Beatles Collection Finally Comes To iTunes

For all the people who still care...... The day has finally come for Beatles fans that they have all been waiting for. Apple has cut a deal and brought the Beatles massive song collection to iTunes. This I'm sure will be part of Apple's "Big Announcement" today, and if you check iTunes right now you can see there are 16 albums available. The big one being the Beatles Box Set which feature 126 songs and comes in at a cool $150.

I know that this has been a long battle that Beatles fans have been waiting to be over, but I'm not really sure why. I've always felt that the Beatles were a little over rated, and I know that people will be up in arms over that statement. Over rated doesn't mean that they're not good or worthy of praise, just not on the level that the Beatles seem to have. It seems that if you really wanted the Beatles on your iTunes all you had to do it buy the physical disk and import it into your iTunes.

There..... all done!!!

iTunes 9 is out

 iTunes 9 is out now, and it has a feature that most iPhone and iPod touch users have wanted for a while.  A way to organize your apps.  Yes, you can finally set up which apps you sync, and also what page and position they will appear.  Its about damn time.

Another feature that is a longer time coming is sharing of iTunes libraries.  Yes, finally if you have more than one computer in the house, you can fully share all of their libraries on up to 5 computers. 

Finally!!! Tuneup For iTunes Gets Your PC Music House In Order

One of the most frustrating parts of having a lot of music that you’ve collected over the years is that iTunes can’t always identify the mish-mash of nameless tracks. So you have gaps in your album cover flow, songs out of alphabetical order, and general chaos. Now if you’re a Mac owner you really don’t have anything to worry about, because there are lots of applications that can help you with this.

But for PC owners you’re SOL……. Until now.

Tuneup for iTunes is just what the doctor ordered for all of those missing album art covers and mislabeled song names. The service is web based and will clean up the first 100 songs for free, or you can get the unlimited package for $19.95 a year, or the lifetime subscription for $29.99. The thing that I love about it is that it has an automatic mode that will comb through your music and fix the missing tracks information. If you have a lot of music, this is a great feature!

I get the feeling that a lifetime subscription is not the way to go, as once you do a major clean up; you shouldn’t need this very much. But I think it is certainly worth the year subscription to get your music house in order.

Crunchgear has a sweet review of the application, and it’s worth the read.

Blizzard Entertainment® Soundtracks Now On iTunes

IRVINE, Calif. -- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that a wide selection of music from its popular games has been added to the iTunes store. Much of this music was originally available only in collector's editions of the games, or at special events such as the company's BlizzCon® gaming convention. Six Blizzard Entertainment® soundtrack albums are currently available:

StarCraft® Original Soundtrack

Diablo® II Original Soundtrack

Warcraft® III: Reign of Chaos® Original Soundtrack

World of Warcraft® Original Soundtrack

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade® Original Soundtrack

World of Warcraft: Taverns of Azeroth Original Soundtrack

The albums have been placed on a new Blizzard Entertainment hub page within the iTunes store. This page also hosts content such as the BlizzCast™ podcast and trailers and gameplay footage from upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games, with more material to be added in the months ahead. In addition, the "Diablo III Overture" from the company's recently announced action role-playing game, Diablo III, is available as a single and has been highlighted as a Discovery Download, making it free to download until Tuesday, September 9.



Players in the regions iTunes serves (North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan) can purchase the music at standard rates for each of those regions. For more information, please visit www.blizzard.com.

Blackberry Bold To Launch With iTunes Syncing Ability

The new Blackberry Bold (formally the 9000) will cater to more than just the business suits, as it will ship with RIM's yet to be released Blackberry Media Sync. This software will allow you to sync your new Blackberry with your iTunes. This should make this one of the most popular Blackberry on the market.

[Crunchgear]

Apple Taking Care Of Customer’s Who’s Shows Were Cancelled

If your favorite show took it on the chin during the writers strike and you had a season pass on itunes, Apple is going to show you some love. If you kept your season pass but ‘The Office’ lost 8 shows this season, Apple will credit you for 8 shows. And for those who didn’t lose any shows this year but had a season pass, Apple is going to show you some love too. Anyone who had a season pass through the writers strike will get two free shows, just because Apple is cool like that.

Now that is how you handle your customer’s people!!!

Learn from this Best Buy, Sprint, RIM, AT&T, Comcast, ect…..

