iTunes Gets New features to Fend Off Rivals

according to this NY Times article. Apple's vice president for applications and Internet services Eddy Cue pointed to iMix and iTunes Original as two recently-added features to help keep people coming to Apple's iTunes Music Store with 70 per cent of the legal online song market.

iMix lets iTunes users post their favorite play lists for others to see and copy. iTunes users can then download the same mix or they can hear 30-second samples first. In iTunes Original an artist records a track specifically for Apple and a new song is posted every two weeks. Similarly, Apple might assemble a collection of an artist's singles into four- or five-track minialbums, as it did recently with Sarah McLachlan's music.

[Dana Baggett]