Filed under: iTunes

Did you find a shiny new iPod touch, iPhone or iPad under the tree this morning? Congratulations -- we're sure you're going to enjoy it. First things first, though: if you don't own a Mac, and you haven't been using Apple's tools to manage your music, you're going to have to download and install iTunes to sync and manage your new iDevice. Not to worry -- it's just a few quick steps, and we'll walk you through it. You'll be up and running in no time.

[Regular TUAW readers who are staring in disbelief and muttering "Are they really writing up the iTunes for Windows install process?" -- relax, go have some egg nog, we'll be back to normal in no time.]

We're also taking questions all day Christmas day on our tricks & tips Twitter account, Ask_TUAW. Pipe up if you need help!

First step: download the software. The URL is easy to remember, though... itunes.com, then click on the Download iTunes button at the top right.

This is a really useful iTunes 101 lesson for beginners and expert users alike. While iTunes makes it easy to remove duplicates in your song library, sometimes just because a few titles have the same name doesn't mean that they are the exact same song. Because of this, it could take you a really long time to go through checking all your songs to make sure you are truly deleting duplicates and not songs that just happen to have the same name. Thankfully, a reader over at Lifehacker found a way to narrow down your search for duplicates to exact matches only, courtesy of the oft-used Option key. By holding down Option while navigating to File > Display Duplicates in iTunes, the "Display Duplicates" choice changes to "Display Exact Duplicates," thus enabling you to carefully delete only those songs which are exact matches and not just in title alone.

This couldn't come at a better time for me, as I have recently finished loading every CD I own into iTunes, leaving me with some titles that match in name only. For example, I have a ton of bootleg and underground Led Zeppelin songs on my computer. While all songs titled "Black Dog" are by Led Zeppelin, there are different versions from different concerts and old recordings. Without using the Option key to search for them, iTunes might have thought they were all the same, and I might have deleted them if I wasn't paying close attention.

If you have a similar situation in your music library, you may want to give this tip a shot. I certainly am glad I know it's there now!

Talk about jailhouse rock. Last week, 19-year-old Lamar Johnson pleaded guilty in a UK court to one count of conspiracy to defraud, according to the BBC. He was using stolen credit card numbers to buy his own band's music on iTunes and Amazon, thus collecting the royalties.

Johnson was part of a 12-member "band" that recorded their own music and uploaded it to iTunes and Amazon.com. The group then used the credit cards to buy their own songs from the iTunes and Amazon music stores.

In total, the group purchased US $750,000 worth of their songs from iTunes and Amazon between January 2008 and June 2009. No word on how much Johnson would have earned had he and his group successfully collected the royalties. The name of the band remains a mystery as well, though you can bet their music has been pulled from the iTunes Store.

Johnson is currently serving a 5-year jail sentence for grievous bodily harm, separate and apart from the musical fraud case. The remaining 11 members of Johnson's group have yet to be tried, but are scheduled to appear in court in January.

As if Apple's share of the online music world wasn't big enough, financial research firm NPD Group is reporting that iTunes is now responsible for 66.2% of the market for online music purchases. That's up from 63.2% earlier in the year, despite intense competition from Amazon, which is way behind in second place at 13.3%. Remarkably enough, Amazon also saw growth this year, raising its share from around 11% earlier in 2010.

The online retailer has been promoting "daily deal" albums that are priced much lower than the same music on the iTunes store, actually selling many of the albums below cost in order to attract new customers. Amazon has also been doing a monthly promotion of 100 albums for $5, which is done with the cooperation of record labels and artists. Despite such aggressive action, the company has yet to make a visible dent in Apple's dominance of the online music market.

According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, digital album sales have grown rapidly in an industry where CD sales are plummeting and sales of digital single-song downloads are stalling. Apple's album prices are generally higher than those on the Amazon music store, resulting in higher revenues. Amazon's promotion of their online music store has taken the back seat to advertising for the company's Kindle ebook reader, so it will be interesting to see if they decide to actively promote their music business in the future.

[via ArsTechnica]

iTunes 10.1.1 is ready for your approval via Software Update. This looks like a minor bug fix update with no new features. Here are the fixes:

• Addresses an issue where some music videos might not play on Macs with NVIDIA GeForce 9400 or 9600 graphics
• Fixes an issue where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when deleting a playlist that has the iTunes Sidebar showing
• Fixes an issue where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when connecting an iPod to a PowerPC equipped Mac
• Addresses an issue where some music videos might not sync to an iPod, iPhone or iPad

Apple continues to improve Ping, its iTunes-based social network, by adding support for shared iTunes playlists. Customers can now create a new playlist (or import an existing one) and share it with their Ping followers. Here's how it works.

To create a new playlist to share, connect to Ping and then click your account. You'll see "Create a new Ping playlist." From there you can give it a name and description and start dragging tracks from your iTunes library into the list (any song that's in the iTunes store can be included). Songs can be re-ordered if you change your mind. When you're satisfied, click Publish.

