The Insanely Great Songs Apple Won't Let You Hear 341
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?"
Devil's in the Contracts (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, but hardly marketing (Score:3, Informative)
Selling all music globally is something no one's ready for legally, and probably won't be for years, given the glacial rate at which the *AA's seem to be evolving to embrace new technologies and opportunities.
Holmwood.
For an iTunes J-Pop/J-Rock fix (Score:5, Informative)
JList/JBox [jbox.com] has been selling Japanese iTunes [jbox.com] cards for some time, and frequently advertise them in their ads in magazines like NewType USA. Right next to the hentai/bishoujo games and Domo-kun plushies.
It's about copyright ending at the border (Score:5, Informative)
It *should* be a simple, global, find-it-and-buy-it repository. Unfortunately, the way that copyright has been worked, the right to sell a particular work (music, movie, tv show) only extends to a country's borders. If you want to sell that work in another nation, you have to somehow acquire the rights to sell there as well.
This used to be a real problem trying to buy import albums and CDs. If a particular overseas-only album had a local rights-owner who didn't have the title in print, that rights-owner could prevent you from importing the CD for purchase. (Naturally, they could also prevent you from importing if they *did* have it in print, but generally then you wouldn't want the import in the first place.) This didn't always happen in practice, but it did make things more difficult at times.
Today, they try to restrict trans-national media purchases via things like region coding.
Honestly, I think this is another of the ridiculously outdated aspects of copyright law that really needs to change. In my mind, if I purchase a legally-produced copy of a CD or DVD (or iTunes download), then somehow, somewhere, somewhen the artist was compensated for that purchase. Maybe not directly, and maybe not for that exact purchase, but at some point the artist's rights to sell the track were transfered to someone else who got money from me. It shouldn't matter if I'm buying a German pressed CD while visiting in Japan and holding a US passport. As long as the German CD was produced with the approval (or delegated approval) of the original artist/rights-holders, then it should be treated as legitimate and proper.
Of course, if you've got a situation where some country is permitting the sale of tracks for which the original artists have *not* delegated their rights to whomever made the [cd, dvd, file], then that shouldn't be permitted. Certainly, this isn't what's happening in Japan, but it is sort of what happened with AllOfMP3 (or so I understand -- I haven't followed that too closely).
I believe this is also why it's taken so long for new iTunes stores to open in new countries. It's not just a matter of arranging the financial-side of things for handling payments, currency conversions, etc., or even of getting servers and such set up for faster local access, but I bet a whole lot of it is securing the appropriate approvals from whomever "owns" the publishing rights for each track in that country.
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:5, Informative)
What makes it even more retarded is that the remix / version you want is always on the other label which you're not allowed to buy.
Most of the other stores are smarter, unfortunately, and you just can't go and change your location. So, you get to have fun finding a proxy that truly is in the territory from where you want to pretend to be.
Another legal way to buy Japanese music (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/ [cdjapan.co.jp]
I have no financial interest in this company. I am merely an occasional customer. Of course, if you are under, say, 25 years old, the idea of actually buying a CD will be anathema to you as you'll have to wait for it to arrive by mail and you'd rather slit your emo wrists than do anything that doesn't lead to instant gratification. And if you want to just buy individual tracks, this isn't the answer you were looking for either. However, if you are over 30 years old and not afflicted with ADD, this might be an option for you should want to purchase that CD that is only available in Japan. Sometimes Japanese CDs come with bonus tracks not released in other markets (usually this means the US), so hardcore fans of various Western singers/groups might be interested in Japanese CDs for that reason too.
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:3, Informative)
While I agree with most of what you said, this is obviously wrong. US movies still mostly take a few months to get to the UK, and any UK movies often take more than 6 months to get here. Sure a few very big movies have world wide releases, but then that was happening 10 years ago.
Re:Nothing new... (Score:2, Informative)
Actually I remember my older sisters having boxes of 45 rpm singles. It wasn't until cassettes and 8-track became predominate in the early 70's that you almost had to buy the whole collection of songs that comprised an album.
Re:Uh, it's the Record Companies (Score:3, Informative)
Um, look at the headline...
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Japanese track made #1 on the US charts (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.maddmansrealm.com/sukiyaki/ [maddmansrealm.com]
"His biggest hit, Ue o Muite Aruko (I Look Up When I Walk; "Sukiyaki" in the West), was released in Japan in 1961. After its release in the U.S. in 1963, the song's earnestness and melodic beauty proved irresistible despite its incomprehensible lyrics. Against all odds, on June 15, 1963, the song ousted Leslie Gore's "It's My Party" to become the No. 1 popular song in the U.S."
Japan has lots of great music. While I was there I bought a few albums. Some I could not even tell you who the artist is or the name of the album because there is not any english printing on it. The record stores would frequently play albums and display the album playing. This is how I found and bought some great music.
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:3, Informative)
that's not what's going on. what happens is that whoever has rights to the music can sell rights to distribute the music to different distributors. you don't need to buy rights to hear music in different regions, but distributors have to sign contracts so that they are the official distributor of a specified region. this helps a label gain distribution because a large distributor will be more likely to pick up a label if they know that they will be the exclusive distributor for that label in the region they operate in.
so the problem seems like japanese labels just don't have very good distribution in the U.S., or perhaps no distribution at all. this isn't really their fault per se because it might very well be that U.S. distributors aren't willing to pick up japanese labels. it's very easy for U.S. labels to get distribution in other areas like europe, australia, asia, canada, etc. but not so easy vice-versa.
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:3, Informative)
Frank would have been displeased, of course, since he spent a chunk of his career/life pissed at Warner for their treatment of him and fought to get out from under their thumb.