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Here’s another of Apple’s “secret” Leopard features. With the launch of the iTunes Movie Store next week, Apple is preparing to evolve iTunes beyond its current state to be the ultimate media player. Next week, there will be a “Movies” link in the iTunes store, like the current “Music Videos” link to direct users to the new Movie section. It is then expected to get its own dedicated tab on the sidebar as “Movie Store” in a future iTunes update. Other features of the new iTunes 6.0.6 (or iTunes 6.1?) will include support for the new iPod nanos. Then in Leopard, iTunes will evolve alongside Front Row 2. Both Stores should be accessible from the FrontRow menu. The “iTunes Music Store” will be renamed as the Store is now not just music… The search features in the Store are also to recieve a facelift, with predictable searches (ala Google Suggest). Do bear in mind though, that all this can change by the time of Leopard’s launch - currently scheduled for April 2007. Now did that make any sense?…

Update: Who was right, who was right! Well sort of.

We all know Apple will be announcing the iTunes Movie Store on September 12th. Here’s the list of movies which will be available (or will be within a few weeks of launch) for $9.99-$14.99. It is expected they will follow a similar FairPlay model as the iTunes songs, so hopefully we can move the film to 5 other computers and an iPod. Burning to DVD is not expected to be allowed. Most major and indie studios have signed up, except Sony - so that means no Spiderman or James Bond films.

Walt Disney: James and the Giant Peach, Pocahontas, The Lion King, Aladdin, Chicken Little, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Sky High, Ice Princess, National Treasure, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Disney/Pixar: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars.

Miramax: Cold Mountain, The Hours, Chicago, Cinderella Man, Scary Movie 1, Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4.

Touchstone Pictures: The Royal Tenenbaums, Pearl Harbor, The Sixth Sense (with Hollywood Pictures), Unbreakable, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Shanghai Noon, Deuce Bigalow Male Gigolo, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, King Arthur, Hidalgo, Open Range, Signs, Reign of Fire.

Lions Gate: American Psycho, Dogma, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Pi, Requiem for a Dream, Open Water, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, The Punisher, Fahrenheit 9/11, Crash, Alone in the Dark, Hostel, Saw 1 and 2.

It is also not known wether the store will be open to all the countries that have an iTunes Store. It may just be America!

A digital distributor has confirmed to us that a new build of iTunes Producer was seeded to them last week. It now forces distributors to upload music tracks in their native lossless formats. Could we be seeing higher quality tracks coming with the next iTunes revision? We certainly hope so! Other rumored features for iTunes 7 include new social tools and a new metal-less interface.

A survey published by Apple today could possibly reveal features coming up in the next revision of iTunes. It mentions features such as “a rewards program if you buy more”, “ability to view what my friends wish they could buy”, “ability to view what my friends are listening to now (with their permission)’, “ability to view my friends’ playlists (with their permission)”, “ability to view my friends’ recent purchases (with their permission)” and “ability to view my friends’ favorite artists (with their permission)”. It looks like Apple is trying to make the iTunes Store more social. Also, it mentions how you would feel about Apple adding more movies and T.V. shows to the UK iTunes Store, at last! Maybe this will be previewed at WWDC?

Update: It also mentions about Apple possibly replacing lost songs through a maintenance agreement, as we reported last November.

Apple announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 200 million songs from its European iTunes Music Stores in just over two years, and the iTunes music catalog now includes more than three million songs from major music companies and over 1,000 independent record labels. Launched in the UK, France and Germany in June 2004, the iTunes Music Store now operates in 17 European countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Congratulations Apple!

Echoing France’s recent ban on DRM, it now seems that Denmark is to follow and also ban DRM. Reportedly, Maersk and the Denmark’s largest telecommunications company, TDC, are speaking out in favor of such an action. Maersk and TDC are not only two of largest companies in Denmark, but they are amongst the largest and most powerful in Europe. Both also operate online music ventures. Gert Rieder, CEO of TDC, said that “We can only press for something like the French, because it gives the consumers as many opportunities to shop for music.” In Denmark it is currently illegal to circumvent DRM. Brian Mikkelsen, the Danish Minister of Culture, said that legislation addressing the matter would be introduced in 2007. He expressed optimism that DRM interoperability would be backed by the various record labels. Goodbye iTunes Denmark?

