One of the apps I worked on at Chaotic Moon launched today. This one isn’t just any app, though. It’s called Disney Movies Anywhere, and it allows people who have purchased Disney movies in iTunes to own them in Disney’s entitlement service, called KeyChest. A user downloads the app, links their Disney account to their iTunes account, and all iTunes-purchased Disney movies are automatically transferred to Disney’s system. All of the movies streamed to the app come from Disney’s cloud, not from iTunes.
In addition, if you have a library of movies in KeyChest, those movies will appear as purchased in iTunes. At that point they’re treated like any other purchased Apple content: they can be downloaded to iTunes on the desktop or to an iOS device, they’re available for streaming via iCloud, and so on. All you have to do is link your Disney account with your iTunes account and the rest happens automatically.
Apple is allowing another digital media entitlement system access to iTunes. Think about that for a minute. If this becomes a trend, it could change the nature of digital media forever.
One other thing I’d like to add is acknowledgement of the outstanding team of engineers that build this app. They put together a very complex piece of software in a very short amount of time, and at no point during the project were there any emergencies or fires. We worked at a sustainable rate throughout the project, and never had to go through crunch time where we were grinding through nights and weekends.
A huge round of applause to Dimitri Stancioff, Matt Klosterman, and Zef Houssney. Amazing work.