<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Streaming has been available via iTunes for quite some time, although all the channels are free, and none are hosted directly by Apple. For some reason, though, folks continue to see streaming radio as a direct competitor to the iTunes pay-per-download service, and wonder when exactly Apple will offer their own streaming service.\nStill, as with most moves Apple makes, people are always more than willing to attempt to read between the lines and attempt to discern what sort of strategy decisions may be in the works from Cupertino.\u00A0 Today, Jimmy Guterman at O'Reilly Radar speaks as a member of the Recording Academy, quoting an email he recieved from Apple regarding the upcoming Grammy's:\n\"As many of you are aware, over the past four years we have endeavored to provide a way for Academy voting members to digitally access nominated music during our final voting period, and we are happy to share our strongest solution to date. We have formed a new partnership with our friends at Apple. A password-protected member area has been created on iTunes where full streams of nominated music will be available in those categories where master rights and publishing rights for all nominated recordings have been cleared. This area will be accessible by all members in North America, and this application will work across both windows and Mac platforms. ... you can listen to full-length previews of available tracks by double-clicking on the track name. You will not be able to download the music.\"\nSetting up a private area where streaming versions of the songs are available for a limited number of folks to hear is no major programming feat, nor do I think it could signal a major shift in Apple policy (nor is it really a true example of \"streaming music over the Internet\", but let's not argue petty semantics).\nWhat it does show is that for a select, elite crowd of individuals, the member labels of the RIAA are willing to suspend their strict rules preventing Apple from giving out what it sees as \"free music,\" since ostensibly members of the Recording Acadamy can be trusted not to reverse engineer the system and release these DRM free copies of the music into the wilds of the web (or, [gasp] a P2P network).\nI wouldn't expect to see official streaming or preview options from Apple any time soon.\u00A0 There is very little market pressure on Apple to improve the iTunes offerings any more than what they currently are, and given the angst they've had with other media companies, now is not the time to be pressing advantages against their media suppliers (especially since for Apple, at the moment, there are very few advantages to press).\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2007/12/13/itunes-to-officially-offer-streaming-previews/>