You’ve All Gone Lala
- January 9th, 2010 - 1.40 am BST
- Apple News, News of Interest
- Alex Brooks
This week a report began spreading like wildfire about 30-second previews on Apple’s web based iTunes. The feature in question allows users who don’t have iTunes installed to explore the iTunes Store in a web browser and listen to 30-second previews, as you would in iTunes itself.
The preview feature is actually not new to the web based iTunes also known as iTunes Preview. iTunes Preview appeared online in November last year, at the time song previews were not available, as noted by Gizmodo and Mac Rumors. But in early December song previews did appear on iTunes Preview, although went unnoticed by most.
In early December Apple also finalised the acquisition of Lala, a service which allows users to listen to music in a web browser.
All this has created far too much excitement for most media outlets; the apparent appearance of song previews in iTunes Preview and the existence of Lala in Apple’s back pocket means that apparently the two are related.
Here’s why that is complete misinformation:
- Apple has had 30-second previews in the iTunes Store since its inception. As of iTunes 9 the iTunes Store has been built in HTML and rendered using Webkit, the same rendering engine which Safari uses. Surely wouldn’t be difficult to use the same technology for previews on both platforms.
- Lala’s streaming license has been said in the past to be non-transferrable, not a clear cut reason I’ll admit.
- Apple has been making song previews available via iTunes Store RSS feeds for years.
The second issue with some of these reports is the reported quality of the previews. GigaOM first incorrectly reported that iTunes Preview 30-second song previews were “44.1 KHz AAC format at 300+ kbps”. But if you were to download this song preview and drop it into Quicktime you’ll quickly see that it’s a regular 256Kbps AAC file.
Here’s the bit where I speculate, potentially to my own downfall. Apple bought Lala for two reasons. Firstly to prevent Google for snapping them up (same for Quattro Wireless) and secondly to add a complete streaming service to iTunes later this year (not too shocking).
Who’s guilty of spreading false information:
Anybody else not doing any of their own research? Let me know in the comments.
Comments
Bill 11th January 2010, 15.13 pm
1. “But in early December song previews did appear on iTunes Preview, although went unnoticed by most.” A reference to anyone who noticed it would be appreciated. While I don’t doubt that they may have appeared in early December, it would be nice to see some news of it. Several of the links I looked at don’t necessarily claim that the feature is new, but that the report of it is.
2. “But if you were to download this song preview and drop it into Quicktime you’ll quickly see that it’s a regular 256Kbps AAC file.” I’m seeing some register in QuickTime as lows as 252 kbps and others as high as 290 kbps, so it looks to me like they’re using variable bit rates. I didn’t see any over 300 kbps in a quick survey, but it’s not a far stretch to think that GigaOM may have spotted one or more.
If the samples did appear in early December, it does make it less likely that Lala was involved, but I don’t know if anyone was saying that Lala’s technology/expertise/licensing/etc was NECESSARY to get it done. Perhaps some thought it was a quick job to get Lala’s team introduced to iTunes, perhaps it was simply the Lala purchase or potential of the purchase that sparked Apple’s desire to roll out web-based iTunes Previews in the first place. I don’t know.