A press release from LOVEFiLM has just announced that LOVEFiLM have acquired Amazon’s DVD rental business and customer base. In the deal Amazon has now become the largest shareholder of LOVEFiLM for an undisclosed amount of cash investment.

This take over by LOVEFiLM of a part of Amazon’s service is likely to send ripples throughout the entertainment and internet industries, as it is the 1st time that Amazon have sold off part of their business. LOVEFiLM will now be shown to be one of the major leaders of the Entertainment sector in the UK and Germany.

The switch for Amazon customers into the new LOVEFiLM customers is rumoured to be in the next 2-3 months, all DVD rental’s for both companies will go on as usual till this point.

So what for the future?.. Well now that LOVEFiLM is going to take it’s UK subscriber base from an estimated 500,000 to 900,000 no doubt they will be looking to break the 1million mark. LOVEFiLM have been the number one online DVD rental store in the UK for a couple of years now, so where does this leave Blockbuster in the next few months?.. I would hazard to guess that LOVEFiLM will either buy them out or just take them out of the UK for all entertainment rentals.

Full press release below.

LOVEFiLM to Acquire Amazon’s UK and German DVD Rental Business;
Amazon to become largest shareholder of LOVEFiLM

Luxembourg, February 4, 2008 – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and LOVEFiLM International (www.lovefilm.com), today announced that LOVEFiLM will acquire Amazon Europe’s DVD rental business in the United Kingdom and Germany. As part of this transaction, Amazon Europe will also make a cash investment and become the largest shareholder in LOVEFiLM International Ltd., and finally, the two companies will enter into a multi-year marketing agreement in which Amazon Europe will promote LOVEFiLM’s services on its sites for UK and German customers.

Completion of the deal is subject to regulatory approval in the UK and Germany. Following completion of this deal, the new LOVEFiLM subscriber base will total over 900,000 customers predominantly in the UK and Germany, but also in the Nordics (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark).

“As one of Europe’s largest online DVD rental businesses, LOVEFiLM is well established to serve customers’ increasing demand for entertainment,” said Greg Greeley, Amazon’s vice president of European retail. “Our investment will enable LOVEFiLM to grow the business further and we are excited to be part of their future.”

Simon Calver, CEO of LOVEFiLM International said, “Customers are faced with an astonishing array of choices in the entertainment world these days. LOVEFiLM International will ensure that Amazon Europe’s customers get the best possible DVD rental service. We will be delighted to welcome all Amazon Europe customers to the LOVEFiLM service. This new, bigger customer base will give us an even better position from which to build LOVEFiLM as the best place for customers to find film.”

Amazon Europe will continue to operate the DVD rental business on behalf of LOVEFiLM for a period of time following the close of the transaction to ensure an efficient transition and smooth customer experience. No staff reductions are planned at Amazon’s German or UK operations as a result of the business transfer.

Download the Full LOVEFiLM-Amazon-press-release

I will bring you more news on this story throughout the coming months.

Read more on LOVEFiLM taking over Amazon DVD rental

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Click here see the full post and to watch the video on how LOVEFiLM service works.

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The objective of the game is to control Eric, who has a DVD to return to the video shop before he encours a late fee, but the path to the store is a minefield of cars on a busy street and speeding trains on the railway (don’t try this at home kids!).
It seems LOVEFiLM is showing that having to deal with late fees and the extra journey to the store is a pain, when you don’t have to with their rental system.

The prize is a Sony Bravia 40 inch LCD Television, and 10 runner up prizes of cinema tickets. All you need to do is enter your email address and get to the end of the game in the fastest time. The competition closes on the 29th of February.
Screenshots and list of items in game after the fold. Click to read more.

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This Valentines day (RED) have joined up with several companies to split their proceeds on the gifts they sell for valentines, kind off sharing your love twice. - [ http://lovered.co.uk/ ]

LOVEFiLM’s gifts section has been given a re-vamp to support this cause, and are giving 50% of their profits from all purchases to Aids and HIV suffers in Africa. Good job LOVEFiLM, but the gifts section is a little confusing and not the easiest to get around.

The page has two ways to buy the gift subscription, on the left is a normal DVD rental option, and on the right you can get the DVD rental and a delivery of flowers to your loved one. Sounds simple, and should be, but the layout of the page does look confusing.

