and gives you access to a Ticketmaster pre-sale for the band's North American tour.

If, for one reason or another, you're interested in stripping all the album art from every track on your iPod, I've found an applescript over at Doug's Applescripts for iTunes that's right up your alley. While you might be able to spend a bit more time to complete this same process manually, you'll tie up iTunes and your iPod until it finishes. The beauty of this script is that it can work in the background, allowing you to still use iTunes.

Now on the other side of the fence, Restore iPod Album Art might just be for those of you who are suddenly panicking and need all that artwork back on the iPod. This one requires you to select tracks on the iPod in iTunes, in which case the script will attempt to find the corresponding track in the library to copy the album art from. I haven't gone through the readme, but Doug's listing says it's a must for using this script.