However commenter Rian from DailySplice.com thinks it should be the other way round: iTunes to become social like MySpace! Rian wrote: "What if the iTunes store was more like MySpace or Last.fm where you were given a little corner of the store and could even promote your favorite bands?"

Here is Rian's full comment:

"Agreed. Last.fm is one of my favs for this. What if you could purchase and sync up your latest playlist onC Last.fm. We're banking on this kind of concept too as we develop our features for podcasts at DailySplice.com.

But I don't think it's time to say goodbye to iTunes. I think it's just time for iTunes to become more social. This seemed like the game plan for Zune when it came out. What if the iTunes store was more like MySpace or Last.fm where you were given a little corner of the store and could even promote your favorite bands? Hmmm... even make commissions off your sales... haha, ok, maybe now I'm dreaming."

iTunes Match, Apple's cloud-based music backup and syncing service, was held back during the launch of iOS 5 and iCloud, which was probably a smart move considering the strain iOS 5 itself put on Apple's servers. Well, iTunes Match should be dropping any day now.

This is not yet an option in the current version of iTunes, but presumably version 10.5.1 is on the way, which will enable the feature. Apple has said it expects to make iTunes Match available before the end of October.

Apple did roll out something called iTunes in the Cloud last week, which allows users to push new iTunes purchases to all of their devices wirelessly. When it's ready, iTunes Match will do the same thing for their entire library.

Rather than requiring one gigantic bulk download like Google and Amazon's cloud music lockers do, Apple will simply match your library's meta data to its massive collection of 20 million songs, which are stored on its servers. All matched tracks will be available at a high 256kbps bit rate, even if that's of higher quality than your original files. Anything Apple can't find will need to be uploaded. The service costs $25 per year and is separate from one's standard iCloud storage.

Google, which already has a cloud-based music locker, is expected to launch its own MP3 music store very soon, though the search giant has quite a way to go if it's serious about competing with iTunes in this space.

Here's the iTunes link and below you can see some screenshots.

I'm posting my plans at Plancast.com/marshallk. You can see who's coming to our SXSW party Sunday night with NPR, PBS and more here on Plancast.

See also: Hot Potato also has a new iPhone app just released today (iTunes link) which may come in handy for discussing the events that you attend via Plancast and otherwise.

This new version of iTunes also enables video streaming through AirPlay, which allows users to wirelessly stream videos, pictures and music from iTunes to the new Apple TV. Until now, AirPlay only worked for audio and photos. Besides this, there are no major new features in this new version of iTunes (the release notes also make no mention of AirPrint, by the way). If you are using iTunes to sync an iOS device, we recommend you update as soon as you can, especially if you plan to update to iOS 4.2 as soon as it is released.

Now, however, thanks to an online version of the App Store which scrapes the content of the store in iTunes, you can quickly browse for applications, read reviews, and see screenshots from any computer that has access to the Internet without ever having to open iTunes.

As Amit Agarwal notes, Apple uses a rather cryptic XML format for delivering the pages in iTunes. However, the developers of the online App Store have found a way to decrypt these XML files and render them as regular HTML.

Limitations

Of course, there are some limitations to this approach. You can't, for example, install apps without using iTunes at some point. The online App Store also doesn't have a search function.

Will Apple Shut it Down?

Of course, given Apple's litigious nature, we don't know if this version of the App Store will be around for a very long time, but it's a great resource if you just want to link to an app in the store, for example, without your users having to open the desktop iTunes app (which, after all, is not available on all operating systems).

Apple recently pulled a third party app that let users stream music from their Amazon cloud locker, reportedly due to legal concerns.

Where's iTunes Match?

iTunes Match, Apple's somewhat different answer to Google and Amazon's cloud lockers, was unveiled by Steve Jobs alongside iOS 5 in June, but the service has yet to be activated. When iOS 5 was launched last month, Apple said we should expect to see iTunes Match by the end of October, a deadline that has obviously passed now that November is here.

For iOS users who have grown impatient, it looks like trying one of Apple's competitors isn't an option for now. This is one of the limitations of this still-emerging space. Services like Google Music and iTunes Match ostensibly allow people to free their music from the confines of local storage and listen to them from any Internet-connected device. Yet, as this incident illustrates, such freedom comes with its limitations.

