Good news for Pink Floyd and The Cure fans, (or should that be potential fans?) Apple has informed music labels that it will soon triple the length of music previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. So, those songs by such bands as previously mentioned which have super-long intros of feedback, whistling, clunking and the like may now have time to get to, at least the first couple of notes; basically any song that has a bit more substance than a three minute pop song will get a bit more time to show itself off. Music rant over, let's look at the preview changes.
This change which has long been rumored was thought to be 60 seconds, so with 90 Apple really are spoiling us. There is a slight catch though. The full-length song can't be shorter than two minutes and 30 seconds, which is fair enough really.
In a letter to record labels Apple said: “We are pleased to let you know that we are preparing to increase the length of music previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds on the iTunes Store in the United States. We believe that giving potential customers more time to listen to your music will lead to more purchases.”
Consumers get more preview, Apple and the label get more sales, everyone wins (well apart from the artist who probably gets about 1p from each sale) but that’s another matter.
Source: CNN