One thing that’s always annoyed some people about the iTunes Store is that simply to preview a track, you have to download or open iTunes first to do so. However, Apple have finally seen sense on this issue and decided to allow users to preview tracks in their browsers whether or not they have iTunes installed or open.
You can try for yourself by going to the iTunes top 100 albums charts, selecting the album you’d like to preview and then pressing the play button.
The play button doesn’t appear until you hover your mouse cursor next to the track and you still get an annoying prompt to open it in iTunes first but at least you can dismiss it. If you decide that you want to buy a track or album, just click on the “View in iTunes” link on the right.
Previews are performed using QuickTime in 44.1 AAC 300+ kbits/second quality and limited to 30 seconds per track.
Could this be a sign that Apple are willing to move towards a more universally accessible and convenient web-based iTunes rather than a standalone application? It would certainly make sense to do so with all the different mobile devices now on the market which can all browse the net and are thus able to use a browser based iTunes service without having the actual application installed. Apple definitely have to be a little bit more innovative about how they take iTunes forward in the new decade especially in light of the success of other music apps such as Spotify.
