iTunes for Movies

As if the content companies haven't already been making fools of themselves with some recent strategic decisions, things are only going to get worse. Sony is now saying that it wants to create an "iTunes for movies," saying it will "set business models, pricing models, distribution models like (Apple chief Steve) Jobs did for music, but for the film industry." First of all, that's simply not going to happen. Sony is in the content business itself -- so its competitors in the movie business probably aren't going to be thrilled about contributing to its movie store. However, even if they can set up business models, pricing models and distribution models just like iTunes, they've totally missed the point. That, alone, is not what made iTunes successful. It's the customer experience. Apple made the customer experience work. They made it easy. While some of their decisions have been less than user friendly concerning copy protection and the forced-iPod connection -- overall it's the user experience that makes iTunes work. That means, for the most part, not treating your customers like criminals. However, Sony's entertainment execs have made it clear that they already view their customers as criminals and will do everything they can to lock all their content down. Hell, just take a look at Sony's widely disparaged already existing iTunes clone for music to see how copying the business model isn't nearly enough.