Movie Rentals Coming to iTunes - What About Music?

As rumored for a while (and previously mentioned) Fox and Disney will both be offering movie rentals via iTunes (for between $2 - $5 for a 24 hour period). So, Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme - and complete hardware line - has now obviously evolved to support time-constrained subscription licenses.

As the music world continues to move to a DRMless ecosystem - with Warner now the 3rd of the 4 major labels to join - one must wonder if Apple is considering entering the subscription music market.

Why?! Well, in a DRM world iTunes became the dominant player partly because the only place you could buy major-label music that worked on an iPod was from iTunes. But now.... now I can unprotected MP3s from multiple sources that work with my iPod. Amazon being the most notable.

So, if Amazon all of a sudden started eating into iTunes sales.... would Apple flick the switch on subscription music to lock them (the consumers) back in? I don't know, but at this point one of the few people that could get people to "rent" their music is the same person that told people not to in the first place.

I still need to post my 2008 predictions... maybe this will be one of my long-shot picks.

Theatrical Release Movies on your iPhone

Not that I am endorsing this, but I can verify that it works (well)....

PirateBay + Azureus (or other BitTorrent client) + iSquint (video conversion software) + iTunes = new movies on your iPhone

DVD quality copies of DieHard 4, Knocked Up, Ocean's 13, Bourne Ultimatum and more in your pocket. Or you can go for handycam versions of newer movies like SuperBad.