Have you ever been frustrated while trying to buy new music, feeling that a 30-second song sample just wasn’t long enough to want to make you click “Buy”? Apparently Apple agrees, and at long last they’ve started rolling out 90-second song previews in iTunes.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple has quietly started pushing 90-second song samples to iTunes late Thursday. The feature isn’t available on every album (or even every song on an album), and it appears to be only in the United States for now, but the good news is that the rumors are finally true.
We reported recently that Apple alerted music labels about their intentions to extend iTunes song samples from 30 to 90 seconds on all songs longer than two minutes and 30 seconds (tracks shorter than this length will continue to have 30-second samples, same as before). The letter, send via e-mail, essentially meant that the labels were accepting the new terms just by keeping their music on the iTunes Store -- those who didn’t were required to remove their music, which we’re guessing not too many have done.
We did a quick spot check on a handful of songs that we’re eyeing for purchase and they’re all rocking the 90-second song samples. How about you? Will longer song samples encourage you to buy more music?
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MacAndMe
December 17, 2010 at 11:23am
Definitely yes. I always felt 30 seconds was too short, especially if it was missing the chorus or just a sample from the intro of the song. Having said that I believe 60 secs would be fine too. 90 seconds seems a bit long actually, especially if the whole song is jut 3 minutes (which most of the modern tunes are). But hey, more power to us.
