Called iTunes Preview, you can now access any iTunes music page through your browser by selecting “Copy Link” and pasting it Firefox, Safari, IE or whatever you use.

At the moment, Apple isn’t doing very much with iTunes Preview. Sure, you can view music (videos and other media not yet online), but to buy or preview anything, you’re redirected into iTunes software. In that way, iTunes Preview really lives up (or down) to its humble name — it’s a non-interactive preview of iTunes content for people who haven’t loaded the software (as well as bloggers who’d just like to link a webpage rather than an app). But is it so crazy to imagine a day when Apple allows us to buy music free from the confines of their software?

Yes, yes it is. [iTunes Preview via AppleInsider]

What surprises me about these facts and figures — apart from iTunes skyrocketing again after the introduction of variable pricing — is the fact that CDs are not completely dead yet. They are clearly going down, but I had this mental image in which all of those round mirrors were destroyed, melting like Dali clocks in a desert of indifference. [Mint]

You can download the Orb application right here. You’ll have to look for porn to stream on your own. [Orb via Engadget]

But don’t hold your breath on it happening yet: Peter Kafka has “yet to hear of a single programmer that has made a firm commitment”. As he points out, while networks are constantly looking for new revenue, like those arsehole aliens in Independence Day moving from world to world consuming every natural resource, they’re nervous about the idea for a lot of reasons.

A lot of it has to do with the icky, sticky relationships between networks and pay TV operators, where everybody’s worried about losing out as people start to watch more and more TV content online, not in their living rooms — where streaming video eats up bandwidth, and advertising revenues aren’t nearly as rich (which is why Hulu wants to figure out new ways to get you to pay).

While these little complications might slow the process down, the exodus is inevitable. There’s no stopping this. The internet is the new pay TV: Netflix, Hulu, BitTorrent. Apple might not get to launch it in a few months, but it will happen. Just give it time. The actually crazy part, if you ask me, is that the Apple TV might even live up to its name. [Hulu]

Even Palm, who used this feature as a symbol of their underdog status, repeatedly defied a notoriously litigious behemoth and just wanted to give their users an easy way to sync music? Yes. It’s a clear stunt to garner sympathy as a scruffy up-and-comer, it’s in defiance of published USB standards, and Apple is clearly never, ever going to stop patching this “bug”. You’ve got bigger things to worry about.

And even Apple, who’s just trying to maintain control over a proprietary media player, and who has every right to do so? Yes. To users, the updates look weirdly protective, and make the company seem dickish, which here, they kind of are.

It’s like watching children locked in a yes/no argument over whether or not liquorice tastes good, and both parties should just leave it. I don’t say this because I prefer Palm users to be locked out of iTunes or something — it’s just that that’s where things stand right now, it’s the status quo and devoting any more energy to this protracted fight would be a waste. Apple can ignore this, because it shouldn’t matter to them, and Palm should tell Prefolk to sync with doubleTwist, because that works—now even with the Pixi—just fine. Thanks in advance! [PreCentral]

iTunes 9.0.2 adds support for Apple TV software version 3.0, adds an option for a dark background for Grid View, and improves support for accessibility.

iTunes 9 comes with many new features and improvements, including:

• An improved look and feel, including a new Column Browser for easily browsing your artists or albums, movies, TV shows, and more.

• iTunes Store has a brand new look, with improved navigation for quick and easy exploration.

• iTunes LP and iTunes Extras create unique experiences that feature exclusive interviews, videos, photos, and more – available with select album and movie purchases on the iTunes Store.

• Home Sharing helps you manage your family’s iTunes collection between computers in your home. iTunes can automatically transfer new purchases, or you can choose just the items you want.

• Genius Mixes are created for you by iTunes and play songs from your library that go great together.

• iPod and iPhone syncing now allows you to organize your iPhone and iPod touch home screens directly in iTunes. Syncing is now also more flexible, allowing you to sync individual artists, genres, or TV show and Podcast episodes.

• iTunes U items are now organized into their own section in your iTunes library.

