Posted Friday, September 03, 2004

iTunes Affiliate Adventures: From Acceptance to Denial

This morning's email brought the good news that I've been accepted into the iTunes affiliate program. Great! Now I can pollute these pages with links to my favorite songs and albums, and you'll buy them and I'll be rich.

Or not.

In its current state, the iTunes affiliate program has a mammoth limitation: it doesn't let you create links to albums, artists, or songs of your choosing. Instead, you must choose from a variety of prefab links. Some, like the iTunes logo in the sidebar to the right, simply hawk the music store.

Others, like the banner here, promote specific artists or albums. But you can't search for an artist, song, or album and then create a corresponding affiliate link.

In other words, you can promote anything you want, as long as it's something Apple wants you to promote.

This needs to change, and presumably, it will: the iTunes affiliate page specifically touts the ability to "link directly from your website to any song, album or artist on iTunes."

That's what I want to do. I want to be able to promote Upstairs at Larry's, a new remix album of Lawrence Welk music. (It's true! Don't miss Bubbles in the Wine.)

Yes, the iTunes affiliate program is in its embryonic stages. Affiliates won't even be able to get traffic and revenue reports until the middle of this month. But hopefully the ability to link to individual items will come soon. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, go shopping.

Free Download: Single of the Week. Only at iTunes