The iTunes LP idea hit a bump in the road late last week. It was being reported by Gizmodo that iTunes LP would only be available to bigger record companies and the small guys would be left in the cold. The reason being is that a small time company was claiming that Apple was charging $10,000 for production fees. The company is called Chocolate Lab Records. And according to Apple, everything they claimed is actually false.

Apple made a comment concerning iTunes LP:

“We’re releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own. There is no production fee charged by Apple.”

iTunes LP is an idea of bringing a “record” type feel to iTunes downloads. There will be original cover art, and extras you can download along with the music. There is behind the scenes videos, animated lyrics, and photos.

For those who are reading this and own an iPhone, you may or may not have MMS capabilities already. People have been reporting that MMS functionality is up and running. Technically, the service isn’t supposed to start until September 25th.

If you own the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3Gs, then you should have received a text from AT&T stating that MMS would be ready 09/25. Now that the date is upon us, AT&T is scrambling to make sure that there’s plenty of bandwidth to handle the new feature.

The amount of work that it takes to launch something like MMS with such a user base is staggering. AT&T has been working on their systems for months now, and it looks like they’re still nervous about the launch.

Hopefully, everything will run without a hitch when Friday rolls around.

During Apple’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” event yesterday, news was dropped of their iTunes 9 release. There have been a slew of new features added, which I’ll list below. Also Apple has an official press release you can browse through:

iTunes 9 Features

- iPhone App Organization

- More media sync options

- Home Sharing and Genius Mixes

- Redesigned store

- iTunes LP

SAN FRANCISCO—September 9, 2009—Apple® today introduced iTunes® 9, the latest version of the world’s most popular software application to purchase, manage and play media, packed with innovative features such as iTunes LP, Home Sharing and Genius Mixes, as well as a redesigned store and improved syncing. iTunes 9 makes it easier than ever to discover, purchase and enjoy your music, movies, TV shows, and apps for iPhone™ and iPod touch® from Apple’s revolutionary App Store. Plus, Home Sharing now lets you easily transfer songs, movies and TV shows to other computers in your home.

“iTunes 9 is a great iTunes release, with innovative features that make using iTunes better than ever and iTunes content richer than ever,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iTunes LP, for example, lets artists share more of their creativity with fans and gives music lovers the feeling of being immersed in an entire album with art, lyrics, liner notes, photos and videos.”

iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more. iTunes LP debuts today with albums including Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Norah Jones’ “Come Away With Me,” The Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty” and Dave Matthews Band’s “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King: iTunes Pass.” The new iTunes Extras provides a similar experience for movies on iTunes with features including documentaries, deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes Extras is now available for select movies including “Twilight,” “Batman Begins,” “WALL-E,” “Iron Man” and “The Da Vinci Code.” Customers can enjoy iTunes LP and iTunes Extras on a Mac® or PC.

iTunes 9 also introduces Home Sharing, which lets you easily transfer music, movies and TV shows among up to five authorized computers in your home. Family members can now view up to five iTunes libraries on their home network, see only the portion of these libraries they don’t already have, import their favorite content directly to their own libraries, and automatically add new purchases from other computers into their library.

The incredibly popular Genius feature gets even better with Genius Mixes which are created using the results of over 27 million music libraries with over 54 billion songs that have been submitted and analyzed by Genius. The new Genius Mixes feature is like having a “Genius” DJ that automatically generates up to 12 endless mixes of songs from your iTunes library that go great together.

With improved syncing in iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1, you can now organize your iPhone apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone with the same layout. Plus, syncing music, photos, movies and TV shows is easier than ever with the added ability to sync music by artist and genre and sync photos by Events and Faces. The iTunes Store on iPhone now features precut ringtone downloads with over 20,000 ringtones priced at just $1.29.

Already, hundreds of Mac users are gleefully downloading and enjoying their shiny new operating system, Snow Leopard, hot off the press from Apple.

Unfortunately, not all Mac users are gleeful. Although the news is just now breaking on the topic, Mac OS X 10.6 is confirmed to be incompatible with over 100 Mac software applications. The recently developed (and quickly growing) Snow Leopard Compatibility site keeps a running trail of apps that work, apps that don’t work, apps with problems, and apps whose status is currently unknown. The site, with hundreds of entries, contains a one-stop check for your favorite software.

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