The Insanely Great Songs Apple Won't Let You Hear

FunkeyMonk writes "Slate.com has an article by Paul Collins explaining that the iTunes music store has thousands of tracks that you can't buy in the U.S. From the article: 'The iTunes Music Store has a secret hiding in plain sight: Log out of your home account in the page's upper-right corner, switch the country setting at the bottom of the page to Japan, and you're dropped down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of great Japanese bands that you've never even heard of. And they're nowhere to be found on iTunes U.S.' The article goes on to mention a few workarounds if you want to purchase foreign tunes. But this brings up a good point — why shouldn't iTunes be the great mythical omniscient music repository where all the world's music is available instantly? Is this simply a marketing decision?"

Re:Devil's in the Contracts

[russ1337]

>>>"Possibly because the label itself doesn't have rights to distribute the material in the US. There's often different publishers for different regions on the same medium."

OR, think of the outrage from the industry if a Japanese track made #1 on the US charts.

Do the math...

[biglig2]

A copy of Britney's Greatest Hits (as a random example) on the US itunes store is $8.91.
On the UK iTunes store it is $15.75 (i.e. £7.99)
On the Canadian store, $8.47
New Zealand, $12.61
etc. etc. etc.

On the Japanese store, by the way, they don't sell it at all. Guess they saw the video for "Hit me Baby" and figured "Like the schoolgirl outfit, but needs more tentacles. Or cowbell."

Re:I wanted to buy "American Pie"

[eltonito]

Waaaaah! Oh, so sorry that you are upset with iTunes because Don McLean or his label requires that Apple sell you the entire album instead of the one popular song he has to his name. What an injustice!

Petulance is no excuse for engaging in illegal activity and then acting like a jackass. If you don't like it then go buy the single somewhere else.... what? It's out of print? How dare those bastards pull shit like letting a single from 30 years ago go out of print!

Contrary to popular belief, it is not your god-given right to take your Chevy to the levee for free.

Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's god's way of punishing you for liking dance 'music'.

Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing

[noewun]

E! News Live is live every night and translated the next day.

Speaking for all Americans, I apologize.

Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing

[hkgroove]

If he were truly punishing me, you would have referred to it as "techno".

Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that they'll have to get better at hiding forgein music, now that the workaround has been publicly discovered?