Apple announced a new packaging concept called iTunes LP. Basically you can buy an entire album including things like liner notes artwork and other extras, making the package similar to old vinyl albums.

Too many of you aren’t old enough to remember albums, but when you bought the entire album you got a bunch of bonus material as an incentive to buy it. And iTunes LP is the digital version. The album covers are cool, plus pages for songs that feature lyrics, all that stuff. Even liner notes. We aren’t sure if it will mean more sales, but it’s cool.

In part of today’s announcements from Steve Jobs and Apple at the “It’s Only Rock and Roll” event, they’ve announced the latest version of iTunes - iTunes 9.

This new version (at first glance) most notably has a a new look to it, making navigation a little easier and get around (provided you aren’t too used to the old version). They’ve also added a way to preview from anywhere in the store instead of having to find the right place.

iTunes LP is something something new with iTunes version 9, bringing back some of the features we used to enjoy with LP’s that have been lost with online music, such as lyrics, notes, video, photos and apperently some other things that were not mentioned up front. Genius mixes are another enhanced feature in this new version, playing automatically generated …

Apple’s latest announcement gets high-def movie purchases to the iTunes Store. HD TV shows were already available to buy, but HD movies were rental-only. Until now anyway. HD movies will cost you $19.99, and though it isn’t known for sure yet, they’re likely the same H.264 compressed 720p quality.

Purchases will come with both an HD file and an iPod/iPhone-ready SD file and Apple says that HD rentals will now be on the store within 30 days of retail release.

Apple recently announced that it was doing away with it’s unfair DRM copy protection. Awesome news. Going one step further, the company is giving anyone who’s ever bought songs on iTunes the ability to upgrade their music to DRM-free versions. For a fee of course. There is a catch. As Wilson Rothman over at Gizmodo discovered, you have to upgrade all of them at once.

That really sucks, because if you’ve been at it for awhile just downloading away over the years, you have a problem. Costs can easily be in the hundreds of dollars. There is no way to upgrade your titles individually. Things like this are why some of us don’t use the service. They’re going to make you pay again for songs you already bought? Nice one Apple.

Apple’s iTunes store is hands down the most popular place to buy music around. Many people have tons of tracks in iTunes and teh ability to listen to those tracks on a wide variety of mobile phones while on the move would be a great thing for most music fans.

Didiom has announced that its placeshifting application for iTunes is in beta. The application allows iTunes users to stream music from iTunes on their PC to a mobile phone wirelessly. The software works with both BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices.

Apple has reached an agreement with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office and the National Federation of the Blind and they will make the iTunes service more accessible to the blind. It will be called iTunes U and that area of the iTunes Store will feature educational content from colleges and universities for the blind from December 31st onward. That’s just the beginning.

Apple will also continue toward providing full accessibility of iTunes before the June 30, 2009 deadline. To top it all off Apple will be donating $250,000 to the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. Nice move by Apple, because like the new windows campaign suggests, not all users come from the same mold.

Apple is touting themselves as the world’s largest online music retailer and these numbers are tough to argue with. As of Thursday the company announced that iTunes has reached the 5 billion mark and beyond for the number of online song downloads since their launch in 2003. It seems like it was only a year ago that they reached the 3 billion mark. In fact it was not quite a year go last July when they announced they had reached 3 billion downloaded songs.

To get an idea of just how many songs that is, customers had to have downloaded a little over 2.5 million songs per day on average since the site launched. In reality 2 billion of these were done in just the last 10 months, making it over 6 million per day for the past year.

iTunes has officially started offering HBO series episodes available for download online through iTunes. This is a welcome announcement for many who would love to get episodes of the Sopranos, The Wire and Flight of the Conchords onto their PMP’s, but it comes at a price.

The price is actually what makes this announcement most interesting. Apple, who seems to have previously been with the belief that all series shows are priced equally, seems to have made a concession with HBO. The series episodes of the Sopranos is priced at $2.99 each, which is a whole dollar more than the usual $1.99 rate for a TV show.

Apple today announced the immediate ability to purchase movies through iTunes the same day that they are released to DVD. This takes away another hurdle that Apple needed to get over to increase the number of online movie rentals through iTunes, and comes only months after the initial launch of the ability to purchase movies at all through the online service.

Apple says they will be providing new releases for sale from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Lionsgate, among a couple others. The new release purchases are priced at $14.99 each and can be viewed on a Mac, PC or any iPod with video and require iTunes version 7.6.2 which is available now as a free download.

Starbucks and Apple’s iTunes continue to expand the relationship which shows synergy between latte drinking customers and the iPods they love. The latest incarnation is the announcement of a weekly free music download which will be made available to Starbucks in-store customers.

This new promotion, dubbed Pick of the Week, debuted today with a song from the band Counting Crows. Customers who are in-store on a Tuesday will be offered for free a card with the latest song information as well as a code to download that tune from  iTunes. A music video looks to also be available, though its not clear if that will be a weekly choice as well. Whatever the download, customers will have 60 days from the week the card is distributed to cash in their code for the download.

The digital music revolution is definitely here, all you need to do is look around and it seems that everyone is using an iPod or other PMP device. Digital tracks have quickly outpaced traditional CD sales and online digital music sales have skyrocketed.

Back in February we reported that Apple’s iTunes store was the second largest music retailer in the United States. Apple announced this week that it was now the top music retailer in America, surpassing Wal-Mart.

Lionsgate said today it is working with Apple to make use of the latter’s Digital Copy for iTunes so select DVDs will also be available for digital viewing. The first Lionsgate film to get the iTunes treatment will be Rambo on May 27th.

Lionsgate said that by using Digital Copy for iTunes, those who purchase select DVDs or Blu-ray Discs will be able to insert the disc into a computer. The customer then enters a unique code into iTunes, and the movie is automatically copied to their iTunes library.

Apple’s iTunes online music download service has moved into the number 2 position as the second largest U.S. music retailer, beaten out this time only by Wal-Mart. We had seen just last July that iTunes had moved into the number 3 spot, beating out Amazon and following both Best Buy and Wal-Mart, and the trend so far is continuing in Apple’s favor.

Amidst the new product announcements unveiled during the MacWorld 2008 keynote today Jobs slipped in a message about a new feature that will easily get your DVD content into your iTunes or Windows Media Player library called Digital Copy. Partnering with Twentieth Century Fox, Apple is offering the Digital Copy feature on DVDs from the Fox studio starting with “Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest” which releases today.

Anytime someone purchases a DVD from Fox that has the Digital Copy feature they can insert the disc into their computer, enter a unique code and transfer the movie into iTunes or Windows Media Player. The movie will then be available for unlimited viewing on their computer, iPod with video, iPhone, Apple TV or other video media player. There is of course some restriction on your purchased DVD’s Digital Copy feature however. It will transfer the DVD to only one instance of iTunes, limited by the unique code required.

Apple announced the immediate launch of iTunes Movie Rentals today during the MacWorld 2008 keynote speech, allowing iTunes users to get limited-time download of movies from any of the major studios for as little as $2.99. The new service is part of iTunes version 7.6 which is available now and gives a rental download of movies for 30 days, but once you begin watching the movie the rental will run out in 24 hours. It can be watched as many times as you would like within that time. You can even start watching on your computer and then transfer the video to your iPod and finish watching the movie on the go.

Apple appears to have picked up all the major studios with this offer with the list of participants including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. iTunes plans to have over 1,000 titles available by the end of February with rates of $2.99 for regular titles and $3.99 for new releases. For another dollar iTunes will deliver titles in high-def with Dolby 5.1 surround.