French lawmakers approved an online copyright bill Tuesday that would require Apple to break open the exclusive format behind its market-leading iTunes music store and iPod players. The draft law - which also sets new penalties for music pirates - would force Apple, Sony and others to share proprietary copy-protection technologies so that rivals can offer compatible services and players. That would permit consumers for the first time to download music directly to their iPods from stores other than iTunes, or to rival music players from iTunes France. Lawmakers voted 296-193 to approve the bill. The legislation now has to be debated and voted by the Senate - a process expected to begin in May. It seems most likely that Apple will withdraw iTunes from France rather than open up it’s FairPlay technology. I want an open iTunes too!

The iTunes Store is now offering their first movie up for sale. “High School Musical” is available (US-only) for $9.99. The only question to ask is why you would spend that much on a really bad Disney Channel movie in really bad resolution. At least this confirms what we thought, Apple is gearing up to sell movies! Let’s just hope Apple wasn’t using this to test demand…

Apple today made some changes to the iTunes store. They introduced a “multi-pass” system to pre-purchase upcoming episodes of daily TV shows a month in advance. The new system will automatically download new shows as they are aired. The shows downloaded still have the same FairPlay DRM, so they’ll never ‘expire’ to play. For example you can buy 16 new episodes for one month at $9.99, which is quite a large discount. It’s currently US-only, but hopefully the rumors of the video store spreading to other countries will turn out to be true. Apple is also expected to add some new functionality to podcasts, mainly allowing users to purchase special podcasts or subscribe to them by in sets of a week or month.

Apple’s 1 billion song iTunes contest has finished! Apple haven’t yet released the details of the winners, but it wasn’t us so that’s 9 staff members down. Let us know if you won anything.

1 billion songs have been legally downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Music lovers like you in 21 countries around the globe have purchased one billion songs from the iTunes Music Store. And for helping us reach this massive milestone in digital music history, we’d like to thank you.

Update: The billionth song “Speed of Sound” was purchased as part of Coldplay’s X&Y album by Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Michigan.

NBC is offering the pilot episode of its new legal drama “Conviction” for free on the iTunes Music Store nearly two weeks before the show makes its network series premiere. NBC is also offering a music video by The Gabe Dixon Band and a behind-the-scenes look at the show. The hour-long show, currently being heavily promoted on air, will debut on the network on Friday 3rd March. Conviction is from the writers of Law & Order. The free download is only available on the US iTunes.

Apple has sold 30 million songs through iTunes in ten days and is closing in on selling its first billion. iTunes launched its billion song countdown on February 7. Its song sales ticker now shows it has sold 981,301,852 tunes. On February 7 Macworld reported the company to have sold 951,060,444 songs. At three million song sales each day, Apple seems set to reach its billion song target within the week. I sooo want that $10,000 iTunes voucher, and of course the 10 iPods and 20″ iMac

The rumors have been coming left and right, and requests for a higher resolution are always prevalent. But is Apple actually going to make the video size larger? MacNN reports that Apple could triple the size of its video on April fools day. This is also the birthday 30th of Apple. Macenstein weighs in on the possibilities. Traditionally Apple has celebrated milestones and anniversaries with a give away such as the billionth song count down. However there is the one exception of the 20th anniversary Macintosh. This article also appears to be additional confirmation of the new video iPods. This seems logical if Apple is to release the Mac “media” mini.

Apple kicked off the “Billion Song Countdown” for the iTunes Music Store. With about 50 million songs to go until the landmark sales figure, Apple has started giving away a black 4GB iPod nano and a $100 iTunes Music card for every 100,000 songs, with the grand prize for the billionth song purchase consisting of a 20-inch iMac, 10 60GB iPods, a $10,000 iTunes Music Store card, as well as a scholarship created in their name.

“A scholarship will be created by Apple in the name of the Grand Prize winner to a world renowned music institution to be selected by Apple. The scholarship recipient shall receive four (4) years of tuition to a university-level program at the music department of the selected institution. The Grand Prize winner shall not be eligible to receive the scholarship or participate in determining the scholarship recipient. The scholarship shall have no monetary value to the Grand Prize winner.”

Users can also enter the contest without the purchase of music via this form. Free entries are limited to 25 per person, per day.

MTV Networks and Apple today announced that hit television programming from MTV, MTV2, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and The N is now available for purchase and download on the iTMS. The new content features top-rated favorites such as “Punk’d,” “South Park,” “Dora the Explorer,” “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Laguna Beach.” Apple states in the press release, “Nickelodeon’s “Dora” is the first preschool program available on iTunes, while Comedy Central’s “Stand-Up” is iTunes’ first stand-up comedy program, and MTV’s “Laguna Beach” and “Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Gauntlet 2” are the first reality-based titles available on iTunes.” With the addition of these 14 shows from MTV Networks, iTunes now offers over 40 TV shows for $1.99 per episode for viewing on any computer with iTunes or on your new iPod video.

