Posts Tagged ‘iTunes’

iTunes UK adds movie purchases and (48 hour) rentals

iTunes UK adds movie purchases and (48 hour) rentals Six months after their U.S. debut, Apple has finally made movies rentals, along with purchases, available to iTunes customers in the UK.

On the plus side, new film releases for purchase will be offered the same day as their DVD release and, in a near industry-first, the viewing window for rentals has been extended to 48 hours (from 24), whereby customers have up to 30 days to start watching a rented download, and once the movie starts they have two days to finish it or watch it multiple times. As we wrote in our earlier analysis of Apple’s U.S. iTunes movie offering (Content, pricing and convenience. How do movie rentals on iTunes fare?), a 24 hour limit “makes it impossible to split a film over two nights, a requirement that is more common than you’d think, especially for those with kids”.

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HBO offers six shows on iTunes; even with higher prices, savings are considerable

hbo on itunesA quick update to the iTunes-HBO post from yesterday. Six of HBO’s most popular shows are now available for purchase on iTunes, ranging from $1.99 to $2.99 an episode. They are:

  • “The Wire”: $1.99
  • “Flight of the Conchords”: $1.99
  • “Sex and the City”: $1.99
  • “Deadwood”: $2.99
  • “Rome”: $2.99
  • “The Sopranos”: $2.99

(Apple release)

This translates to considerable savings, especially for those who 1) don’t subscribe to HBO; 2) are interested in the series but are not sure if they want to spend the money on the boxed sets; 3) would buy the boxed sets if they were a little cheaper.

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Something is going on at iTunes: Apple reportedly agrees to variable pricing to get HBO shows

hbo logoApple and Home Box Office will be achieving a couple of very important firsts when HBO content comes to iTunes in the next few weeks.

For Apple, it will be the first time the company will allow variable pricing for content on iTunes in the United States. According to Josh Saul of Portfolio.com, sources indicate that Apple has agreed to a separate price structure to bring HBO content to iTunes.

itunesNo details were given, but it’s expected that HBO shows will sell for more than $1.99 a episode. Apple has held steadfast to its philosophy of fixed pricing — $0.99 cents per song, $1.99 for TV shows, $2.99 to $4.99 for movie rentals and $9.99 to $14.99 for movie purchases.

Apple has been so adamant about fixed pricing that NBC to pull its shows from iTunes at the end of last year after a loud, public dispute over, in part, variable pricing demands.

For HBO, the expected agreement marks the first time the cable station’s content will be available online. This content includes current shows such as “John Adams” or “Entourage” as well as old favorites like “Sex in the City,” “The Sopranos,” and “The Wire.”

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A hint at what's to come? NBC streams "The Office", "30 Rock" to iPhone

nbc streaming to iphoneIt’s certainly not the best quality video, and the show selection is severely limited, but it’s a start and — maybe — a hint at what’s to come.

As Silicon Alley Insider and Saul Hansell of The New York Times note today, you can stream NBC shows to an iPhone or iPod touch, completely bypassing iTunes. As everybody knows, NBC and its network properties pulled their shows off iTunes late last year over a pricing and copy protection spat.

NBC is streaming full episodes of “The Office” and “30 Rock” to the iPhone in unprotected Quicktime format. The files are split into four small segments with no advertising (Update: I watched the whole Office episode again, and at the end of each segment there is a super brief ad — in this case, one for the Toyota Carrolla). The quality is fuzzy at best, but the shows are watchable in portrait and landscape modes.

Unfortunately, only one episode of “The Office” is available — the one where Michael puts his face in cement and Pam is wearing glasses. There’s also one episode of “30 Rock.” The NBC site hints that there may be more shows coming.

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iTunes same-day movie releases reportedly a loss leader, yet prices remain too high

In striking a deal with Hollywood to offer new movie releases for purchase on iTunes the same day as their DVD equivalents, Apple is making a loss, reports the Wall Street Journal. According to a “person familiar with the matter”, Apple is paying the movie studios a wholesale price of $16 per movie while maintaining its current retail price of $14.99. The reasoning seems to be that in order to grow its movie download business and associated hardware offerings (primarily the newly-vamped AppleTV), the iTunes Store must achieve parity with DVDs, in particular in terms of release windows.

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Catching up on iTunes news: NBC wants back on iTunes, but with conditions

Catching up on iTunes with NBC Universal, Fox and Paramount, Amazon MP3, and Starbucks.

