New iTunes 9 Store Observation

With the release of iTunes 9 in September, Apple also refreshed the iTunes store with much needed user interface improvements along with some subtle, albeit needed, changes to the merchandising space in the store.

One of these interesting subtle changes is the seemingly removal of custom artist pages. In the previous store, iTunes would allow for custom art work to display in the background of an artist page. I’m sure the operational management of the image assets with the music labels wasn’t an effective allocation of Apple’s resources but certainly added a contextual richness when browsing songs from your fave artist as captured below.

Under the new store, the custom background images appear to be gone.  Although the user can view more assets by the artist, the visual richness is certainly reduced.  Perhaps Apple realized the overhead cost of managing this level of customization for the labels was not worth the expense.

Overall, I think the new iTunes store with the main navigation moved to the header provides the user with an intuitive method of navigating through the store and allows for more visual merchandising.

What are your thoughts?