Apple to credit iTunes Season Pass holders [Macworld via Crunchgear]

All You Can Download Music Coming To iTunes

This is what I'm talking about Apple!!!!

Financial Times is reporting that Apple is in deep talks with music companies about an all you can eat music service, this from an anonymous executive. The article suggests that customers would pay an extra $100 for an ipod, and would get free downloads for the life of the device, or pay a monthly fee of $8.

Now this is what you do to combat piracy and completely dominate the music industry. All you can download for $8 a month? Where do I sign up Apple!!!

[FT via Gizmodo]

Netflix Tries To Beat Apple To The Punch

One thing that I like about Netflix is that they don’t wait for the preverbal train to run them over before they react. Such is the case with the decision to give most of their users unlimited movie streaming downloads, in response to Apple’s rumored announcement tomorrow at MacWorld. Apple is said to announce that they will get into the movie rental business and stream movies to users for $3.99 a pop. Netflix will offer unlimited streaming download for a monthly set price for all but their cheap ass users (such as me) that are part of the 2 movie rentals a month for $4.99. So while Apple will offer per movie downloads, Netflix will give you the run of the house. This is a great option for people who rent 5 or more movies a month, as long as you don’t mind watching a movie on your computer.

This should be a lesson for Blockbuster. Don’t sit on your ass, waiting for someone to kick it!

[Yahoo News]

Edgar Bronfman: Music Industry Partly To Blame For War With Consumers

Finally, someone within the music industry has taken some ownership of why the music industry is struggling. Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr admitted that the music industry is partly to blame for the problems that it is experiencing, and that they are "at war" with their own customers. Check the quote:

"We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."

It's amazing that someone within the industry DOES get it. Instead of embracing a new way of music interaction and distribution, they've chosen to grip tightly onto their old ways of doing business. Stating that they're loosing money only because of piracy is not looking at the whole picture. The truth is is that artist (if you can call them that) are not as good as they've been in the past. With iTunes and other outlets like it, people are not forced to buy an entire album if only one good song exists on it. Unlike in the past, artist and the music houses can't have one good track and 10 tracks of filler, and expect the album to do well.

That is a good thing!!!

This forces the both artist and the music homes to WORK on putting out a good product, and not expecting one song to carry the album. If the music industry channeled the same effort that they use going after college students, single moms, and grandmothers, imagine how good the quality of music would be out today.

Jay-Z Pulls Album Off iTunes

Not sure if I would classify this one as brave or stupid, but rapper Jay-Z took a bold move with his new album 'American Gangster'. The the album was listed on iTunes, but was pulled by the artist on Tuesday, and although the title is listed, you are unable to purchase it. Check the quote:

"As movies are not sold scene by scene, this collection will not be sold as individual singles.”

Now I wonder if he could have set the album up to only be sold as one complete unit on iTunes, but this move is questionable at best. Jay-Z is one of the biggest stars to pull an album from iTunes (outside of the Beetles, which hasn't made it to iTunes), so I'm curious to where this is going.

Brave or stupid?
You decide.

[G4TV]

Apple Cuts Prices On DRM-Free Music

Apple has gone on another slashing spree, this time with the DRM-Free songs on iTunes. In what was sure prompted by the Universal and Amazon.com moves, Apple has cut the prices from $1.29 to $.99. You rarely see Apple react to other companies moves, but this was a smart move on their part.

Now there is no reason to purchase any music that contains DRM from Apple, and I would hope that DRM goes the way of the gremlin.

[Apple via Gizmodo]

iTunes 1.1.1 Unlocked: AT&T Haters Rejoice

Boy that didn't take very long.

The guys at The Dev Team have already put together a working "Jailbreak" application that unlocks iphones that have been upgraded to iTunes 1.1.1. It hasn't gotten all the third party applications working just yet, but it will get you out of the clutches of AT&T. It should be available sometime next week, so stay tuned.

Announcing a preliminary iPhone 1.1.1 Jailbreak [TUAW via Crunchgear]

iTunes Update: May Not Brick iphone After All

The new iTunes 1.1.1 is out and available for download, with the new firmware update that Apple claims will brick your unlocked iphone. Well the guys at the Giz are working with The Dev Team to see if the firmware update actually does brick unlocked iphones. So if you do happen to have an unlocked iphone, DO NOT update your iTunes, sit tight until the guys at Giz finsh their testing. Here is a recap from them:

• The update will work ok in iPhones with no modification.
• The update will work ok in iPhones with Installer.app (although it gets wiped out. The apps seem to remain in the iPhone, but they won't appear in your screen.)
• The update will work ok in unlocked iPhones, but it will return your iPhone to the activation screen. From there, no activation is possible. The iPhone doesn't get bricked but, if you want to keep using it, don't update your iPhone.

