Amazon UK's website has now officially released 30 second excerpts for each of the twenty three tracks of the Extended Edition for Peter Jackson's final instalment of his eight hour, 750 million dollar cinematic version of JRR Tolkien's classic children's fantasy tale. Each of these including Billy Boyd's rendition of 'The Last Goodbye' can be sampled at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Hobbit-Original-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B00PBEN6P6/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1. The release of the full version of the score is planned for December 1st to coincide with the movie's world premiere in London.
And remember kids, that's Amazon's British site Oonly..
A Few Observations:
Listening to the various tracks it's possible to pick out certain cues established from the scores to the previous movies such as Smaug's in 'Fire and Water' as well as Azog's at the end of 'Bred for War' and the choral notes associated with the elves in 'The Guardians of the Three.' However I was unable to identify any distinct themes common to the score as a whole. Those who felt Howard Shore's music to the previous instalment too 'bombastic' might care to skip this one simply because this movie isn't just an extended 'road trip' this time around but is more like a 'war movie'
Regarding the overall length of the movie one should note that the total length of the special edition is listed as 1Hour, 48 minutes and 12 seconds. This would seem to confirm Peter Jackson's statement made to the LA Times this past Halloween that "he expected it to be the shortest of his six Tolkien movies." If the soundtrack is any measure we might be looking at something close to a 2 hour and 20 minute runtime and going by the tone of most of the tracks it promises to be an intense one at that.