• Sync with iPod nano (5th generation), iPod classic (Fall 2009), and iPod touch (Fall 2009).

• iTunes 9 also includes many other improvements, such as HE-AAC encoding and playback, more flexibility with Smart Playlists rules, simpler organisation of your media files inside an iTunes Media folder, and more.

Deja vu, am I right? [Apple]

Why Extras—which are like DVD extras, with bonus clips, interviews and photo galleries, but for iTunes movies—is just now on its way to Apple TV is sorta mystifying, even for their most neglected product. (What does Apple have against its tinier boxes?) It’s like, the thing Apple makes expressly to plug into your TV, where you might want to watch those things.

Since Apple TV 2.0, the last major update to the sad little box happened almost two years ago, maybe, just maybe, there’s more to Apple TV 3.0 than just Extras and iTunes LP. Or you know, not. [AppleInsider]

Only about 93,000 have actually hit the App Store so far, but still, it’s pretty incredible. Expect some crowing via press release when they formally hit 100,000 apps in the store. A month ago, Apple hit two billion downloads. And it was just about a year ago that this mosaic—celebrating a mere 10,000 apps—was created. Wonder what it’s gonna look like a year from now. [App Shopper NextWeb via Twitter]

Google’s already got a decent music search engine in place, and they’ve got plenty of experience designing iTunes-like client apps like Picasa, so the interface, be it web or native, will probably feel quite familiar. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves — we don’t even know what this thing is, how it’ll be supported, or how much it’ll cost. The free, all-you-can-eat model makes sense in China, where download piracy rates approach 100% and music industry revenues, despite massive listenership, don’t even touch $US90 million dollars. In that context, Google’s projected $US14.6 million in ad revenue counts as a victory.

But here, the music industry sees $US10 billion dollars pass through its hands on a yearly basis, and people still actually pay for music. Even assuming higher click values, it’s hard to see how Google could just give full downloads out for free. Maybe it could stream, like Spotify? Or, you know, just sell music, like iTunes? Techcrunch doesn’t seem to have much in the way of leads on this, but they leave it here:

We’re still gathering details, but our understanding is the service will be very different to the Google China music download service that they launched in 2008. That service, which is only available in China, allows users to search for music and download it for free.

Place your bets in the comments.

Update: Peter Kafka at AllThingsD has some sources of his own, all of whom seem to want to pee on our parade:

Sources describe the service, which will be called “One Box”, as a refined set of answers for music queries. The idea: Punch in, say, “Madonna”, and you’ll be presented with one or more songs, which may be partial clips or full-length versions, then guided to other sites where you can purchase the music.

He fingers iLike and LaLa as the primary music providers. All in all, this just sounds like a new search interface — not a new iTunes, Spotify-killer, or anything else worth getting overly excited about. Oh well!

[Techcrunch, AllThingsD]

I spoke with Brian McKinney, who runs Chocolate Lab Records, a smallish label out of Chicago. As someone who actually makes records, he saw potential in iTunes LP, and after seeing how incredibly simple the actual LP files are, started looking into making some himself. It didn’t go so well:

I contacted the digital distribution manager at my label’s distributor. He had a conference call with their iTunes rep at IODA and asked how we go about putting an LP together. He was told that LPs aren’t being offered to indies and that there are only about 12 LPs being offered right now. They also said that iTunes charges a $US10,000 production fee for them as well. So that pretty much edges out the indie market completely.

Deflecting criticism that it’s just another way to squeeze a few extra dollars out of customers, Apple pitches iTunes LP as a way to bring back “the visual experience of the record album” (Which they helped kill in the first place. Penance, or something!)

But if they’re charging ridiculous, prohibitive fees and only letting a few major labels take advantage of this—you know, the ones that iTunes needs to keep happy to be a viable music store, not the ones that might actually make something artistically interesting with LP—that romantic cry for the return of the album (it’s more like the return of the Digipak, anyway) sounds a cynical and disingenuous. More to the point, it’ll forever doom LP to gimmickry, because, well, the Dave Matthews Band can only carry you so far. —Thanks, Brian!