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iTMS Launches in Japan
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Aug 04, 2005 05:19 PM
from the big-in-japan dept.
from the big-in-japan dept.
ickoonite writes "The iTunes Music Store has finally come to the Land of the Rising Sun! After months of tricky negotiations, Apple has reached agreements with 15 record companies for the supply of around 1 million tracks, with per-track prices between ¥150 and ¥200. AppleInsider also has some blurb, and Apple has an (English) press release on the launch is here. The question now is: 'Where next?'"
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Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)
That sucks for them. $0.99 is bad enough for one song. I personally think the subscription model is superior. I use Yaho [yahoo.com]
Re:Song prices (Score:4, Funny)
If only the music industry would embrace p2p as a pr-channel similar to radio. Of course, not being able to bribe DJ's could damage the popularity of Britney Spears.
Parent
Re:Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)
They are NOT comparable at all!
Re:Song prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Song prices (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
It's better than about right! :) (Score:4, Informative)
The unfortunate part, though, is that their selection is really just so-so. I couldn't find X-Japan, Tube, or Southern All Stars, all very big bands in Japan. I also couldn't find many newer favorites, like SMAP, Orange Range, L'Arc en Ciel, Aiko, etc. And anime fans would be disappointed to know that there really aren't many anime songs on there, aside from "Sonic X" songs.
Parent
Re:Song prices (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Song prices (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, I wasn't surprised to see the iT
Re:Song prices (Score:2)
There are other options to buying music, especially if you just want to listen to stuff while you work/surf/etc.
$600 to listen to a song over a 10 year period... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Song prices (Score:2)
I guess if you like the idea of renting your music.
m-
Re:Song prices (Score:4, Insightful)
However, that remaining 10% is huge. I have eclectic taste (as does my wife), so our combined collection of music when we got married a few years ago was over 1k cds.
Music is all about memory to me, and I don't want to be forced to pay a fee every month or lose my memories.
m-
Parent
Re:Song prices (Score:5, Interesting)
10,000 songs @ $1.00 = $10,000.00.
infinite songs @ $5.00/mo = $5.00/mo.
What they hope that people won't notice is that this means that if you stop paying, it all goes away. So let's say you spend $60.00 at iTMS, you (theoretically) can play your 60 favorite songs FOREVER. If you spend $60.00 at Yahoo, then stop paying, then your infinite songs go away.
It's not a matter of which one is better; I could probably argue for either one. It's a matter of which one is better *for me*, since it's only my money that I have any control over.
If it were up to me, there would be a hybrid model, with $0.99 songs, a $5.00 subscription option, and with the $5.00 subscription option, you get 25%-50% off of songs you purchase after hearing them.
Actually, if were really up to me, I would push artists to adopt creative commons licenses, and recommend that everyone allow free file trading. The people who love the artists still buy collections, still go see shows, still buy videos, etc. Anyone remember when Spinal Tap was coming out on DVD? They gave away their soundtrack album for free, with a site called "Tapster", as a promotional tool for the DVD. It worked for me...
Parent
Re:Song prices (Score:3, Insightful)
$60/year x 40 years = $2400.00
And are you seriously delirious enough to think that Yahoo or anyone else is still going to be charging $15 a month in 40 years?
Do you still pay a nickel to get into a movie theater? Be a little realistic here. In 40 years you'll be paying $300 a month or more for your music rental. (And if that sounds like a lot to you, ask your grandparents how they feel about some of today's prices.)
This is the renter's fallacy, and it's true of everythin
I don't like the subscription model (Score:5, Informative)
I dislike subscription services because they amount to extortion. Keep your subscription, or the music is effectively gone (rendered unusable). Assuming that I don't want to break the law, all the music I downloaded is useless to me if I decide to stop using the subscription service. Of course, iTMS files utilize DRM, but I can play tunes on five CPUs and unlimited iPods, as well as rip CDs. So although I don't have unlimited rights to do whatever I like with iTMS files, for my forseeable uses I feel like I'm getting a fair deal.
Beyond my general reticence toward subscription services, Yahoo's Music Unlimited doesn't work for me because:
1) I use an iPod. I don't think I'm alone in this.
2) I use a Mac. Y! Music Unlimited doesn't support the Mac.
Parent
First Post Wishful Thinking (Score:3, Funny)
ITMS Ankh Morpork (running on Hex OS)
...
ITMS Xanth (running on Com-Pewter OS)
ITMS Amber (running on Ghostwheel OS)
- Greg
sweet (Score:2, Funny)
Re:sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
A reminder... (Score:3, Informative)
No you don't (Score:4, Informative)
A useful (if difficult to find) service.
Parent
On the flip side... (Score:2)
How about everywhere next? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm assuming the reason this is the case is a track that costs $1 in the US might be $1.50 in the UK for the same artist.