Visit the LOVEFiLM valentines DVD and Flowers gifts section, and help fight HIV and AIDS in Africa

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Hi, I was wondering if you had any idea why Lovefilm isn’t renting out Nintendo DS games?

I’ve had a couple of replies from them in the past, one vaguely mentioned that they only did discs not cartridges and the other said there wasn’t the demand.

I’m honestly baffled by both, doubly so when you see the literally record breaking sales the DS has been getting (just google ”DS UK hardware”).

I can only assume someone is just simply out of the loop, the sales speak to the demand and any possible problems should be overshadowed by that demand.

Any info/news on this would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Steve Green

I too had noticed this, and as the Nintendo is such a massively popular hand-held console it seems strange that LOVEFiLM wouldn’t supply any titles for it, yet they still supply titles for older Nintendo consoles.

I have written to LOVEFiLM and they have replied saying that they will look into the oversight. So watch this space to see if any Nintendo DS titles come up for you guys to rent.

Thanks to Steven for bringing this up, if you guys have any other questions please email them and i will post them here, and hopefully bring awareness to LOVEFiLM on all points.

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There hasn’t been too many major developments at LOVEFiLM, and i know in a previous post i did say i would do a review of the new homepage, but as things have moved on the new homepage is now the normal homepage, but any questions or thoughts you have about it please post a comment or an email. Starting from now, i will bring the latest updates with LOVEFiLM, and hopefully get your thoughts on it.

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There are some nice topics discussed about the business of DVD rentals, movie downloads and an internal Hackathon.

Here are some snippets from the interview, ending with some questions from myself.

William on the LOVEFiLM Hackathon

We see you recently held a Hackathon to generate new ideas for the business. How did it go?
It went really well. I read something about Facebook doing a Hackathon and looked up what it was on Wikipedia, and we invented a way of doing it ourselves.

When do you plan to hold the next one?
We have a code freeze at Christmas and we’re going to do use that time to do another one.

I think we’ll aim to do it roughly quarterly from then on. We got some really good quality ideas and everyone that did it enjoyed it.

Q What else was made during the Hackathon, and will the public ever get to see the products even just to have a vote to say if they go live?

Q The first Hackathon and the next one seem to be an internal project, will LOVEFiLM take the example of Facebook and open up the Hackathon to the public developers?

William on movie downloads

How is your download service going, in terms of subscribers?
It’s going. The issue is that we’re not offering as good value on it as we’d like to. We’re all about convenience and good value. Although it’s competitively priced, it’s not something I could tell my friends they should use.

Q With the download to own not going so well, why promote and use it, will LOVEFiLM provide a service like Netflix’s watch instantly?

The questions are probably some of many that William Reeve gets everyday, so i didn’t want to go overboard and there is a fair chance he won’t see this post to answer them, but if you have your own questions then please post them below. Maybe they will get an answer.

Read the full interview on e-consultancy.com, its a nice insight into a growing company, now at 500,000 subscribers, thats a lot of movie watching!

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For those who can’t remember, or haven’t see it before the homepage was in two variants, one for when you are not signed in (Visitors) and a completely different page when you do sign in. The Visitors page was more of a advertisement page, where you don’t get to see any of the goodies inside the website till you sign up.. shame on you LOVEFiLM.

Old LOVEFiLM Visitor page - click to viewNew LOVEFiLM Visitor page - click to view

Now after a while the powers that be inside LOVEFiLM towers have decided to show what is inside the site for all to see, this is great exposure as DVD rentals are only the tip of the iceberg (the interviews, competitions, trailers and reviews were always too far down the navigation for me).

So lets look at the new design.

(more…)

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Not only has LOVEFiLM gone over a small re-vamp with the design of the site, but i have received a few emails from not only readers of my blog but also a couple of the guys at LOVEFiLM itself.

Nick Adderley (Head of Sales and Product Proposition) has kindly invited me to come in and chat about the business, so i can get a better idea of the inner workings of LOVEFiLM. I have provisionaly declined on the basis of keeping my opinion and this site independent and neutral, but that does not mean i want to cut all communication with the staff of the company.

Also one of the founders of LOVEFiLM (and ScreenSelect) as well as the Chief Operating Officer William Reeve (more…)

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With the launch of their new advertisement LOVEFiLM have also launched a competition to win 6 months of free DVD (and possibly video games) rentals, all you have to do is watch the TV advert and name all of the movie and television clips shown. I wont give it away by naming them all, it is pretty easy. The competition page is here.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

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