First Movie Available on The iTunes Music Store

Ever since TV shows became available on the iTunes Music Store, everyone knew what the next step would be�movies.

Apple's movie service has been the subject of much talk and everyone was expecting some big announcement, a big splash, to signal to the world that movies had finally arrived� Interestingly enough, the first movie became available on the iTunes Music Store quietly and discreetly, without any trumpets or red carpets.

'High School Musical' is the first full-length movie to become available on the iTunes Music Store. The movie is a 1 hour 39 minute long Disney Channel original TV movie, a 487 MB download. Interestingly enough, the first time it appeared, the price for it was $1.99, the same as any other video on the Music Store, however, it seems that this was a mistake as the movie became unavailable and then became available again for the price of $9.99.

While Apple has been working on a distribution deal with the major movie studios, it seems that this is not a part of that deal, and, rather, a product of Apple's closer relationship with Disney. It is still an important first step, and most likely will also serve as a field test to gauge user's reaction to the download time and quality of the encoding.