iTunes:
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Peacock-a-thon: Eureka! NBC shows found in UK iTunes Store

Posted on May. 6, ’08, 9:36 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

In our continuing coverage of all matters related to Pavo cristatus, we bring you this interesting fact. In light of NBC’s Faustian bargain from this morning, it seems that they also have made come to some sort of understanding with Apple—at least in the UK. As Italian blog setteB.it points out, NBC’s parent company Universal has made five shows available for download in the UK iTunes Store, including Heroes, which has been MIA from the American iTunes store since NBC’s unceremonious departure.

Also on offer are Eureka (shown in the US on NBC’s Sci Fi network), classic shows The Incredible Hulk and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (Sorbo FTW!), and Hugh Laurie vehicle House. As if that’s not weird enough, the shows are priced at two different price points, with the “vintage” series going for £1.19 an episode (~US$2.32) and the current shows costing £1.89 (US$3.79). The higher £1.89 price point is standard for TV shows in the UK store (or was when Apple first announced their availability).

Is this harbinger of NBC’s return to the American store as well? My guess is that has something to do with individual country licensing deals, but it seems nothing is certain anymore. Up is down! Left is right! Zune is iPod! Gah! Gahhhh!

A million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking real song figures

Posted on May. 5, ’08, 10:44 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

When the iTunes Store had turned five a week ago, Apple threw a party of sorts, touting the store’s successes and achievements and posting five pages worth of bestsellers and editor’s picks from the past five years. Among all that celebration, they’d also mentioned that they now had over ten million songs in their catalogue.

When I read that, I was quite surprised by the number. Hadn’t Apple more recently insisted on a number closer to six million? How had the catalogue suddenly inflated enough to include four million more songs, even though there had been no news of any development on that front in the past few months?

It turns out that it hadn’t. I have no idea how it came to be, but that number was an error. The correct number is six million and the description on the store was later corrected. MacNN has pictures of the figures as they’d appeared on the store, before and after the correction.

If any of you were hoping that Apple had stealthily added DRM-free versions of half the catalogue, we’re sorry to disappoint you, but that just isn’t the case. The rest of the stats are still true, however, so the store does have over fifty million customers and has sold in excess of four billions songs; it just doesn’t have ten million of them to sell.

[Via TUAW]

iTunes shows up with 1000 rentals, two months behind schedule

Posted on May. 5, ’08, 9:59 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

Chris Breen, Dan P and Brian Chen have been on Apple’s case for the past two months, all because Jobs promised to have thousand movies available for rental on the iTunes Store by the end of February and didn’t deliver.

Sheesh! You’d think they’d cut them some slack, what with them being Apple fanboys to their very core (don’t let them tell you any different). Pestered by the nagging, apparently, Apple has finally delivered on their commitment “63 days after the promise deadline”, as Chris so helpfully points out.

A quick search of available rentals on the iTunes Store now reveals that there are just a sliver over a thousand titles now, all queued up and ready to go. And this, my dear friends, brings a heroic end to *The Saga of the Missing Rentals*. It’s a story that will surely be immortalized in history texts and remembered for generations to come.

Studios cue up simultaneous releases for DVDs, downloads

Posted on May. 1, ’08, 8:25 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

Yesterday afternoon, our own Mr. Dahlquist reported that Warner Bros. announced their intentions to make new releases available on the iTunes Store on the very same day as they were released on DVD. But that’s not the whole story: this morning, Apple announced that the same would be true for films from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios. For those of you playing along at home, that’s all the other major studios and a few others thrown in for good measure.

“We’re thrilled to bring iTunes Store customers new films for purchase day-and-date with the DVD release,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We think movie fans will love being able to buy their favorites from major and independent studios.”

Of course, the devil is in the details here: note that Apple’s press release very clearly says this applies to movies for purchase. Nothing is said particularly about rentals, leaving us to wonder if they’re still subject to the sort-of 30 day lag time. I’d certainly hope not: I think rentals are the real potential here, especially as new releases remain priced at $15.

I did a quick check of the titles touted in Apple’s press release: while The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is available only for purchase, American Gangster can be bought or rented. Of the handful of other titles featured in the rotating banners at the top of the Movies page, most were only available for purchase, not for rental.

So while this might be good news, it’s still not quite the news that I would hope for. I wonder how close they are to meeting their 1000 titles for rental goal now.

The British are coming, the British are coming…to iTunes

Posted on Apr. 29, ’08, 8:08 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

Last night, I vowed to start using more Anglicisms even if meant holding up under the disparaging looks of my colleagues: it’s worth the sacrifice just to be able to refer to someone as a complete muppet. What fuels this passion of mine? Well, much as I’d like to merely chalk it up to those months that I lived in the UK back in the early part of the decade, I have to admit it’s mainly a function of the excessive amounts of British TV that I watch.

That’s just gotten even easier, as Apple’s added shows from BBC America to the iTunes Store (iTunes link). You can now pick up episodes from three series: Torchwood, Little Britain, and Robin Hood. I’ve watched both the first and last of those shows, and enjoyed both. The store, unfortunately, only has the second seasons of both shows Robin Hood (as Sean points out below, Torchwood Series 1 is there), so if you’re looking for completeness, you’ll have to go elsewhere.

Honestly, though, I was hoping more for the likes of Doctor Who, Hustle, and Spooks, all of which are shown on networks other than BBC America in the US. Why must you continue to thwart me, silly international borders?

