Wal-Mart’s Online Movie Premiere
This article is from Newsweek (so I can’t give you a link) February 26, 2007 on page 16. Wal-Mart just the first legal movie downloading site. You can buy movies for something around $14 and download them to your computer. The author said there were a lot of technological difficulties when he tried it and you can’t view the movie anywhere other than where you downloaded it to. Despite the websites problems Hollywood proved to be rather happy. The six major studios (and don’t worry the website offers movies from all of them) which Hollywood is representing here has wanted to create something like this for years now to open new opportunities for sales. However, they were hesitant and avoided the idea because they didn’t want to “upset” Wal-Mart, considering Wal-Mart sells 40% of all DVD’s, it’s Hollywoods biggest revenue source. America is too lazy to drive the two miles to the closest blockbuster but don’t worry Wal-Mart is taking over (the world).
February 28th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Yes, Hollywood is keen to develop a “legitimate” vehicle to download movies, lest they soon face the problem of peer-to-peer file sharing that the music industry is still wrestling with.
Wal-Mart’s relationship to this is significant as well. DVDs are an important revenue stream for Hollywood studios, and as Wall-Mart is a leader in this area, Hollywood is reluctant to take on the world’s largest retailer. The studios are playing it safe by “letting” Wal-Mart handle the tricky business of movie downloading.