Re:How about everywhere next? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How about everywhere next? (Score:4, Interesting)
What I would love to see happen is for merchants to be able to be able to import CDs and music for which there is no local distributor. The day a local distributor picks up that music the merchant would be given a time frame to sell their remaining stock, and all future purchases would have to go through the cartel - uh I meant local music distributor
This would allow merchants to provide the selection they want to provide, without being blocked by anyone.
Parent
Music Store Opens in another Country... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Music Store Opens in another Country... (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic idea is, as usual, to maximize proffit. If a band is really popular in the USA but not popular in say, Europe, the most profitable price point of the album in USA might be $19 where it might be maximized at say, $12 in Europe due to low demand. They are trying to prevent an entrepenur from buying a few thousand CDs in Europe and shipping them to the US and selling for say, $16 each. This undercuts their market in the US by $2/unit, costing them sales. Instead they only see the $12 where they could be seeing the $19.
They want the $19 and do everything they can to see that they get it.
If price fixing wasn't illegal in your country, things would be a lot worse... like in the USA a Garth Brooks album might go for twice as much in Tennessee as it did in say, Alaska. We'd probably see more aggressive region coding on DVDs as well. Instead of 7 world region codes, they'd probably try to like split up countries into regions too. Imagine having to buy a DVD that was not only USA region, but was say, in Central timezone code too? Think of the mess that would make for the consumer. And the recording companies would LOVE it.
Parent
Re:Music Store Opens in another Country... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
And where is Sony? (Score:5, Informative)
The story is that this is the current hold up in Australia. Sony/BGM in Australia won't allow iTMS Australia to use their songs unless Apple agrees to sell the songs in Apple's Fairplay AAC, Microsoft's Windows Media format, and Sony's own ATRAC format.
It looks like Apple Japan just went ahead without Sony on board. If only they would do that in Australia...maybe Sony BGM is just too big a monopoly in Australia to be able to do this?
Re:And where is Sony? (Score:5, Interesting)
I commented on this in the story proper (I am the Apple Blog article's author, so the posting on Slashdot was shameless self-promotion, but Piquepaille can get away with it, so I thought 'What the hell...'
But all that is as nothing if you cannot play it. Given that the iPod is, speaking worldwide, something of a standard*, if only achieved through sheer market dominance**, it would be foolish to ignore such standards, i.e. by rolling one's own music download service and supplying one's catalogue to that service exclusively. Of course, as I note in my posting, Sony is no stranger to such folly (see OpenMG in the face of MP3, AAC or, heaven forbid, even WMA, which is frankly farcical, or the Memory Stick in the face of, well, anything else). It may well be that some time will have to pass (and a considerable amount of money lost due to missed opportunity) before Sony will acquiesce and come on board. But any time wasted will be more to their cost than to Apple's (it has been discussed at length how little profit Apple makes via iTMS).
In any event, this is quite a significant step. The Japanese being as they are, this could well be a impressive growth market for Apple, providing they market appropriately (they need especially to think of mobile phone users), and could be a key player in the run up to the billion-songs-sold mark.
Sony BMG won't be able to hold out forever. I don't know what the iPod's market share is like down under, but I'm willing to bet that it's higher than Japan's relatively meagre 36% (according to Apple figures). From a shareholder viewpoint (and we know that in the end, this is all the capitalists care about), any such stance by Sony would almost be negligence. There is no room for such emotion in the corporate arena...
iTMS Australia will happen. It may just partly be that Sony BMG does have a greater monopoly on content there and, also, that Australia's market is not big enough for Apple to release without a major record company on board. The Japanese market is huge - and they've got most of the big names involved (including Avex Tracks, who are responsible for many of the verging-on-paedophilia teenybopper groups in Japan and who run their own download service, IIRC) - so even without Sony, it makes sense.
We'll see what happens, of course, but I'd be very surprised if Sony doesn't eventually acquiesce. 'Beleaguered' isn't an inappropriate term for that company.
iqu
Parent
where next ? the backstreet markets of course ! (Score:3, Interesting)
because its cheaper to pop into town and buy freshly pressed CD's complete with packaging and no DRM or crappy quality for much less than 200yen
the record companies still don't get it
until they do, it won't change a thing
Re:where next ? the backstreet markets of course ! (Score:2)
So these back-street markets you speak of have a million tracks available instantly, from anywhere in the country? That's fantastic! And you can buy just the one track you want, not the whole CD? That's amazing!
m-
Re:where next ? the backstreet markets of course ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, there are cheaper - perhaps even better - alternatives. But when comparing Apple's offerings to street merchants (or even traditional vendors) you should include the selling power Apple has invested in and now wields. The iPod is the new packaging and iTunes is the fresh delivery method. Not revolutionary or superior, but desirable. People are willing to pay for
Welcome to Japan CowboyNeal! (Score:2)
It was always going to happen, the problem is that although you feel an affinity with the Apple itunes technology, you don't speak Japanese or understand the music distribution system in Japan, so it seemed doubtful because the information wasn't available in English.
