Speaking at Apple’s music event, CEO Steve Jobs, in his first public appearance since his medical leave of absence, introduces iTunes 9. After noting that iTunes is the largest music store in the world, boasting some 100 million accounts, Jobs rattles off some of the software’s new features. Among them: Genius Mixes and improved synching. The latter enables more specific synching and supports a new way of managing applications for the iPhone and iPod touch with a nice drag-and-drop feature. Very easy to organize and reorganize applications. The crowd really likes this one.

Also included in this update: Home Sharing, which allows songs, movies and TV shows to be shared and copied to up to five home computers. Another very slick feature that allows users to simply drag and drop songs between computers to copy them.

iTunes 9 also features a new store with redesigned music, movie, TV pages and a handy new navigation bar. Beyond this, there’s also support for Twitter and Facebook.

“You know, some of us here are old enough that we actually bought LPs,” says Jobs. “You used to get liner notes, essays and photos, but that stuff left us when we moved to digital music.”

With that, Jobs announces iTunes LP–the official name of the company’s rumored “Cocktail” album bundle. As expected, these iTunes LP bundles will feature additional art, photos and whatnot. Apple is working directly with artists and labels to develop them.

A Doors “LP” is offered up as an example and it includes some videos exclusively recorded for iTunes–Ray Manzarek talking about how Jim Morrison named the Doors (“Not a door-door, man. Like the door in your MIND.”). Surprisingly nice little video, actually. Certainly, it’s likely to appeal to die-hard fans.

Apple (AAPL) is doing something similar with movies–iTunes extras. Movies bundled with additional photos, etc.

Live from Apple’s “Let’s Rock” Event

• iPod Updates, Games, Nano Video Cameras
• iTunes 9, iTunes LP, Home Sharing, Genius Mixes
• Steve Jobs: “I’m Vertical, Back at Apple and Loving Every Day of It”
• Event Photos by Adam Tow

Now, in the run-up to tomorrow’s invitation-only Apple event, the question is: Will Apple (AAPL) reach the bar? And with what? The answer, if the latest rumors prove true, depends on your feelings about iPods with cameras. Because according to reports, when Apple refreshes its iPod touch and iPod nano players, both will feature cameras–the nano’s for still images, the touch’s for photos and video.

We may also see a new price point for entry-level touch models, one intended to undermine Microsoft’s (MSFT) forthcoming multitouch Zune with HD display and to really juice App Store sales. Perhaps the 16GB touch at $199 and the 8GB at $150.

Beyond this, the event might also include the announcement of iTunes 9, said to include some sort of social networking element; “Cocktail,” a new music format that bundles full-length albums with art, video and other bells and whistles; and perhaps even Blu-ray support (no Beatles, though). And after that? Well, it’s tough to say. Apple’s never an easy read when it comes to product announcements, even when there’s evidence floating around that would seem to suggest otherwise.

So join us tomorrow for live coverage of Apple’s event to see if the above rumors prove true or if Apple’s got something else entirely up its sleeve. The event kicks off at 10 am PDT.

According to the FT, the “full-featured” tablet is being prepped to launch alongside a next-generation digital album format Apple (AAPL) is cooking up with the four largest recording companies, one designed to gin up sales of CD-length music.

“Cocktail,” as the project is known, is a new music format that will gather songs, photos, lyrics sheets, video clips and liner notes into a sort of interactive booklet. Said one executive familiar with the effort: “It’s all about re-creating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork, while you listened to the music.”

…skipping through nine middling-to-lousy songs to reach that one that inspired you to shell out for the album.

Which begs the question: Can that heyday ever be recreated? Now that we’re accustomed to purchasing only the music we want via the thin-margin, 99-cent-song-by-song downloads that iTunes pioneered, can we ever be convinced to pay a premium for bundled music, cluttered up with a bunch of liner notes, wacky band photos and throw away filler songs?

[Image Credit: Apple Insider]

It’s not the fault of the ISPs, never mind that they are, according to McGuinness, “destroying the recorded music industry” by failing to tackle piracy. Nor is it the fault of Apple (AAPL) and the makers of other digital media players who are wrongly profiting from their “burglary kits.” Nor can it be blamed solely on Silicon Valley and its “entrepreneurial, hippie values,” which in McGuinness’s opinion have bred a deep disregard for the true value of music.

No, it appears there’s no one to blame for this particular cock-up but Universal Music, which mistakenly put the album up for sale earlier this week at getmusic.com.au. It was only available there for a brief period, but there was time enough for fans to buy it legally. Not surprisingly, copies of the record began showing up on torrent indexes a short while later.

An embarrassing turn of events for a band that had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent exactly this situation from happening. Still, as TechDirt’s Mike Masnick notes, there’s a lesson to be learned here. “At some point, folks in the music industry are going to (finally) recognize a rather simple fact: it just takes one digital copy of a song/movie/whatever to get out there, and it’s everywhere. You can’t stop it. No matter how annoying it is. No matter what laws it violates. It will happen.”

It was an astonishing offer at the time, especially coming from Glaser, who had been a vocal critic of Apple and its decision to make digital music sold through its iTunes store playable only on iPod (”I bought an iPod and can only shop at one store,” Glaser once said. “What is this? The Soviet Union?”)

But it was an offer that Jobs found unappealing. The Apple CEO rebuffed Glaser, declining even to meet with him over lunch to discuss it.

Glaser, of course, took it poorly and spent the next few years slagging Apple and Jobs for declining the partnership. “We think Apple Computer, and Steve personally, are making a mistake by making the software proprietary,” Glaser said at the Digital Living Conference in 2005. “There’s no reason we should penalize Apple customers for Steve’s pigheadeness.”

Course, in the end Real didn’t penalize Apple’s customers. Apple’s customers penalized Real. And today Apple’s iTunes is the largest music retailer in the states. And Real? Well, Real’s “embracing” the iPod.

Funny how that worked out.

This morning the company announced a new MP3 store whose unprotected music files can be played anywhere–even on an iPod. Like Apple’s iTunes, the Rhapsody MP3 Store offers music from all four major music labels at 99 cents per track, or $9.99 for an album. Over five million songs will be made available, at 256k-bit rates. Visitors can preview them in their entirety instead of the 30-second samples offered by iTunes and the like. And, if they’re Verizon (VZ) subscribers, they can download music directly to their phones with the company’s V CAST Music with Rhapsody service.

“We’re no longer competing with the iPod,” said Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith. “We’re embracing it.”

Pigheadeness, be damned.

Now, given the vast discrepancy between LP and CD units shipped in the past year, it’s entirely unlikely vinyl will ever claim a significant share of the music market–unless Apple (AAPL), for some reason, develops the iPod Phono. But it may well remain a niche market for some time to come thanks to audiophiles who prefer the LP “experience” and its so-called truer sound.

And so today Best Buy (BBY) is testing vinyl sales at some of its stores, as is retailer Fred Meyer (KR). “It’s not just a nostalgia thing,” said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. “The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound.”

“In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group would like to remind people that, as the album could only be downloaded from the band’s Web site, it is impossible for outside organizations to have accurate figures on sales,” Radiohead’s representatives said in a statement. “However, they can confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project.”

Quite a rebuke. And one with which it’s difficult to disagree–though comScore did try its best. “For the Radiohead study, we observed the activity of nearly one thousand people who visited the ‘In Rainbows’ site, a significant percentage of whom downloaded the album,” comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman explained in a post to the company’s blog. “We ultimately observed several hundred paid transactions, all of which ranged between $0-$20, representing a very robust sample for estimating the average price paid per transaction. It’s true that any sample has natural variability, so these numbers are, in fact, estimates. However, when you have a relatively large sample falling within a narrow range of values (i.e. there’s a small standard deviation), the margin of error in the estimate is minimized. … We observed the actual online spending behavior from a robust sample of hundreds of individuals in order to produce an accurate estimate. If we didn’t have a reasonable sample from which to extrapolate, we wouldn’t have released the data. But we did, and we’re confident in what the data showed.”

At least until Radiohead releases official download figures for the album …

Announced this morning, the deal gives Verizon exclusive rights to sell the band’s entire back catalog through March 2008–but not in the way you might expect. Verizon is selling AC/DC’s 18-album catalog, not as wireless “over-the-air” downloads, but as straight-to-PC downloads through its V CAST service. And with the exception of one song, “You Shook Me All Night Long,” the band’s music is available only in full-album format. Oh, and Verizon’s priced the albums at $11.99 and the single as $1.99–a bit steep considering that Apple’s iTunes charges $9.99 for a typical album and $.99 for a single.

Even with AC/DC riffs as firmly embedded in the rock subconscious as they are, it’s hard to imagine fans storming V CAST to overpay for full-album digital downloads. “Who’s advising AC/DC?” asks JupiterResearch analyst David Card. “How many things are wrong with this deal?

• Albums are overpriced–$11.99;
• Only one single is available, everything else is album only;
• It’s an eight-month exclusive with a phone company;
• But that’s a U.S. phone company;
• I’m not sure, but I don’t see any ringtones or other bundles.

… I hope they got some serious coin upfront.”