The annual Dan + iTunes birthday bash

Posted on Apr. 28, ’08, 8:14 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

Last night I was made to endure a terrifying experience, the pain of which still lingers fresh in my brain. My life flashed before my eyes, shot in fuzzy, grainy VHS splendor. On the eve of my birthday, my mother produced a videocassette containing recordings of my fifth, sixth, and seventh birthdays. It was actually the first time I’ve ever seen a video of myself as a child, and let me tell you, it was frightening: the bowl cut hair, the red grade-school sweatshirt, the sheer ’80s-ness of it all. Add to that the slightly surreal soundtrack provided by an anti-smoking documentary that was not fully erased when my parents taped over it—oh, 1980s technology, how you amuse.

So I know how iTunes feels. Here it is, turning five years old, and no doubt Apple is recording every moment, hovering alongside with some digital video camera, making sure that no embarrassing moment is forgotten. The celebrations are already underway in the store itself, where Apple has put up a special section featuring hit music and videos from the last five years. Oh, look, 2003! Jack Johnson and OutKast. Those were the days.

iTunes, of course, has come a long way since 2003, rising from its position as an upstart in the industry to the number one retailer in the country. They started with a selection of a mere 200,000 tracks and have today worked their way up to more than 10 million, selling more than four billion songs along the way.

Which, you’d better believe my mother points out reproachfully when she asks about how work is going. Anyway, happy birthday, iTunes—I’m glad that we can share this special day together every year. Cake?

5G iPods to play iTunes videos again, soon, maybe, hopefully

Posted on Apr. 23, ’08, 3:00 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | iTunes » iPod

5G iPods have never been able to play movies rentals from iTunes. Nothing new. But they were able to play regular videos purchased from iTunes…until recently, when some Apple voodoo magic made the 5Gs incompatible with new video purchases, including Season Pass downloads. The ensuing furor was expectedly prolific, with users mouthing their frustration in long threads at Apple’s discussion boards.

Well, the power of protest once again makes for good blogging fodder… Oh, and gets things done or whatever. Jacqui Cheng at Infinite Loop reports that some grumbling users have been told by Apple support reps that a fix is in the works that will re-enable 5G ‘Pods to play iTunes vids.

Luckily, a number of customers have already been told by Apple support reps that the company is aware of the problem. One user posted to the support thread that he/she was told by AppleCare that a “huge” update would be coming. Since these reports about Apple acknowledging the issue came in as early as last week, it would make sense to see the aforementioned “huge” update hittin’ the streets pretty soon (like, preferably this week).

This is, of course, secondhand information, and thus should be taken more as a “probably” instead of a “definitely, yo.” But it seems to reason that a feature Apple probably-unintentionally broke — why would it just decide that these iPods can’t play new purchases? — would be fixed eventually.

In the meantime, may I interest you in some iPod-compatible video podcasts?

ITV boards the iTunes Store UK bandwagon with classic content

Posted on Apr. 23, ’08, 12:14 PM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

Apple has some hot news for their iTunes Store UK customers—joining the likes of BBC and Channel 4 on the television section of the Store now is ITV, with “complete series of classic ITV shows like Cold Feet, Brideshead Revisited and Captain Scarlet”.

Dawn Airey, the Managing Director of ITV global content, mentioned that ITV plans to get a lot more of their archived content onto the store so that their viewers can have “the opportunity to watch their favorite shows wherever they are”.

Even with the inclusion of these, the UK store still has a lot of catching up to do when compared to the relatively huge catalogue the US version of the iTunes Store boasts of, but these are steps in the right direction. We’d love to hear the opinions of our UK readers. Is this, like, awesome news, or just plain lame?

[Via TUAW]

Judge says Ramone suit not even Halfway to Sanity

Posted on Apr. 23, ’08, 9:59 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | iTunes » Legal

On the musical heels of a Texas district judge dismissing a lawsuit filed by a rap mogul, Apple’s dodged a second bullet. Back in September of last year, punk rocker Richard Reinhardt, better known—or, well, known anyway—as Richie Ramone said that he was owed some serious dough for several songs that he’d written that were being sold online without his authorization.

U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin (and clear Judge Judy impersonator) apparently wasn’t much of a Ramones fan. The Manhattan-based justice tossed Richie’s case against Apple, Wal-Mart, and Real Networks, saying:

“This argument is without merit. The distinction Reinhardt attempts to draw departs from the most reasonable reading of the contract and he therefore bears the burden of justifying this departure. Reinhardt has failed to meet this burden, particularly because he alleges that the digital recordings were sold, contradicting his own argument that digital recordings are licensed but not sold.”

Or, in layman’s terms, “tough luck, Richie.” Fortunately, he’s still got a second shot at success by litigation; his case against the Ramones’ management, the estate of band co-founder John Cummings, and others continues apace.

[via Listening Post]

Judge opines rap lawsuit has no rhyme, reason

Posted on Apr. 21, ’08, 8:04 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | iTunes » Legal

That was a close one. It seemed perhaps that Apple was on the brink of an all-out war with rap mogul J Prince who, if you remember, named the company in a defamation suit last December, along with BET and parent company Viacom. The assertion? An episode of BET’s American Gangster labeled Prince and his employee Thomas Randle as “murderers.”

Prince wanted to prevent the episode from being shown on air or downloaded via iTunes, but U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes (pictured) tossed the case out on its ear, calling the photo in question—which depicted Prince and Randle with jailed gang leader Larry Hoover—“a broadcast of accurate pictures of their social choices.”

Man, that is street. Personally, I know pretty much nothing about Prince and Randle, and while I imagine that being called a murderer when you aren’t one is craptastic, suing Apple for having the episode online is a bit tangential to say the least.

BET, for its part, has been rebroadcasting the episode with Prince and Randle’s faces obscured. I’m just glad we’ve avoided open hostilities: it’s what Tupac and Biggie would have wanted.

[via Macworld UK]