In what seems to be a concentrated effort to jump start its new movie rental business Apple will be offering 99 cent rentals on iTunes once per week on a new movie.
The rental will be available on Thursday and the special pricing will run until the next Monday. The first movie available is The Hours which is available now.
Apple also announced that there was a small update to the iTunes platform, in which there are several bugfixes including a fix to make the service more compatible with the Apple TV interface.
Result for: itunes
The Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) have revealed a new proposal that would allow all Canadian citizens to download as much unauthorized music as they please for the low, flat-rate of $5 CAD per month.
The new proposal, which will require federal approval to pass, will add a $5 CAD surcharge to your monthly ISP bill but allow unlimited music downloading from sources of your choice.
“That’s a very reasonable amount of money to legally, without fear of any legal repercussions, to be able to download that and share it with [whomever] you want to and as many times as you want,” said Eddie Schwartz, president of the songwriters’ group. “On iTunes to download one album, it’s $10. This is half of that and this is pretty reasonable to have access to the entire repertoire of Western music.”
The organization plans to meet at Toronto’s Ryerson University to launch the proposal while asking for an immediate amendment to the Canadian Copyright Act. The new right will be called the Right to Equitable Reenumeration for Music File Sharing and would allow the songwriters to collect fees from all Internet subscribers.
The group went on to say that the new proposal would bring the SAC, and the songwriters, composers and lyricists behind it between $500 million and $900 million CAD per year.
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The United Press International has reported that a tentative agreement between Apple and former Beatle Paul McCartney had been made which would mean that the Beatles’ back catalog will finally be available for digital distribution on iTunes.
The deal, which could be in excess of $400 million USD, will be split between all the former members of the Beatles, Sony, EMI, and Michael Jackson all of which have some rights to the songs, whether it be in publishing, recording or reproduction.
Paul McCartney recently released his latest solo work for distribution on iTunes and that was followed by the release of John Lennon’s solo work prompting widespread rumors that the Beatles catalog would soon follow. There has been no official announcement from either McCartney or Apple so for now the report is just speculation but we will keep you updated.
