Looks like Apple is not going to keep the pie and eat it too. If that saying ever made sense. Soon after we posted that Apple was charging labels $10,000 to produce an album in the iTunes LP format, a reader pointed us to iLongPlay, where you can download a free iTunes LP, outside of Apple’s control.
The iTunes LP format, as Jay Robinson noted a month ago, is merely HTML+CSS with a whole lot of javascript pumped in for good measure. It was only time that was between some enterprising techies to reverse engineer the whole thing, and put it on a silver platter. Juan D’Silva of iLongPlay says:
It’s been pretty crazy this last few weeks. We had to understand all of the internals of how an iTunes LP is made. It’s a little bit more than HTML and CSS, involving some pretty advanced webKit CSS, a lot of javascript, and there are a few things that are outside regular web development.
So far the duo involving Juan Silva as the ‘The Tech Guy’ and Pablo Boquete as the ‘The Art Guy’, have produced an LP of a Tryad album, a band which distributes their music for free.
Tryad generously offers its music for free, for everyone to listen or to build-upon, licensing its work under Creative Commons license. Having released their last album in 2006, they have amounted a big international fanbase eager to get their hands on any new material the band puts out. With all that in consideration, we thought we could help the band to take their next step into a bigger world, and what could be better than the release of an iTunes LP?
Technically, it’s a really good effort. The animations are slick, the layout is good, and while I’m not a fan of the music, it’s a decent listen. The question remains though, how do they monitize this? Apple is definitely not going to let this get into their Store. Juan and team hope to grab the attention of indie labels, so they’re hoping on some more mainsteam coverage. Maybe we’ll see some indie artists publishing their own LPs on the side. I hope so.
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So indie bands don’t get on ITunes Store with their iTunes LPs. There are other e-tailers that would be glad to sell it for them.
Besides, alternate channels reinforce that indie cred.
An iTunes spokesman says the fee is fiction,” MusicWeek reports. “‘There is no production fee charged by Apple,’ he says. ‘We’re releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own.’”
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1038901&c=1
Get the Story Correct, This was All F.U.D. McKinney Lied to get press and then tried to blame someone else for the information he said he received from them, But this is in question now.
Just do a search for the Tuesday Spoils iTunes LP to see another great example of how easily the little guys can create thier own great looking iTunes LP’s
@Scott B: Already posted.