To import an existing iTunes playlist, simply click its title and then the arrow icon. A dialog box appears. Click Publish Playlist. A similar composition window appears, this time with a montage of album art. Once you're satisfied with everything, click Publish. Note that songs can be re-ordered at any time, even after publication, and you can opt to let users add songs to your playlists.

It's a nice new feature and the latest evidence of Apple's dedication to the service. Recent Twitter integration and a new, Ping-exclusive Michael Jackson song also appeared in recent weeks.

[Via MacNN]

Last month we reported when a MacRumors reader pointed out that Apple owned the iTun.es domain name. At the time it was speculated that Apple could begin using iTun.es as a domain link shortener for iTunes URLs on Twitter.

Over the weekend that has become a reality. Now when you select the "Share on Twitter" drop-down option for a song in iTunes, the iTunes link is truncated to iTun.es to cut down on the character length of your tweet. Pretty sweet!

Some bands are bigger than others, it's true, but stop me if you think you've heard this one before: a major British act, long absent from the iTunes store, has appeared with its full catalog for sale. No, it's not The Beatles -- it's the delicious sounds of Johnny Marr and Morrissey in The Smiths.

If you came of age in the 1980s, The Smiths might be just as important to your musical upbringing as The Beatles were for a previous generation of rock fans. For me, this is a great chance to retire those ancient cassette copies of Meat is Murder and Strangeways, Here We Come.

While a greatest-hits compilation from The Smiths was previously available, the band's Ping page announced the rest of the releases earlier this week.

Apple has highlighted the best of iTunes from 2010, showing off their picks for the best apps, movies, TV shows and more. There are several categories and many of our favorites made the cut. Here's an overview of the winners.

Let's jump right to the fun one -- apps. Apple has created separate categories for iPhone/iPod touch apps and iPad apps, but the big honors went to Hipstamatic, which Apple named "iPhone App of the Year" (also a former TUAW Daily App pick) and the record-breaking Plants vs. Zombies which took home the "iPhone Game of the Year" title.

On the iPad side of the store, Flipboard was named the "iPad App of the Year" for 2010, while Cosmos picked up "iPad Game of the Year."

From there, Apple breaks down the hot trends in both iPad and iPhone/iPod touch apps. Categories include food and cooking apps, news, stories, apps for kids and more. We're particularly amused that zombies get their own category of iPhone apps.

Have a look around to see how your favorites fared. If only Infinity Blade had come out earlier.

It's been a long time coming: Apple has begun offering 90-second previews of songs in the iTunes Store. Previously capped at 30 seconds, all songs longer than 2 minutes 30 seconds will now have a 90-second preview available. According to MacRumors not all songs offer the extended previews yet, but eventually, all songs over 2:30 in length should.

Apple played hardball with the music labels last month, stating its intent to extend song previews to 90 seconds and remove from the iTunes Store any labels who didn't agree to support the new licensing terms -- so if some music mysteriously goes missing from the iTunes Store over the coming weeks, we'll know why. Music licensing entities who resisted the extended previews (for whatever reason) must now weigh that reticence against the potential costs associated with not having their wares available on the number one music vendor in the US.

For us consumers, this is nothing but good news; the old 30-second previews often weren't nearly long enough to get a sense of whether or not a song was worth a download, but 90-seconds is just right.

Thanks to everyone who sent this tip to us.

Yesterday's announcement of Google Books was another sign that the internet powerhouse intends to compete with Apple on all levels. If a comment that was made yesterday at D:DiveIntoMobile by Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Engineering, is any indication, Google has plans to create an online music store to compete with iTunes.

D:DiveIntoMobile is a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsDigital, and it features panels with a number of mobile computing notables and the AllThingsDigital staff. During his talk yesterday, Rubin quickly demoed Honeycomb, the tablet version of the Android OS that is designed to compete directly against the iPad. At the prompting of a moderator, he discussed Google's plans in the music space.

When asked if Google would start off with some "simple" download store like iTunes instead of a planned cloud-based subscription service, Rubin reportedly said that "We could build that 10 times over... (it's) not the right experience." Rubin said that he wants the Google music service to have an "intimate connection," reminiscing that he still remembers album titles that he and a date were looking at in a record store when he was 15 years old.

What do you think, TUAW readers? Does Apple need to change the model and the experience for iTunes in order to compete with whatever will eventually come from Google? Leave your comments below.

9to5 Mac is reporting today that some iTunes users received promotional codes good for one free TV rental from iTunes. As far as anyone can tell, there's no obvious rhyme or reason as to how they were distributed.

Perhaps they want to stress test their iTunes streaming services a bit. You'll remember that Apple said the North Carolina data center should be operational by "year's end." If it is in fact going to power an iTunes streaming service, here's a chance to throw some real traffic at it and see what happens.

The only thing we know for a fact is that some lucky customers will be watching TV on Apple's dime this week. If you're among them, have fun and let us know about your experience.