Apparently, iTunes Match has been inadvertently replacing certain tracks with the "clean" version of the same song, Cult of Mac reported.

It looks like what's happening here is the system is misreading metadata for certain tracks and cross-referencing with radio-friendly edits of the same song. At the very least, this has happened with four hip hop tracks as reported by Cult of Mac.

To some, this may smack of the nothing-dirty-please, prim-and-proper censorship for which Apple has gained a reputation in the iTunes App Store. More likely than not, it's just a bug. The company may not want filthy porno-filled apps populating its App Store, but that's quite different from allowing people to listen to a profanity-laden Jay-Z song that they purchased (or otherwise) acquired on their own accord.

Apple has acknowledged that this is an issue and is reportedly working on a fix.

Of course, this is only a first attempt and we laud the Wikipedia Mobile team for releasing this app as an open-source application. However, the fact that the search field is populated with "::Home" when you first open up the app shows that the app still needs a lot of polish before it can compete with the 'unofficial' apps. For now, if you just want a lightweight way of accessing Wikipedia articles from your phone and you don't want to install an app, just use the official mobile site.

In an interview with the Guardian, George Harrison's son Dhani even suggested that rights owners create their own Beatles-specific independent music store to sell the remastered versions. If Yoko is right about the catalogue making it to iTunes, it will be interesting to see the pricing negotiated on this epic release.

The service is an extension of iCloud, the cross-device content syncing feature rolled out in iOS 5. That feature lets users sync contacts, calendars, mail, apps and other data between iPads, iPhones, iPods and Mac computers. For an additional $25 per year, they can now include their entire music collection in Apple's cloud.

iTunes Match marks a significant step for Apple toward becoming a cloud-based repository for users' files and content. Its a noteworthy shift for a company whose success has largely been built on the sale of hardware, from laptops and desktops and tablets and smartphones.

Apple joins both Google and Amazon in this space, as all three tech giants now offer a way for consumers to store their music "in the cloud" and play it back on multiple devices.

Google Music, which is now in beta and reportedly launches very soon, takes a somewhat different approach from what Apple is doing with iTunes Match. Instead of "matching" tracks on Google's servers, the desktop client allows users to upload their entire library, a process that can take hours or even days. Those files can than be streamed from the desktop or Android-powered devices. The tracks on iTunes Match are not available for streaming, but rather need to be downloaded to each device.

Apple has changed its homepage to say that tomorrow morning, at 10 am Eastern time, it will have an "exciting announcement from iTunes" and like with all mysterious announcements, the pondering and speculating has begun.

So what could it be? Have Apple and Facebook decided to get along over that whole Ping network thing they couldn't seem to see eye to eye on? Somehow, we doubt that an announcement involving Ping (from what we've seen so far) will constitute a day we'll "never forget".

Rather, we had the same reading as Mac-centric blog Mac Stories - the long-fabled iTunes in the cloud. As Frederici Viticci points out, Apple is building a "huge data center" in North Carolina. We're talking about a data center that, according to our last report, "is expected to cost $1 billion by the time of its completion."

As our own Alex Williams pointed out, "It's clear that the stakes are high in the new world of cloud-based digital entertainment. It's not hard to imagine that someday we won't own our own music or films. We'll buy it on-demand or pay a subscription for it."

It's been nearly a year now since Apple bought the cloud-based, streaming music service Lala so the company has had plenty of time to work on a could-based music offering. We were disappointed last June, when the company made no mention of the idea in its big announcement, but we can't help but be hopeful with the posturing of this particular iTunes announcement.

If not a cloud-based iTunes, then we're going with Gizmodo in hoping that "Apple announces the death of iTunes - as the slow, outdated, monolithic piece of crap that it is now."

Here here, Gizmodo. That would be a day we would never forget.

However, later in the day, a number of folks had figured it out: the news was that the Beatles were finally coming to iTunes. The WSJ confirmed. As it turns out, they were right.

To promote the new partnership, Apple has prepared TV ads and is offering both a Beatles retrospective and a video of the Beatles performance at the Washington Coliseum in 1964. Both videos are available on the new "Beatles on iTunes" homepage.

