Apple Agrees to Raise iTunes Movie Pricing at FreshDV

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Apple Agrees to Raise iTunes Movie Pricing

Published by Matthew Jeppsen December 5th, 2007 in Formats, News, Off Topic

New technologies go through several distinct stages or inflection points in their growth; price, mass or market adoption, and commoditization. For DVD, the tipping point in cost came in the late 90’s when DVD players finally dropped below $400. Shortly thereafter, the critical mass factor kicked in…20% of homes had a DVD player. And now we have commoditization in that players can be had for $25-$50. And it all snowballed once the price inflection point was hit. I said all that to say this…iTunes movie pricing has been a thorn in the side of major studios for a while now, and it seems they’ve finally gotten Apple to back down.

“…studios such as 20th Century Fox have been successful in convincing Apple to pay a higher wholesale price of $15 per movieâ€”just $3 less than the average price of a brick-and-mortar DVD. What this means for the actual selling price of a movie in the iTunes Store remains to be seen, but this deal apparently secures more studio support for doing things like including an iTunes-optimized copy of the movie on store-bought Enhanced DVDs.”

The good news is you’ll probably have greater selection of digital movies, as it is more attractive for studios to come to the party.. The bad news is that this will make the decision to buy online less clear cut from a monetary standpoint, and quite possibly will limit adoption.

6 Responses to “Apple Agrees to Raise iTunes Movie Pricing”

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1 Kenn Dec 5th, 2007 at 9:54 am

I thought $12.99 was too much. I’ll never buy a downloadable movie for 15. The right price is $7.99 to $9.99. Then it would take off.
2 John Kary Dec 5th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

I couldn’t agree more with Kenn. My limit for a CD or DVD is $10, unless it is a special edition or a product I really want. While I don’t know the true added cost of the packaging/shipping overhead, then brick & mortar mark-up, I do know that digital distribution has got to be a lot cheaper. Bandwidth is only getting cheaper… Paying $15 for a lower resolution video and stereo audio mix for an iPod just doesn’t make sense.
3 Graeme Nattress Dec 5th, 2007 at 8:34 pm

Utter madness! Why would people pay more for an inferior product? We all know download is the future, and download is much cheaper to deliver to people’s homes than bricks’n'mortar stores - so why does it cost so much?

Business:

1) sell a product people want (high quality movie, HD, great image and sound quality, multichannel)
2) at a price they can afford (which is less than they’re paying now)
3) and make your customer happy (extras)

Graeme
4 Kenn Dec 5th, 2007 at 9:30 pm

Maybe if Apple comes up with a way to have a few commentary tracks on one Quicktime Movie and you can pick which one to play. That’s one thing I’ve missed on iTunes Movie’s. Though I might be the only person!
5 kristaps Dec 6th, 2007 at 8:13 am

maybe because Dollar is so cheap now, and to compensate, they have to raise the price?
6 Thomas Dec 7th, 2007 at 11:18 am

I would never pay for an online movie. It is too easy to rip from a DVD. I love how corporations think they can sway people’s habits. I can see those greedy bastards just sitting in their board room thinking, “Boy we are going to get rich now!” Studios, heed this warning. MP3 were still being traded heavily even after the lawsuits started raining down. It was only when iTunes opened up did you see a curve in the activity. Why did that work? Because a dollar a song wasn’t too much. So many DVD’s can be found on sale for $5.00 or less. Why would people pay only for a degraded version that has so many limits placed on it. This kind of stupidity forces the hand of stealing.