Audio News

The iTunes music downloading service has already been around for awhile and seen some remarkable success. Many people saw the service, where users paid £0.80 to legally download a new song, as the legal alternative to rampant online piracy of music files. Indeed it was seen as a compromise between downloading music illegally and for free using P2P networks, or spending upwards of £10 for a new music CD in a music shop. And while some pundits asserted the illegal method of acquiring music would still triumph, the iTunes Music Store saw unprecedented growth and even reached the 4 billion songs downloaded milestone in 2008.

While the service was started in 2003, it naturally took some time before it reached Europe and the UK in 2004. However, the success was no less apparent, with the online store having over 450,000 for one week in the UK alone. Naturally, it was expected that Apple’s online store would eventually extend to film and video content. This occurred in 2005 with Apple making episodes from certain television shows available for purchase on their iTunes portal. Although this time the rest of the world and the UK have had to wait quite a bit longer for the service to grace their presence. But now the wait is finally over, for the UK and Canada at any rate, who can have been able to purchase film content from the iTunes store since yesterday.

Apple reached an agreement with the major Hollywood studios and will begin with an assortment of over 700 movies, including many newly released hits. We can see this list only getting larger as time progresses. While many people are thrilled of the possibility of legally downloading entire films onto their computer in a manner that is both timesaving and convenient, others are equally enthusiastic over the renting option. All of the available film titles are also available for rental at a much lower rate. Users simply download a title and then have 48 hours to watch it as many times as they please.

Films are going for anywhere from £6.99 to £10.99, while rentals are starting at £2.49 and £3.49 for new releases. Still many UK users remain disgruntled over what they see as a cost bias, where UK users have to pay substantially more, and sometimes twice as much, for the same services as their American counterparts. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has countered these criticisms by saying the VAT is responsible for a large amount of the price difference and that doing business in the UK is “more expensive”. Of course, these reasons are hardly reassuring for consumers in the UK. Nevertheless customers are predicted to flock to the new and convenient service which could serve as indicator of how films will be purchased in the future. Especially because the service makes it simple to purchase films and then watch them directly on an iPod MP3 player.