It may not have won any Oscars, Emmys or Peabodys, but the Disney made-for-TV flick "High School
Musical" (which looks like a sort of "Fame" knockoff) has earned the dubious distinction of being the
first full-length movie to be sold by Apple on the iTunes Music Store. Sort of. While
a direct link to the
movie does indeed take you to a page where you can buy it, you won't find it any other way. In fact, although the movie
is listed on the Disney Channel's page on iTMS, there's no link to actually buy it. Then there's the price. The movie
reportedly initially appeared on iTMS for $1.99, then disappeared for a few hours, only to reappear at a $9.99 price
point. From the looks of things, this seems like another pricing experiment from Apple, akin to the recent
"multi-pass" offering for "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," which lets customers
pay $9.99 per month for all episodes of the two shows. As far as price tests go, that's one that seems to pass; as for
paying $9.99 for a low-res copy of a movie of the week that will probably show up in Blockbuster's remainder bin in a
month, let's just say it's time for Apple and Disney to go back to school for a bit.
[Thanks to everyone who
sent this in]
posted Mar 15th 2006 11:59AM
