The size of a movie file online is vastly larger than a five minute song. The annoyance of trying to download a movie up until recently prevented movie downloading on the scale as music downloading. As a result movie companies had time to observe what the music companies did right, and wrong. BloggingStock's Tom Taulli just posted a story pointing out that now movie companies are moving forward with a very different approach than the music companies did. They're partnering up with file sharing companies to use their technologies to distribute their content and find new customers.

Warner will be posting some 1,000 titles for sale via Guba.com and BitTorrent. As noticed, they're not giving the license to distribute solely to one company. Obviously this is simply to maximize distribution. But it's also due to a move made by Steve Jobs not too long ago, when Steve fought to keep songs at a single price of 99 cents, despite music company resistance. Movie companies, by keeping various distribution channels, wish to keep pricing flexibility and control and avoid getting locked in.

With networks experimenting with putting ads onto TV shows and releasing them online themselves, and movie companies choosing to partner with P2P companies, single channel content distributors like iTunes have a big struggle in front of them. Apple no longer will have first mover or prime advantage.

The worse case scenario is that the iTunes store is no longer able to obtain A-list content and remains frozen where it is, only picking up stuff around the edges like the MTV offerings announced yesterday. iTunes becomes a secondary player in a large market of digital media, with iPods playing various media, but the iTunes/iPods combination not being as strong.

Best case scenario is that Steve manages to get the same content, as well as some the occasional lock in and continues on, using iTunes momentum to carry on.

But either way, iTunes will probably not be seeing the exclusives that it has enjoyed in the past anymore.