The paranoid folks in the Apple kingdom will be pleased to know that iTunes now requires permission to turn on the new MiniStore feature. What is this MiniStore: It basically provides an interface to the iTMS whilst in your library. Requires iTunes v6.0.2 to use it.

The Australian iTunes Music Store now includes artists from Sony/BMG. Tracks are $1.69, the same price as tracks from other labels. Albums are typically $16.99, although some are higher than this. Along with the release comes a special page called The Latest and Greatest, which includes a selection of newly-added Sony/BMG albums. iTunes Australia launched on 25 October 2005, however Sony’s entry into the Australian store was long delayed due to disagreements over the pricing model.

Literally means “Video Single”. The first Vingle is available in the UK iTunes store and is for the Pussycat Dolls “Beep”. Strangely there seems to have been no announcement of this anywhere. In fact the only other time we’ve heard of Vingle was when it was trademarked back in November. Who knows, maybe this is an accidental release? Yet another mistake by Apple’s superb web management team… *cough* iLife ‘06. Oh and another thing, since when has the UK had Apple stuff first?!

The Disney ABC Television Group announced today that it plans to add a slew of new programming to the iTunes Music Store. The new offerings will come from ESPN and ABC Sports, ABC Entertainment and Touchstone Television, ABC Family, ABC News, Buena Vista Television, Disney Channel, SOAPnet, and Walt Disney Feature Animation. The content will be a mix of free and paid downloads.

ESPN and ABC Sports are offering condensed versions of all four BCS Bowl Games from ABC Sports. Yesterday’s Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and Nokia Sugar Bowl will be available today, while today’s Orange Bowl and tomorrow’s Rose Bowl will be available the day after they air. Other ESPN content will be available later this month, including the “Best Of The X Games,” ESPN Classic’s “SportsCentury” interviews, “This is SportsCenter” commercials, and “Knight School,” the forthcoming reality program featuring Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight.

Also available later this month will be ABC Family’s original series “Wildfire,” Disney Channel’s animated series “Kim Possible” and “The Proud Family” and SOAPnet’s original biography series “Soapography,” as well as ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and the popular 1970’s Saturday morning “School House Rock” vignettes and episodes of Buena Vista Television’s “Ebert and Roeper.”

Classic animated shorts produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and featured on Buena Vista Home Entertainment’s upcoming “Disney at the Academy Awards,” including the 1933 Academy Award-winning “The Three Little Pigs” and the 1935 Academy Award-winning “The Tortoise and the Hare,” will also be available.

In addition, free video podcasts from ABC News will be available on iTunes, including daily segments from “Good Morning America” and the “World News Tonight” webcast, as well as ABC News Now’s “Money Minute,” “Medical Minute” and “Buzz Cut.”

Apple has made available through its iTunes Music Store a couple of free to download video clips:

Saturday Night Live Short - Lazy Sunday
Sci Fi Inside: Battlestar Galactica

They respectively last 2′31″ and 21′03″ and they’re available for free on the U.S. iTunes store. This is the first time Apple offers free videos for download on iTunes. Perhaps Apple will start a “free video per week” campaign like they did with music when the Store opened.

Security researcher Tom Ferris has posted details on a security vulnerability that affects the latest versions of Apple’s iTunes and QuickTime software. A specially crafted .mov video file could cause a heap overflow and potentially give an attacker the ability to execute arbitrary code. Ferris first reported the problem earlier this month and says he notified Apple at that time. He says both Mac OS X and Windows machines are affected, as are older versions of iTunes and QuickTime. Security firm Secunia has rated the vulnerability “moderately critical”.

According to this report by The Register, it appears that Apple has axed their plans to add ringtones to the iTunes Music Store. The plan was that you could purchase ringtones and then mix them in GarageBand before transferring them to mobile phone. The new feature was reported to be a headline feature of iLife ‘06 at Macworld. No explanation was given for the feature drop. There have also been rumors of satellite radio integration in iTunes, but there has been no word on that for months, so maybe that too has been dropped.

From January, HP will stop bundling iTunes with all new HP PCs. The announcement comes after HP similarly decided to stop selling HP branded iPods this June. HP reports that this is due to their new “digital lifestyle” plans starting early 2006. BusinessWeek also reports that HP has been seen cozying up to Microsoft. In turn, Microsoft has announced their own partnership with MTV to launch a music store early next year. The new service to called “Urge” is set to offer the standard non-iTunes setup, with files encoded in Windows Media and no iPod support. Does Apple feel threatened? Probably not the slightest.