May
11
2005iTunes Store now selling videos
11
2005
With the release of iTunes 4.8, Apple has quietly started selling video content - so far only as “bonuses” with album purchases.
For example, if you buy the new Gorillaz single, you get 4 videos with it for free. Since I’m a Gorillaz fan anyway, I figured it was worth the 99 cents to check it out. If you have the Gorillaz’ “Celebrity Take-Down” DVD, you’ll recognize these videos as small bits from that DVD.
You can choose to view iTunes videos within the “Album Art” window, as a pop-up window, or full-screen. Note the new option for this under the “Advanced” tab in Preferences.
You can also add arbitrary QuickTime videos into your iTunes library. There’s no special way (that I can find) to browse only videos. However, a Smart Playlist with “QuickTime” in the “Kind” field can easily solve that.
As a classic case of “bug or feature?”, when you have a video playing in a pop-up window, and you poke around elsewhere within iTunes, so that the video is no longer selected, the video simply disappears, though the audio keeps playing. Bug or feature? You decide.
There is also at least one iTMS album which gives you a free PDF brochure on purchase (Jack Johnson’s In Between Dreams). I’m not sure quite how this is implemented, as I don’t want to buy the album to find out.
In any case, with these new features, it seems Apple is trying to capture a new kind of reluctant “switcher”, the folks (myself included) who are still reluctant to buy entire albums online, when it’s not much more expensive to get a physical copy with nicely printed liner notes and possibly other included goodies. A stack of Sharpie-markered CD-R’s is simply not the same a display rack of “real” CD’s. I’m sorry, maybe I’m just old-fashioned.
Almost all of my iTunes purchases fit the following criteron: a song that I really like, on an album I otherwise have no interest in. Example: Steriogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man” - Great song, iffy album.
Will extra digital goodies with online album purchases change my reluctance to abandon physical “album” artifacts? We’ll see. But it looks like Apple is making a smart, low-risk attempt at making that happen.
“A stack of Sharpie-markered CD-R’s”
Man, who’s even doing that? Just sync w/ your iPod and go!
“I’m sorry, maybe I’m just old-fashioned”
Indeed. But at least you’re not lamenting the fact that you can’t roll joints with MP3s like the good old days of gatefold LPs…
Kieran 5/11/05 @ 3:29 pm