Where next? (Score:5, Interesting)
international next (Score:3)
Re:international next (Score:2, Interesting)
I opened up iTunes to look at the Japan store, and what's one of the big things they have available?
"The Complete B'z"
And I love B'z. They kick ass six ways to next tuesday. I'd so be out $170 and several hundred MB of space.
Re:international next (Score:3, Interesting)
2) talk to the folks that hold the publishing rights to the music you want to purchase so that they remove blocks to such a thing.
3) talk to the various music industry representatives and organizations, get them to understand how good it could be.
I assure you Apple doesn't want to have a separate store for every country, it costs them money, sales and time having sepa
Total Tracks (Score:2)
iTunes Mars! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Ulaanbaatar,+Mongoli a&spn=0.111235,0.240704&t=k&hl=en [google.com]
Or that spot that's the most disant land location from any ocean- the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=46.283333,86.666667 &spn=0.229462,0.481407&t=k&hl=en [google.com]
Or Mecca and Vatican city with free George Clinton songs. We can end this war if both sides can just be helped to get their funk on.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=21.422224,39.826469 &spn=0.072718,0.120352&t=k&hl=en [google.com]
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rome&ll=41.902564,12 .452638&spn=0.015445,0.030088&t=k&hl=en [google.com]
Prediction: Australia (Score:3, Informative)
I stopped using iTunes (Score:3, Informative)
At least P2P won't make stupid regional stores that lack almost everything, the sound quality is just as good, I don't have to jump through hoops to put the music on my MP3 player, and it's cheaper. Pretty hard to see why it's so hard for the publishers to get a decent music download system working. I'm completely willing to pay for downloads, they just don't offer the option.
more J-pop and anime soundtracks in US store (Score:4, Informative)
Dude. The question isn't "where next?" (Score:4, Insightful)
I think keeping old music on ice is the same as saying you don't want money.
And I hereby acknowledge that this post is only pretending to be shocked at the long-term, and evidently continuing idiocy of music labels.
Lame pandering to marketing strategies (Score:5, Insightful)
I've started listening to a bunch of Mandarin-language music lately, and for track-at-a-time sampling, I pretty much have no choice but to listen to unlicensed Internet radio stations (= piracy) or download from P2P networks (= piracy). I'd happily pay to sample a few more tracks by the artists I've heard on those radio stations, but there's no way for me to do it, and it's not worth paying through the nose to import a CD from overseas only to find that the track I heard was the only one on the disc worth listening to.
Oh well, yet another case of "I want to give them my money, but they won't let me." (See: DVD region coding, etc.) Guess I need a fancy MBA degree to see how that makes good business sense.
J-List's Take (Score:3, Insightful)
Peter Payne, the American-born founder of J-List [jlist.com], a source for all things Japanese, had this to say in today's instalment of his regular newsletter:
"After a long wait, Apple's iTunes Japan music store has finally opened, allowing customers here to download Japanese and international music for around $1.75 per song. Despite the large number of digital-savvy users in Japan, it's not at all surprising to me that it took so long for Apple to get the iTunes store up and running. Japan can be a very conservative place, and to big companies with established businesses, nothing is more terrifying than change, any change at all. Apple has had to navigate between greedy record companies who have kept the prices of CDs at the artificially high price of $30 for decades, and industry groups like the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and the Recording Industry of Japan (RIAJ), who have closed ranks against any kind of digital distribution of music that doesn't guarantee more profits for them than conventional CDs. A big problem was JASRAC's insistence that Apple follow "Japan's rules" when it came to selling music online, which apparently meant that the industry group was to receive 7.7% of every song sold in addition to what the actual copyright holders receive. It's all very silly when you think about the fact that in Japan, you can go into any one of thousands of CD rental shops and rent a whole album for $3 or less. Sadly, Japan's copyright-happy record industry lacked the vision to allow Apple to sell Japanese music to customers outside of Japan, so worldwide fans of JPOP are shut out from participating in the Japan iTMS. Apple isn't the first company that's had to endure pressure from the establishment in Japan: Amazon was blocked from selling products below list price on their site here, since price fixing is still allowed for some products, like books and CDs. If there's one good thing that's come from the past decade of recession in Japan, it's that many of Japan's closed economic doors have been forced open, letting the light of competition and common sense flood in. If you want to see a hilarious commercial that marries the iPod with Sazae-san, one the most popular anime in Japan's history, here's the link: http://www.jbox.com/sazae [jbox.com] (Quicktime required)"
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:Where do I send my $250 (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps compile a list of the pirated tracks and send it (anonymously) to Sony BMG with a brief note saying:
"By blocking the iTMS Australia, you are losing money from me.
"Multiply my case by the hundreds of thousands of other frustrated consumers in the same situation and see if your accountants think that makes financial sense."
Re:Answer to Question (Score:3, Informative)