What do Jimmy Page, Jack White, The Edge, and Kings of Leon have in common? You can download them in the new Music Movies area on iTunes. This week you can pre-order Davis Guggenheim’s electric guitar documentary, “It Might Get Loud,” and Kenny Ortega’s box office hit, “Michael Jackson’s – This Is It.” Also available this week: a home video exclusive from Kings of Leon, “Live at the O2 London, England.” These three films, plus hundreds more musicals, music documentaries, and live concert films, are available now on iTunes.

Smart Playlists in iTunes 9 can now be more than just (A and B) or (A or B or C) to build a playlist. Now the rules can be combined and nested. In addition to the plus and minus buttons, there’s a new three-dot (ellipsis-like) button to generate the nested rules. For example, A and (B or C) was previously not possible.

In iTunes 9, you can now do this. First add rule A and set the top “Match” criteria to All. After you have rule A done, click on the three-dot button to get a lower level rule, add rule B and set its applicability pop-up to Any. Finally, click the plus sign and add rule C. This will create the logical structure of A and (B or C). You can get even more fancy and click the three-dot button again, and add a D or E conditional, giving you a final rule structure of A and (B or C and (D or E)).

The iTunes 9 help is silent about this new feature, but it’s quite powerful.

Source: MacOSXHints

One of the often requested features for iTunes has been the ability to set a folder for it to watch, automatically adding any items you drop in that folder to its library. In iTunes 9, Apple has quietly added this feature, although I wouldn’t blame you for not having noticed its existence. In typical Apple fashion, it’s not exactly what people were asking for, but Apple’s interpretation of what they want.

When you install iTunes 9, it automatically creates an Automatically Add to iTunes folder in your ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder (or under ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media if you created a new library after installing iTunes 9). When you put an iTunes-compatible media file in this folder, it will, as the name suggests, be added to iTunes automatically.

In my limited testing, I’ve found that it pretty much works as advertised. Whenever you drop any file into that folder, it’s instantly added to iTunes if the application is running. If not, it gets added the next time iTunes is launched. It even looks for files in subfolders you create and adds them to the library as well. And if you ever delete or rename the Automatically Add to iTunes folder, iTunes simply creates a new one for you the next time it is launched.

[Read more →]

A tipster just drop a handful of iTunes 9 screenshots.

“The first notable feature depicted in the new shots is the Facebook integration. The images show the ability to create a new playlist and then share it on Facebook,” Epstein reports. “The Facebook entry that subsequently appears on the user’s FB wall will include an iTunes link, presumably pointing to the shared playlist found on an iTunes page.”

Epstein reports, “Up next… How about some third-party device support?”

Full article, with the screenshots, here.