iTunes 10 is revealed by Steve Jobs at this week's Apple presser in Californa, with a new logo and a host of new features to help you enjoy the albums you have and to discover new music.
The biggest new feature is something called 'Ping' - which Jobs describes as like "Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes."
Ping lets you share your favourite music with others in your Ping network.
Share your tunes: iTunes Ping is a social network for music lovers
"Ping is super easy to use," claims Jobs, "it is a social music discovery feature that lets you follow people or be followed."
"We've made it even more elegant and simple," says Steve Jobs. "It looks even better."
iTunes 10: Ping, AirPlay and lots more new features
The Circle of friends
Jobs demos how you can quickly create your 'Circle of friends' and get "as private or as public as you want."
Ping features over 17,000 live concert listings and is open to over 160 million iTunes users worldwide immediately.
"It is that simple," says Jobs. "It's a social network all about music. Make sense?"
Ping will also be made available on the iPhone, in addition to iTunes on your PC or Mac.
Stream iTunes effortlessly
The other major new feature in iTunes 10 is AirPlay, which lets you stream music through your house wirelessly.
AirPlay tech will be built into a new range of speaker docks, AV receivers and stereo systems from the likes of Apple's AV and hi-fi partners such as Bowers & Wilkins and Denon.
Apple AirPlay: Stream your music wherever you like around the house
"Say you have one set of speakers in your bedroom, one in the office and one in the living room. For the ultimate sonic panorama, you can stream your tunes to more than one room simultaneously, so you'll never lose the beat, no matter where you are in the house," Apple explains on its website.
"Just select "Multiple Speakers" from the speaker pull-down menu in iTunes. AirPlay works over Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection, or a combination of both. So you can stream music directly from your home network if you're near an Ethernet port or connect wirelessly if you're not."
iTunes 10 is up and available to download right now from http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/download/
Your comments (5) Click to add a new comment
onerichie
September 2nd 2010
5. I always seem to either love Apple products or be thoroughly unimpressed by them (the ones that Apple cast off as "hobbies"). This falls into the latter category for me. It seems very gimmicky to me somehow, and as people have already said it's not exactly original: Zune, last.fm, Mercora, even MySpace is pretty useful for keeping up with your favourite artists and what your friends are listening to. I don't see this taking off at all.
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awire
September 2nd 2010
4. This is all well and good (*cough) but what about syncing ios devices over Wi-Fi. I am getting tired of waiting for functionality especially for the iPhone that should have been put into place 4 years ago. I feel i may have to convert to Android.
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bubbahotepuk
September 1st 2010
3. Hmm, Napster had this sort of thing at least 5 years ago too.
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keztricks
September 1st 2010
2. I think last.fm deserves some credit here
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northerngeek
September 1st 2010
1. For all those who say MS is 3 years late into smartphones... Apple seems to be 4 years late to the built in social music service that MS put into the Zune at launch- yet this is even easier to copy, and seemingly a more blatant rip-off.
Bravo Apple... now let's watch the world go crazy about another copied product.
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