Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store added six new shows from Warner Bros. Entertainment Tuesday, including the first season of the hit show Friends and the sci-fi series Babylon 5.
Also added Tuesday were the first seasons of classic Warner Bros. cartoons The Flintstones and The Jetsons. Warner Bros. also made available the pilot episode of a new DC Comics series Aquaman, and highlights from the comedy show MADtv’s eighth, ninth and 10th seasons. All episodes sell for US$1.99 each, and can be played on the iTunes application or on video-enabled iPods.
Tuesday also saw one of the biggest early opponents of digital music piracy finally make its catalog available online. The works of Metallica, one of the world’s all-time best-selling hard rock acts, were uploaded onto iTunes, with each song selling for US$0.99. The group’s early and vocal opposition to Napster’s file-sharing software, before it was reincarnated as a legitimate rival to iTunes, gives Apple’s service a further nod of legitimacy as the conduit of choice for legal digital music.
However, the group’s 1993 three-CD live box set, Live Sh*t: Binge and Purge, and its 1999 double-disc collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony, S&M, were not included in Tuesday’s releases, although single tracks appear as bonus tracks on some of the albums offered.
-Steven Schwankert, IDG News Service (Beijing Bureau)
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- Apple to Announce iTunes Movie Rentals in August?
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