iTunes

Periodically, albums become available for live streaming on iTunes prior to their official release date. The hope is that not only do consumers get a chance to hear the album before buying it, but also that by offering a free and legal way to listen to the album before it’s available, there will be less motivation for eager fans to pirate leaked albums. With unreleased albums from Daft Punk and The National currently streaming on iTunes, 9to5Mac has discovered that the streams are being left completely unprotected, offering an easy way for pirates to get high-quality cuts of the albums before they’re officially released.

Apple recently released iTunes 11.0.3 with a number of cosmetic improvements including an updated MiniPlayer and songs view. However, this release is more than just a pretty face, bringing a number of security patches which address a wide range of vulnerabilities. Even users not interested in the visual treatments will want to grab this update.

There's a new iTunes update in town, and at the top of the list of new goodies is a new look MiniPlayer. The tiny little iTunes window has had a makeover that now includes a progress bar for the track currently playing, alongside your album artwork too. It may well be tiny, but it does look a lot nicer now, so good job on that front, Apple.

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Apple has released a statement concerning their recent 50 billion app downloads, and in it, they completely bury the lede. From Apple PR

50 billion unique downloads excluding re-downloads and updates.

In just under two weeks since first announcing they were approaching the milestone, the Apple App Store has officially ticked over its 50 billionth download. Coincidentally the milestone was reached during the first few hours of Google I/O, where Google themselves were shouting about their own download numbers. In reaching 50 billion, that now means one lucky iOS user is set to receive a $10,000 App Store gift card, with 50 billion and one through to 50 each receiving $500 vouchers.

Amazon's Cloud Player has been around for a while now, but the only way to access it in a desktop environment has been via the web browser. Now though, Amazon has announced a full desktop client for Cloud Player, and takes the fight to iTunes in doing so.

Daft Punk are back, and their fans could not be happier. Well, until now, that is. The latest creation from the legendary pairing, Random Access Memories, is their first full studio album since 2005 and is due for general release on May 21. But, waiting sucks, so iTunes has come up big by allowing fans to stream the new album in its entirety before it's released. Every, single, track. All you need to do is head on over to the Daft Punk landing page in iTunes on your computer.

According to the chief financial officer of Windows -- what, your company doesn't have a product-level CFO? -- Microsoft has laid out the welcome mat for iTunes for Windows 8, but Apple has yet to come a knocking. Why ever could that be?

Apple's two-step verification service first rolled out in March, though only to a limited number of countries. Anyone outside the U.S, UK, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand was out of luck, but as 9to5Mac reports, the service has just been switched on in a host of new locations.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft wants Apple to create a Windows 8 version of iTunes. Apple already makes a version of iTunes that runs just fine on Windows 8, but it's an old-style "desktop app" not a new-style "Windows 8 app". Not that that seems to be bothering Apple in the slightest. According to CNN Money: