iTunes Song Samples Now Increased To 90 seconds

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A mere half a minute just not enough time to figure out if you actually want to pluck down that hard earned buck on The Pipkins’ classic sonnet, “Gimme Dat Ding”? You now have thrice the time to sample, courtesy of iTunes.

Apple has already started rolling out extended song previews under iTunes in the U.S. Store, lengthening them from 30 seconds to 90 seconds on all songs over two and a half minutes long. No freeloading three-quarters of Blur’s “Song No. 2” for you, then.

It’s by no means ubiquitous: though it was previously reported that Apple played hard ball with the labels to force through the new 90 second rule of song previews, telling publishers that to accept the new extended preview terms, they only needed to keep selling their content through iTunes.

It appears, now that it’s here, that the record industry managed to get its act together to coordinate a legalistic kung-fu kick back in Apple’s direction, because whether through threat of lawsuit or threat of mass defection, Apple’s since made the extended previews opt-in on a track-by-track basis.

The hassle of licensing extended previews seems to have also delayed the feature’s roll-out internationally. Sorry, ye chattering natives of fragrant, far-flung lands: 90 second previews are a U.S. Store feature only for right now.

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