Intros no more!

A good bit of news for those who enjoy purchasing dance music on iTunes: song previews will now be increased to 90 seconds.

I'm not an iTunes user (AmazonMP3 is my choice). But it's a pain to browse new dance music tracks under the current 30-second format. Rather than taking the 30 seconds out of the mainlead or breakdown of a song- its two most melodic parts, I usually find the samples to be the beginning of songs. Hearing the start of a dance music song is barely an indication of what it actually sounds like, since most introductions are just cues for DJ's to mix the track into their set.

With these new sample sizes, listeners should be able to get a better indication of what a track sounds like without having to search for the full version on YouTube.

[Image credit: 9to5Mac]

Aly & Fila's Rising Sun now available on iTunes

Aly & Fila's debut album, Rising Sun, is now available a week before it's official release date on iTunes for $7.99.

Armada has posted track previews of the album's 15 songs on their official YouTube page, and the release has also scored a positive review from the folks over at TranceFix.

On a side note, according to Billboard, iTunes now accounts for 26% of all US music sales. With this statistic and increasing sales on iTunes in the future, it'll be interesting to see if more electronic dance music artists market their music more on iTunes over places like Beatport and TrackItDown.

YouTube launches new artist development network

MySpace has been decreasing in popularity ever since Facebook was launched, and the site's once highly-trafficked music section also appears to be on the downfall as well.

YouTube is making an effort to grab some of the deserters by launching a new artist development network, Musicians Wanted.

The program is based mainly off of music videos, but due to the diversity of music, I'm sure they'll accept a few electronically-focused artists.

DJing on YouTube...somewhat

A reader tipped the popular tech blog Gizmodo this morning about a new website that allows you to match and crossfade any two YouTube videos.

Unfortunately you can't easily record your mashups from the site, but it's a fun timewaster.

After spending a little time on the site this morning, I was able to create a neat little mashup of Jorn Van Deynhoven's remix of Chapter XJ's "Resurrection" and Paul Van Dyk's megahit "Home".


Click this link, slide the crossfader a quarter-length to the right, and start playing "Home" at 3:00 when "Resurrection" is at 3:47 for the good stuff.

Can you think of any good ones?