itunes license

[audiog]

Hello

I'm working up an iPhone app idea and need some help please.

It is an audio based app that provides a narrative, and I want it to use music from the itunes store as a backing track. Is this possible? I've got a hunch apple might object, but cant find anything specific in the user license. Any advice gratefully received.

Thanks

[moozlebug]

Do you mean play a track from the user's library that they bought from the iTunes store as background music in your App? If so then that's fine.

But if you mean (as I suspect you do) can you distribute music from the iTunes store within your application then definitely not! You would have to contact the artist and agree a licensing contract (and if they're mainstream it is likely to be prohibitively expensive). For backing music you're better off looking for 'royalty free' music that you can license relatively cheaply

[audiog]

the app would have no idea if the music was actually bought in itunes or found 'elsewhere' - but no, this isnt intended to distribute music from the store.

to clarify, an example scenario:

i'm outside a building and want to hear some interesting facts about its history. the narration does this for me, but i want to have the backing track provided by the music that already exists on the iPhone.

it means overlaying the narration audio over the top of the music from itunes.

thanks

[moozlebug]

Originally Posted by audiog

the app would have no idea if the music was actually bought in itunes or found 'elsewhere' - but no, this isnt intended to distribute music from the store.

to clarify, an example scenario:

i'm outside a building and want to hear some interesting facts about its history. the narration does this for me, but i want to have the backing track provided by the music that already exists on the iPhone.

it means overlaying the narration audio over the top of the music from itunes.

thanks

Well that's fine then, no problem in playing music that the user has on their device already:

http://developer.apple.com/library/i...aryAccess.html

and you can then play your narrative at the same time use AVAudioPlayer (or similar).

[dre]

You can play any user's music on the idevice. Why would they put it in a license?

[audiog]

thanks both

my concern was that apple might get precious about how itunes is used in 3rd party apps. possibly something that the music industry had insisted on.

i'd like the premium version of this to create a linear piece of audio from the itunes audio content and the narration, and to transfer when iPhone plugged in to the computer, so it could be put on another device (eg another mp3 player).

guessing this will probably cause issues however - any idea?