The trouble is that Apple has been the only online retailer which has persuaded all of the terrified recording industry to dip its toes into online distribution. They're the ones who place restrictions on content distribution (DRM) and they fear the destruction of their old model should they allow all online retailers to peddle their IP.
The result? Apple dominates online distribution of legal music and if you really want to sell your music online, you have to sell it on iTunes. The recording industry's tepid adoption of change has awarded Apple a near-monopoly, which Apple uses to extract access to more IPs and provide their customers with the less restrictive service they really want (some songs are available without DRM for a premium price).
Now Apple is going to leverage that dominance into legal movie downloads. Many of these movie studios are owned by the same mass-media conglomerates that own the record labels, so dealing with them must have been easy. It's a guarantee that they will branch out from rentals to sales eventually. Since the iPod, Apple has always started off targeting a narrow, high-profit segment of a new media market it enters and slowly cracked it open to target all segments.
I've really got to hand it to the dealmakers and contract lawyers at Apple. It's amazing how many media publishers they've managed to get on board, however they've done it.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
