iTunes now selling movies

Just a few days after I reported that Myspace was going to take a big chunk out of iTunes’ digital music retail business, the store strikes back by offering up videos through their store.

iTunes is once again ahead of the game with this latest media offering, beating out competitors AOL and Amazon.com, who have also signed contracts with movie studios to sell movies online. Now it’s almost comical that when you open iTunes—and click on the little icon on the left-hand side of the program that says ‘Music Store’—you aren’t just transported to a portal that offers music downloads. You are staring at a store that sells virtually all kinds of media, from music and music videos to TV shows and (now) movies. With the next version of the video-capable iPod due for a release by Christmas (if some reports are to be believed), Apple is apparently getting ready to appease the demand for more visual content.

The store first sold Disney’s High School Musical beginning in March; offering the teen-hit for ten bucks. The test apparently was a positive one for the Apple application, and today iTunes started selling a vast (and growing) amount of videos, ranging from classics like Dumbo to new releases such as Glory Road and Kinky Boots.

All in all, iTunes has just over 120 videos for sale (as of September 12), though 53 of them are shorts. The going price for the movies is $9.99 or $12.99 for a feature-length production (Pirates of the Caribbean is selling for $9.99) and $1.99 for a short. Currently one video is being offered for Free: an international short film titled ‘Covert.’

You won’t find X3: The Last Stand in the store right now, and not Ben Hur or Titanic, either. As of now, iTunes is offering mostly Disney fare—though M. Night Shyamalan’s got a couple of his flicks there, including The Sixth Sense—and 3 of Pixar’s feature films are amongst the pickings, too, along with one of their shorts: One Man Band.

It’s a promising start, though, and one that should keep drawing in revenue for Steve Jobs and continue to thrust Apple out in front of the rest of the competition. (How do they keep doing that?!?)