iTunes gets widgets

Music widgets from iLike have been showing up on Facebook in the past few months, and other social bookmarking services for music have proven to be equally popular. Taking a page from this trend, Apple appears to have jumped into the game with a new set of customizable widgets that let you show off your musical tastes to everyone.

This release coincides with this week's debut of iLife '08, which, as we mentioned, includes an updated version of iWeb that's widget-friendly. Anyone can put these in their blog or Web site, assuming they've got an iTunes music store account and have been either purchasing or rating music tracks.

Below is an example from my test library. The widget in question is showing off my favorites. There are also widgets to show off your purchases, as well as any reviews you've written on the iTunes music store.

Update: Looks like this thing is having some kinks displaying information. Until it's been worked out, I've put it after the jump to speed things up on the front page. You can still find some workable examples on Apple's My iTunes page.

(Credit: Apple.com)

[via Macrumors]

[mesadynamics]

Run these widgets in Sidebar and Dashboard

FYI, for those of you who want to run these widgets on your desktop outside of
the browser you can use Amnesty Generator to convert the widget code
provided by Apple into a Sidebar gadget (for Vista) or Dashboard widget (for OS
X Tiger).

http://www.amnestywidgets.com/Generator.html

[multiball]

Displays only what you've purchased?!

These widgets only display music that you've purchased in the iTunes store... What about the other 8,031 songs in my library? Good idea, lame restrictions. Hopefully a new widget will address those who don't purchase DRM'd music.