Disney have licensed popular soundtracks to Apple’s iTunes service – but they’ll only be exclusively available there until the end of September. Short licensing deals are a popular tactic with online music retailers: they allow flexibility in an evolving market, allow labels to pick and chose the most popular download service and permit licensors to distribute music from their own stores once the agreement has expired.
Amongst the music that will be available will be the soundtracks from Disney classics such as The Lion King, Snow White and the Little Mermaid. More recent films will also feature with music from hits like Toy Story and Finding Nemo.
Apart from this compelling content being licensed to a download service for the first time, the deal is interesting because of Apple’s connection with Disney: Steve Jobs runs iTunes and Pixar, and Pixar recently broke off their deal with Disney.
Jobs said in a statement “Now iTunes users can add these timeless Disney songs to their music libraries and enjoy them wherever they go with their iPods.”
Apple on the news
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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