I agree with you on all that stuff.

…the last music video I watched was something from Christina Aguilera’s Slut-Yourself-Rich period a couple of years ago….

God I loved that period.

Anyhoo…I generally agree that there probably isn’t much money in selling music videos (although I personally rather enjoy them and will probably buy them). However, it seems to me that music videos are a “low-hanging fruit” that would give Apple an easy entry into the video market. Movies are the obvious breadwinner here, but I believe there are still licensing deals and copyright issues to be dealt with. Concert videos is a great idea, but it requires production of them, which is no doubt an expensive and complicated task. Music videos, on the other hand, are just sitting there, ready to be taken, ripe to be picked.

It seems like a reasonable first shot at the video market to me. I just hope it’s not the be-all-end-all of Apple’s video plans (and surely isn’t not, right?).

Also, don’t forget that the concerts in and of themselves are *already* profitable. Live and archived footage is just gravy.

That makes sense. I guess my real point was that just because Apple is doing music videos first doesn’t necessarily mean all this other stuff isn’t on their radar…

I do not have a TV (college student), but when I did watch MTV or VH1 and it was music videos, I usually just had it on to listen to the latest in music. I did not sit down and actually watch the videos.

All in all, like you said, I do not think it is a market worth going after. There is Yahoo Launch which I think does a terrific job of showing music videos if you are inclined to watch some.

If they could let a DVD be ripped and watched on your iPod then that would be great, but that will never happen. It’s illegal to do anything cool like that with DVD’s.

But what about television shows – sitcoms, cartoons, Charlie Rose? I hear stories (as I don’t have one myself) of people watching the Simpsons via their cellphones on the train to work. Is this not true?

Perhaps going astray, but the BBC is soon to start releasing their shows online. I’ve heard that they are going to rely upon P2P for distribution so they don’t have to absorb all the bandwidth costs themselves.

As I’m a native Seattle-ite living in Europe, I can’t tell you what I would do to have easy access to some shows. Yes, I would even be willing to pay to download. Will tv in the states find a model to follow BBC’s lead as well? Could Apple have a role (as opposed to exclusively distributing movies)? Is this discussion merely about music videos and movies?

Vaska: Distributing TV shows may be a bit easier than movies in some cases, given the shorter length and lower quality requirements, but the rights issues are still there. Think about the show “WKRP in Cincinnati” which had to have all of its music removed when redistributed because the authors of the music didn’t agree to let their stuff be reused without being paid additional fees. The thing about TV is that when a station like NBC broadcasts a show like “Friends”, they don’t automatically have the right to do whatever they want with it afterwards. The producers of the show (an independent company) retain those rights so whenever NBC decides they want to do something else with the show besides just air it on TV, they need to go back to the production company for rights. Studios are starting to get hip to this stuff and negotiating “IP distribution rights” in advance, so the situation should get better in the future, but it’s not retroactive, so most of your favorite shows will still have issues.

I think you have to also see the iPod as Apple’s strongest marketing tool for the rest of its range. If they want to move into selling movies (and perhaps produce a media centre Mac to sit under the telly) they’ll need every trick in the book to make it succeed, and getting people used to viewing cheaper videos (and ones they’ve created themselves) on their iPods is one such trick.

But doesn’t that open up the arena to those production studios to go and sell their content to (say…) Apple directly?

Of course, it would mean that Apple would have to deal with a lot more parties, though they of course would be less powerfull.