iTunes Has Movies!

The iTunes Music Store has updated, and is now selling movies. If you remember my post at the end of August, Business Week speculated that Apple would be charging $14.99 per movie, an increase from the original $9.99 that Steve Jobs wanted to charge. Well, it looks like there was an even compromise, and new releases are selling for $12.99. Older movies are selling for $9.99. At least, that's how I think it works, although I wouldn't say "The Life Aquatic" is a new release, and it's selling for $12.99.

I've got kind of a lukewarm reaction to this. It's still not attractive for me to get a small discount on new releases, since many new releases can be bought for $19.99. But it will be interesting to see what happens with the older releases. The Long Tail in action, baby!

The weirdest thing in all of this, I think, is how Apple has branded the store. First it was the iTunes Music Store... now it's called the iTunes Store. They dropped the music, but they haven't dropped the "Tunes." Anyone think we may see iStore or iDownload any time soon?

Update: Engadget has some great info around this subject from the Steve Jobs keynote. A couple interesting facts from that presentation:

• iTunes has a market share of 88% for legal US downloads
• iTunes is the 5th largest reseller of music in the US, behind Amazon, projected to surpass Amazon in January
• 45 million TV shows have been downloaded from iTunes since last October
• Resolution of video has increased to 640x480.