Well well well! Lools like iTunes has skipped ahead and pre-announced iTunes LP, the rumored "Cocktail" album format from Apple.

Apple [iTunes link] says:

The visual experience of the record album returns with iTunes LP. Get a gorgeous, immersive version of select albums -- right in your iTunes library. So while you listen to your favorite songs by your favorite artists, you can also five into beautiful animated lyrics and notes, performance videos, artists and band photos and more.

Guess this is the flip side of D45s, we'll be getting the details when It's only rock and roll, but we like it kicks off in a few minutes! (Come join our live blog now!)

The Financial Times is reporting that Apple may be in cahoots with the Big Music record labels, Sony, Warner, Universal, and EMI to create bonus-material laden Apps in an attempt to reignite interest in full album purchases among consumers. This project is said to be code named "cocktail" and would include:

a new interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other interactive features with music downloads

Since the advent of iTunes, sales of digital singles has risen but full albums has fallen. In previous decades, from vinyl through cassette and compact disc (CD), with the exception of 45s (original, not the new digital kind) and compilations, albums were often the only way to get popular tunes.

While some, including our own editor-in-chief, still prefer buying whole albums so as to get the whole "story" an artist is trying to tell, others have maintained since the days of vinyl that some artists were just as content to put effort into a couple hit songs then quickly produce filler for the rest of the album.

So "Cocktail" could well enhance even those mega-albums filled with great music, much as they did in the heydays of physical media, but will they be compelling enough to get consumers to fork over $9+ instead of $1.29 to get filler from that one hit wonder as well?

[Via MacRumors]