iPod and iTunes Hacks

Create Links to the iTunes Music Store

Send your friends a link to that new song you love and make it easy for them to buy it, all in one click.

One of the many brilliant (yes, brilliant) things about the iTunes Music Store is that, even though it is its own application, Apple has built some web-like functionality into it. Want to go back a page? Use the same key-board shortcut you would use in Safari,

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As discussed in “Get at iTunes Music Store Metadata” [Hack #71] , the Music Store uses web-friendly conventions such as XML. Even though the iTunes Music Store functions outside the paradigm of the World Wide Web, Apple has made it easy to create links to its store. The store-specific hyperlinks can be embedded in HTML web pages or emailed along to a friend, just like any other URL. The difference is that when your friend clicks on the URL, her web browser won’t open. Instead, iTunes will open up on her machine and go to the Music Store and the artist or song to which you linked. Of course, this requires that your friend has iTunes on her machines, but who doesn’t these days?

The quickest way to get a link is to Control-click or right-click on a song in the iTunes Music Store. A contextual menu pops up. Select Copy iTunes Music Store URL and simply paste the URL into an email or HTML ...