Help get our iPhone app approved

I'm a teeny bit worried that Apple may reject our upcoming iPhone/Magnatune app, because they recently rejected another music application for using too much bandwidth. I'd rather not limit the iPhone/Magnatune app to only being used on wifi, because it does work well on 3G as well. And once Apple rejects you, it's hard to get them to give you another chance. So... I want to put our best foot forward the first time we apply to them.

I was thinking that the best way to make Apple happy would be to add a "buy from iTunes" link to the iPhone/Magnatune app. By doing that, Apple won't see us as competing with them, and instead will see us as helping promote sales of our music on iTunes. You can buy music directly from the iPhone, and it will sync back to your iTunes folder. Plus, all of the Magnatune-supplied music on iTunes is DRM free.

But... I need some help.

I need somebody to spend an hour or three matching up each album at Magnatune with a URL to the right iTunes store page.

What you need to do is for each and every Magnatune album, go to the iTunes store, find the appropriate album, right click on the artwork, and copy the URL. Then, put the URL in a document to me, clearly labeling what Magnatune album it belongs too. I can then put that into our database. Sometimes, the album is available from iTunes directly from the musician, and not through us, which is totally fine (as in the example on the bottom of this blog entry). About 2/3rds of Magnatune albums are on iTunes through us, and the rest should be also available on iTunes, through arrangements the musician made on their own.

For example, the album at:

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/fogelberg-karooshi/

can be bought from iTunes at this url:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=65926663&s=143441

-john

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Update: a big thanks from me to Chris Allen and Chris Harvey for volunteering to do this and getting it done (and nicely done too) in just a few short days. Thanks Chrises!

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Comments

[Grumbler]

Bugger apple.. Really. iPhone is basically hype, and I don't understand why you're spending time and resources to make Apple happy, specially because they go totally against your company philosophy.

I really don't understand why people waste so much time kowtowing to Apple.. it's not even that iPhone is a good phone.. it's a nice toy, but as a phone it totally sucks

I think someone is jealous. ;)
I don't disagree that there is a substantial amount of hype involved. However, in the case of the iPhone 3G, it does not suck, it may not be perfect, (Is anything electronic perfect?) but it is a nice phone.
An alternative to the app idea would be to make a mobile device compatible version of the website. This way you would not necessarly be playing favoriates, but there are drawbacks to this approach. However you would not need to make Apple happy.

[Quinn DuPont]

I think you are doing the right thing, working within the environment in a non-combative manner. It makes good business sense to get an iPhone app going, and I think your approach is smart.

[Jonathan]

I think you should talk directly with apple, and try to form a deal with them.

I didn't think magnatune music was available on iTunes. How much does Apple get out of the sale? How much does the artist ultimately get paid?
You should address these questions in the app help screen, as well.
Also, are the previews full previews or 30 seconds?

[Grumbler]

It's not a question of being jealous.. I do work in a mobile operator and could get one iPhone for free.. but, as a phone it has really serious drawbacks.. Ever tried to text using it? Battery also drains really fast. Besides that, Apple strategy is from my point of view totally different from Magnatune's. That's why I bought music and membership from Magnatune and would never buy something from iTunes Music Store.

[Ryan]

Well, I like my iphone, and I think the phone part is great.

I'm really looking forward to the magnatune app!

[Thorbjørn Kühl]

So whatever happened to the Magnatune app? Can we get a jailbroken version if apple rejects it?

[John from Magnatune]

The Magnatune iPhone app is almost done, we're just fixing some final bugs with it. We're building it for the new iphone v3.0 API so that it doesn't get rejected for that reason.

[Thorbjørn Kühl]

Then please build some snazzy push notification into it so we can specify different genres we'd like to know about.

Then every time a new artist joins or an existing artist releases a new album we can get notified via the app and go directly there and listen to the music.

Jamendo already have a pretty basic app up, just browse the artists and listen to the music, I guess that's all it needs to do, but you guys need to add the login so us lifetime download members can really enjoy!