NBC wants back on iTunes, but with conditions

George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s chief digital officer, indicated indirectly and directly at the Ad: Tech conference that NBC would like to be back on iTunes, which the network dumped in late 2007 over a nasty public spat about pricing.

kliavkoffIndirectly, Kliavkoff said during an on-stage interview at the conference, “If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gate-keeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some anti-piracy measures.”

Directly, Kliavkoff said, “We’d love to be on iTunes”, but only if Apple institutes more anti-piracy measures. “It has a great customer experience,” he said. “We’ve love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes.”

The timing is interesting. iTunes is now the largest music retailer, and while the video side of the store (TV shows and movies) has not reached the same level, it still benefits from the overall iTunes brand and music traffic. Since NBC bolted, no other major network or studio has followed, leaving NBC standing alone.

Think NBC regrets its decision?

If it does, NBC doesn’t appear to be budging. In addition to the extra anti-piracy protection, the network would also like to see flexible pricing on iTunes, which doesn’t seem to be likely anytime soon.

(via News.com and NewTeeVee)

Photo credit of Kliavkoff: News.com at Ad:Tech

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Where do you get your recommendations on the Web? From a service like The Filter? Or from friends?

It’s hard to fault Peter Gabriel’s logic: We are overwhelmed by the amount of information and choice we have on the Web. But is his solution — a recommendation engine called The Filter — really the answer?

Of course Gabriel, the genius behind the British rock band Genesis and the solo artist who gave us such tunes as “Solsbury Hill,” “Exposure,” and “Games Without Frontiers,” thinks so as he and England’s Eden Ventures have invested $8 million in The Filter. They believe people are overwhelmed by the Web and can’t find good content because it’s buried out of sight.

“When you drown people in an ocean of information, you’ve got to give them navigation tools,” Gabriel told News.com. “I know that there is better stuff out there than what I generally am exposed to . . . So if I have a sort of intelligent ally working with me 24 hours a day, I think I have a much better chance of getting stuff that will entertain, excite, and inspire me.”

The Filter, originally launched as a music recommendation service about a year ago in Europe, re-launched today in private beta as a more complete solution. It will be available to the public sometime in May.

But there’s something about The Filter that bugs me. What separates The Filter from any of the other algorithm-based recommendation engines out there, whether a human is a part of the process or not — Amazon, iTunes, lastFM, Netflix, Imeem, Digg, Pandora, and many more?

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What is music 2.0?

Music futurist Gerd Leonhard has just released an informative video explaining what music 2.0 is and how the music industry should change to adapt to ‘web 2.0’ principles. Some of the themes are that control doesn’t work (e.g. DRM and trying to control networking) and that music is meant to be shared. Even iTunes comes into some criticism – iTunes works great, says Leonhard, but it “is a locked community”. Ultimately, Leonhard says that “open is king” and that “we have to give up on the idea of control and move to an open ecosystem in music.”

Video embedded after the jump…

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Free ad-supported music leads to more sales

So says Last.fm

Since CBS-owned Last.fm re-launched its free ad-supported music service in January, with licenses from all four of the major labels, overall CD and download sales through the site’s partnership with Amazon.com have experienced a 119% increase. The upturn in sales can be accredited to an increase in new visitors as well as existing users who, according to Last.fm, have purchased 66% more music than they did prior to the free-on-demand offering. Last.fm also has affiliate deals with iTunes and 7Digital.

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Adobe Media Player launches – does the world need another Internet TV app?

Today, Adobe launched version 1.0 of its new desktop Internet TV application.

Adobe Media Player launches - does the world need another Internet TV app?The Adobe Media Player (AMP), built using the company’s Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) — a cross-platform technology designed to bring web-based applications to the desktop — is an aggregator and media player that enables users to subscribe to, download and playback Flash-based video. Included in the application is a directory of content provided by Adobe’s partners, including CBS, MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, PBS, CondéNet, and Scripps Networks or, alternatively, users can add content from any Flash/MPEG4 video source that provides an RSS feed. In this respect, AMP can be compared to the video podcast functionality of Apple’s iTunes or the open source Miro. However, neither iTunes or Miro (or even VeohTV, which features similar functionality) offer a way for providers to monetize their content through advertising. This is where the Adobe Media Player is attempting to fill a void.

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