For the remaining Beatles fans who haven't already ripped their CDs to iTunes or acquired the music through slightly less-than-legal means (aka "bittorrent"), the entire Beatles catalog is now available for $149. It ships with every A- and B- side ever recorded and iTunes LP content, which includes mini-documentarie on each of the studio albums, photos, notes and a video from the band's first U.S. concert, the above-mentioned Washington Coliseum event.

The terms of the deal that brought the Beatles to iTunes at long last were not revealed. However, it is known that the Beatles record label EMI has been under financial strain after its buyout of Terra Firma Capital Partners LP in 2007, according to the WSJ. Despite the age of the Beatles music, it's still one of the top music franchises around today, having sold 3.3 million copies of their albums in 2009 (source: Nielsen SoundScan, via WSJ).

Will You Buy the Beatles via iTunes?

Obviously the Beatles will sell well on iTunes - after all, we hadn't even finished writing this post when our phone started buzzing with excited Facebook updates from friends about the news. What we'll never know, however, is how well it could have sold if released earlier in the digital music era - back when people were still building their collections of tunes from the ground up. How many more would have bought the Beatles music from iTunes back then compared with today?

If you're a Beatles fan, will you purchase the music via iTunes - music you may already own - in order to get the extra digital content? Or are you content with the catalog you have now, however you may have acquired it?

As Fortune's Jon Fortt, who also first wrote about this book in the iTunes store, points out, Gibson (who was last featured in Transformer's 2) wasn't alone in creating this iTunes LP - Apple actually helped Gibson out by allowing Sam Herz, a user interface engineer for the iTunes store, and Barry Munstersetiger to work on this project. According to Fortt, the two also created a number of tools that could now make creating similar projects a lot easier.

Are There Multimedia eBooks in Apple's Future?

Maybe the future that Apple sees for eBooks isn't just the static books we are used to today on eReaders like the Kindle or Sony's Readers, but multimedia eBooks that combine text, audio, and video just like Gibson's comic book. With the iTunes LP format, Apple has already developed the right format and delivery method for this - the company would just have to change the name a bit. One restriction of the current breed of iTunes LP albums is that the extras don't work on the iPhone, so it definitely takes a device with a larger display (the Apple tablet?) to really make the most out of these multimedia eBooks.

According to a report by Andrew Wallenstein at PaidContent tonight, Sony is experimenting with the following, when you buy one of three new movies on iTunes:

"A search button allows you to input a word, and any mention of it in the script will be retrieved along with a link to the exact moment in the movie in which the line was uttered. A 'clip & share' function lets the viewer take select scenes and post them to social networks. There's also a playlist with songs from the film, which are linked to to places on iTunes where those songs can be purchased."

I cannot imagine watching a Resident Evil movie, but perhaps one of my Facebook friends will shoot a clipping of the best part into my Newsfeed and change my mind.

May all old media industries find inspiration in these experimental new features and come up with ways to make their products exciting enough to purchase in a digital world filled with free content.

They'll also be unable to change their applications, change marketing materials or download sales reports during much of this time. iTunes Connect, the interface that allows developers to manage all their applications in the App Store, will be unavailable from December 23 - December 28, 2009.

"I guess iTunes Connect [team members] want a break too," wrote one developer, "but come on, closed for the holidays when people have a lot of time on their hands to buy apps ?"

Another dev shop, Bottle Rocket, wrote, "Apple is taking the next 4 days off. Good for them. So, should we take the hint and lower the shades on Bottle Rocket for at least a few days? The answer is, well, no comment."

Here's a graph showing the kind of traffic and sales pattern app developers can expect to see right around Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the ensuing week or so. This is a visualization of data from iPod Touch devices last December:

So, once again, during what may be some app developers' biggest sales spike of the entire year, they will not have access to information on sales performance or other metrics, and they won't be able to tweak their marketing materials or create new incentives as the year's biggest gift-giving holiday approaches.

In the interest of maintaining our holiday spirit, we will refrain from comment on whether or not this is a lame move and instead caution our application developer friends to get their ducks in a row before iTunes Connect is out of commission.