Apple Launches iTunes Preview
Posted 11/13/2009 at 10:49am
| by Arvind Srinivasan

When iTunes 9 was released, it brought a slew of new features, including a redesigned interface for the iTunes store based on web technologies like HTML5 and CSS. Now, it looks like the software is porting some of the same technology over to the web in the form of the newly launched iTunes Preview website.
The main functionality of iTunes preview is that iTunes links will no longer open in iTunes; rather, they will redirect to a web page with information about the song or the artist, effectively mirroring what you would see in the iTunes artist page. The page then offers a link to preview or purchase the song inside the iTunes application.
Unfortunately, the site itself does not offer any preview functionality. Furthermore, finding artists is clunky -- unlike the desktop app, where you can browse the charts by genre, and look through various lists, the only way to find artists is to search for them, or browse for them alphabetically.