[Giz]

iTunes 7.4.2 Slows Ringtone Hacks

iTunes 7.4.2 has been released and it patches the hacks that came out for the iphone ringtones. recently. Apple doesn't take to kindly to anything that will infringe on the bottom line, so the patch seem to be a priority.

Although this patch takes care of the file renaming hack, it seems that some of the older hacks are still functioning.

[Gizmodo]

iTunes has 99 Cent Surcharge For Ring Tones: Not Cool

One thing that I've always have given Apple credit for was the way iTunes works. No other application works as well with an MP3 player like this one does. So I was excited after the announcement of the upgrade of iTunes with a new feature for ring tones. This new iTunes will allow iphone users to take 30 second snips of any song they own, and make it into a ring tone. Any 30 seconds that you want of any song, which is very cool, right?

Until I found out that Apple is going to charge your ass .99 cents to do this. Now, this is a song that you already own, not downloading from Apple to add as a ring tone. A song that is already in your iTunes that you've paid for once before. I'm sure that the record company is getting some kind of kick back from Apple for this.

But that is a total rip off!!!

So you have to pay to have a song that you already own, cut up to put on your phone?

BS Apple!!! BS!!!

NBC Universal Pulling Video Content From iTunes

NBC Universal is turning up the heat on iTunes by ending support, which means there will be no more "Heroes," "The Office" or "To Catch a Predator" after December. This is a huge deal to Apple because 40% of their downloads are from NBC Universal.

The problem is due to NBC wanting to raise prices, and Apple wanting to keep things the way they are. Everything stems from greed, and I wonder would NBC rather make no money, than play by Apple's rules? Most likely NBC will sign a short term contract with Apple just to keep leverage for negotiations, and there is still a few months left to come to an agreement.

[NYT via Gizmodo]

Google, Universal Team Up With gBox: iTunes Killer?

In an effort to shift power away from Apple, Google along with Universal has teamed up with gBox to offer DRM free music on-line. Starting August 21, gbox will offer DRM-free music tracks via Google search results.

Tracks will cost .99 cents, which undercuts iTunes by .30 cents for DRM-free music. The move is huge for gBox which will benefit from Google's search advertising. A month ago, Universal informed Apple that they would not renew a new long-term contract to sell music through iTunes. This seems to be the next step in shifting power away from Apple.

Read the entire article after the jump. [readwriteweb.com]

iphone Security Update

For all the iphone owners who were ready to chuck it out the window when the security holes were exposed, you can rest easy now.

Apple released an update version 1.0.1 via iTunes to not only fix some of the known bugs, but also to plug the holes that could allow someone to get all kinds of goodies off your iphone. This will also prevent Hackers from having their way with Safari Web browser on your phone.

If you have an iphone, I would sync it like yesterday!!

Read more after the jump.

About the security content of iPhone v1.0.1 Update [Apple via Crunchgear]

Eminem Goes After Apple: Again!

Man I tell ya, Eminem makes me laugh sometimes.

Eminem is suing Apple once again, for selling his music on iTunes with out his permission. If you remember he also filed a lawsuit against Apple for using his song 'lose yourself' in an unaired Apple TV commercial. The lawsuit this time centers on if Universal (the label who Eminem is on) can cut a deal with Apple to sell his music without his consent.

It looks like Eminem is looking for a larger cut than what Apple is paying Universal for his music. I think it's a little strange that he's going after Apple, and not after his label who brokered the deal in the first place. In all fairness though, I really do think that Apple should disclose how much of that $.99 goes to the artist.

Hit the jump to read the article. [Detroit News via Crunchgear]

Control Your itunes Through Your iphone

If you have an iphone and are looking for a cool way to control your itunes, the guys at Signal have got your back. This web application connects the iphone to your Wi-Fi network and then point your iPhone to the web address that Signal gives you.

So you can control your tunes anywhere your network signal can reach. Now not only is your $600 investment a phone, but now a remote!

Hit the jump for the product page. [Alloysoft via Gizmodo]