Interview with iTunesLP.net Creator

As you probably heard, Apple launched the new iTunes LP format during the last press event. The technology allows for a fresh take on the ancillary digital content that can be part of an album. Unfortunately, the LP format is currently only available to  the major record labels, although Apple announced today they will open up the format to independent labels at some point in the future.

Enter a programmer going by the name of Solitude, who has created iTunesLP.net. The site is designed to show how LP content can be made outside of Apple's grip, and how you can add this content to your existing album collection. We had a chance to interview Solitude as the news broke of Apple's announcement:

Tell us a little about your background...

I work for a digital media company where I do programming for websites and applications, I also do some supporting interaction design, and stuff for video-editing and special effects. My activities are pretty broad. I've always been interested in music, and software development, and especially the combinations that can happen between them.


What made you decide to create the site?

When Apple held their recent "It's only rock and roll" event I was intrigued by the iTunes LP format. I've always enjoyed LPs more than CDs, and even now still buy them regularly. When I buy music I'm going to listen to it on my AppleTV and my iPod, so what am I paying for other than bits and bytes? The packaging. Something pretty to look at and explore. And for that an LP is much better than a CD. Also something about the warmness of the sound still compels me to put one on the record player every now and then. 

The idea though that digital music might bring back those experiences of browsing through large special artwork, reading the lyrics and even expanding the concept with music videos and special stuff such as custom visualizers, got me excited.


What is the goal?

When iTunes LPs were announced one of my first thoughts was (from a programmers viewpoint), how do they work. Pretty soon a few blog posts were already detailing some of the basics. It's HTML, JavaScript and CSS3 animations. It's basically what I do every day. However there was little to no info on how to control iTunes from these LPs so I became curious, and investigated the format.

I wanted to use iTunesLP.net as a place where I could collect my thoughts and experiences with the format. Hopefully so others would also create fan-made iTunes LPs which I could download from them. Possibly even build some kind of community platform where people can share those LPs.

Then when I found out some of the basics I went through my record collection looking for an album to try to implement, and chose the Fantasia LP, since it is old enough to probably not cause too big a stir in copyright land, and since even though it's old would probably still be popular enough for others to look at.


What do you see as flaws of Apple's iTunes LP product?

There are a couple of things that I hope Apple will fix in an upcoming version of iTunes. iTunes LPs - or at least the commercially available ones - are fixed at 1280x720. To remain compatible for the future I've done the same. However this means that users with smaller screens such as the 13" MacBook won't be able to view the entire thing. I hope iTunes 9.1 or whichever version will treat every LP as 1280x720 and scale it down to fit, if the window size is too small.

Another thing I'm dearly missing is a nice fullscreen option.

Apart from that it's all pretty minor things. I thought it was too bad that iTunes LPs don't have the same browser plugin support as Safari has. However I can understand why. It would have given some nice opportunities though if they hadn't disabled it.

How difficult is the creation of an LP?

I was surprised by how easy it was actually. If you look at the tutorials on the iTunesLP.net website you'll see that it only really takes 3 files which you can create with only basic HTML and JavaScript knowledge.

Any sense of whether the LP packaging will actually lead to more sales?

I'm not sure. I hope so, because it means there will be a lot more of these iTunes LPs if it does. However when you look at the trends, people are moving away from album purchases towards single tracks. I much prefer complete albums myself. I like how an album tells a story that is more than the sum of its parts. But then again, you already see that artists are expecting single track sales more and more, because when you look at the commercial top-hit albums, then that album story is often much weaker, or often even gone completely. Hopefully this can turn the tide even a little bit, and reintroduce the concept of an album as something worthwhile.

The Fantasia LP looks great. How long did that take?

It took about 4 days to scan, design and build. The website itself then took another 2 days. Most of my time went into other stuff such as finding out how to control iTunes from within those iTunes LPs; finding out how TuneKit works, and finding out I didn't actually need it; writing the tutorials, etc. etc.

What about copyright concerns with the Fantasia LP?

 Everything that was created and published before 1964 has to have it's copyright renewed in its 28th year. If it is properly renewed the copyright should last 95 years after publication. At least those are the rules in American copyright. However since I'm not American I had no easy way to check If the copyright on the artwork for the Fantasia LP had been renewed. I know the sound and the film have had their copyright renewed. They both have had new publications as well. However the specially commissioned artwork for this LP has as far as I know never been reprinted. This gave me cause to suspect it was currently in the public domain.

What other titles do you have in mind? Do you want to create LP's, or are you more interested in getting the tools to others?

Well I certainly want the tools in the community's hands. I'd love to one day be able to download LPs for indie artists that I like, and for out of print stuff that someone has put out there. But I did like creating an iTunes LP myself, so I will probably do that as well. So if any Indie label reads this and want's one, then I'm open for suggestions.


If someone buys the album from iTunes, and downloads the LP features from you, is there a way to get those to work together?

Yes that's exactly my intention. I haven't put a clear enough explanation of that on the website yet, but as you can probably tell by news section on the homepage, it is still very much a work in progress. 

The Fantasia iTunes LP is made in such a way that as long as you have your mp3's or m4a's properly tagged it should just work. That means, make sure that the track-order is the same as on the original LP or double CD edition of the soundtrack. And the album name should be identical to the one of the iTunes LP. If you tag your mp3's with the album name "Walt Disney's Fantasia" they should automatically play when you click the tracks in the program view of the iTunesLP.
 

Apple just announced they will open up the iTunes LP process to independent labels. Does this change your plans?

Maybe a bit. But I'll wait and see when and if Apple actually does that opening up. It would be great if they did, though it would probably still have limitations based on my current knowledge of TuneKit. TuneKit connects the iTunesLP features to tracks using iTunes store specific IDs. This means that if albums were only created with Apple's framework, you couldn't ever buy an mp3 album with an iTunes LP from amazon for example. I want to keep those kinds of options open though, so I believe there is still a place for iTunesLP.net.

Also even with TuneKit it can still be a bit daunting getting started with those iTunes LPs, so tutorials are still nice to have.