May 24, 2013: Apple begins phasing out the option to download movie trailers from its once enormously popular iTunes Movie Trailers website.

The move signals a major change in the way people consume digital content as the internet evolves. Downloads will continue to decline, as streaming services like YouTube and Netflix pick up steam.

iTunes Movie Trailers: Made for the internet

Apple introduced its iTunes Movie Trailers website (archived version here: trailers.apple.com) in the late 1990s alongside its QuickTime 5 software. In the days before streaming video services like YouTube, Apple’s site quickly became the go-to place for fans wanting to watch movie trailers at a higher resolution than was available anywhere else.

Coming soon after the launch of the internet-ready original iMac (where the “i” stood for “internet”), the iTunes trailers site exemplified Apple’s embrace of the web in a way it largely failed to do previously. At around the same time, Apple launched its online Apple Store, which capitalized on Dell’s successful sales model.

1999’s Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace trailer became the first big hit for Apple’s site. (The iTunes Movie Trailers site came into being, according to Apple employees, after Cupertino was appalled by the low-quality encoding of the Phantom Menace trailer hosted by Lucasfilm.)

After setting up a meeting with the movie studio, Apple started hosting trailers that looked far better than the RealVideo alternative of the time. Apple did not pay for this new content that it hosted. However, Apple did pay for the bandwidth. The arrangement, like the profit share Apple CEO Steve Jobs worked out for iTunes soon after, worked in both parties’ favor.

The rise of YouTube fuels shift to streaming video

The technology showed off Apple’s tech prowess and pushed QuickTime downloads. Meanwhile, the movie studios got free advertising. A little more than a decade later, however, the landscape had changed.

YouTube, which launched in 2005, had become a household name, and it gave users instant access to streaming movie trailers. The only remaining appeal of the iTunes Movie Trailers site was for people who wanted to download 1080p copies rather than the 720p versions that streaming sites offered at the time.

The exact reason(s) for Apple ending movie trailer downloads has never been revealed. However, it marked a definite turning point in the decline of downloads and the continued rise of streaming. By 2015, U.S. revenue from streaming music edged out downloads for the first time.

Streaming leads the way to Apple TV+

More than a decade after ceasing downloads from the iTunes Movie Trailers site, the landscape has shifted almost exclusively toward streaming. Apple dismembered the venerable iTunes, pushing its functions into three distinct apps in 2019 — Apple TV, Apple Music and Apple Podcasts. And the company pulled the plug on the Windows version of iTunes in 2024.

While Apple continues to sell full movies for download via the Apple TV app, streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ lead the market today. Apple pursues that same path, pumping out content for its Apple TV+ subscription service, which launched in 2019.

As Apple’s streaming video service continually adds new original content, it seems to finally be finding an audience. In 2021, Apple TV+ became the first streamer to win an Academy Award for best picture, thanks to indie flick CODA. New shows like Ted Lasso, Severance and Silo also became legitimate hits. And these days, movies like Argylle and shows like Dark Matter quickly rise to top the streaming charts.

What was the first movie trailer you remember downloading from Apple’s iTunes Movie Trailers site? Leave your comments below.