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Music Businesses Media Apple

iTMS Launches in Japan 251

Posted by CowboyNeal 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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iTMS Launches in Japan More

iTMS Launches in Japan

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  • Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bburton ( 778244 ) *

    Songs are priced between 150yen and 200yen (0.76-1.01pounds; $1.34-$1.79), somewhat more expensive than those sold at the American iTMS and possibly also those of the UK. Apple, the article notes, had wanted to have one price for all tracks, but faced opposition from record companies and performers' organisations. That said, it appears that 90% of the tracks are to be priced at 150yen.

    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)

      by b4stard ( 893180 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:28PM (#13245302)
      I find the piracy model [thepiratebay.org] to be superior and expect large parts of the japanese market to do the same.

      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.

      • Re:Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)

        by akac ( 571059 )
        The difference is that radio leads to people buying music. P2p piracy does not. Once you have the song at its best bit-rate - what's the point in buying it? Radio is far from the best audio experience and you have no control over when it comes on.

        They are NOT comparable at all!

        • Re:Song prices (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Squozen ( 301710 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:38PM (#13245809) Homepage
          Several studies disagree with you, as do my personal experiences. I download music to check it out, then buy the CD. Most genuine music fans do the same.
        • I'd have to disagree. Radio tends to play 1-2 major hit tracks from an artist's CD. When I was a kid, this might've been enough for me to buy it. But in this day and age, given that I'm older and digital content, I never do this anymore.

          I might buy a CD if 1) I enjoy at least half the tracks very much and 2) I want to support the artist. Why would I do this over p2p? Not everything is available over p2p. Ironically, the most available stuff is the most marketed stuff (most of which is crap). CDs sound b
      • Your mention of Britney Spears confirms what I already thought this to be: an argument straight out of 2003.

        Seriously. We have the iTunes Music Store. It costs, but it's very successful. People have proven that they are willing to pay for music online, even if the ability to pirate it still exists.

    • Re:Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Considering a music CD is about $30 in Japan, I'd say it's a pretty good deal. Probably cheaper compared to CDs than the US store is.

    • Re:Song prices (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I like to own my music, sorry. Thanks for the advertisement, though. Sorry to hear you'll be paying a subscription fee for the rest of your life and will lose all your music the day you cancel.

    • Re:Song prices (Score:5, Informative)

      by NaruVonWilkins ( 844204 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:31PM (#13245338)
      Actually, that's about right. CD prices tend to be 3000-4000 yen (25-35 dollars). Remember that both cost of living and pay are higher in Japan - you can't compare directly to the cost of a song in another market.
      • But one thing I noticed when I went to japan a year ago was that it was much easier to find stores that sold used music CDs and stuff. I would usually buy used full CDs that were in the $5 range and you could find used singles for $1-2 IIRC. On the other hand, you could find new CDs in china for around $1. Some of them probably weren't the real copy, but I think fakes would sometimes come with like 2 CDs--an extra with songs from a previous album or even an entire different singer!

        • Re:Song prices (Score:3, Insightful)

          by NaruVonWilkins ( 844204 )
          Could that be due to density? It's not exactly difficult to find used CD shops in the middle of Seattle or New York - and much of Japan is up at that density level. Most of the US is very sparse in comparison.

      • It's better than about right! :) (Score:4, Informative)

        by kollivier ( 449524 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:59PM (#13245926)
        Depending on the album, at 150 or 200 yen per song, albums can become quite a bit cheaper. For example, singles CDs, which typically cost anywhere between 800-1200 yen in Japan, are about 400-500 yen on iTunes. That's a nice discount! A 12 song album would be between 1800-2400 yen, which is also significantly cheaper. Jack Johnson's 14 track album was actually 1500 yen, which is a really good deal.

        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. :) Well, they're just starting so hopefully things will improve, but it does give the impression that the Japanese market is even more hesitant to embrace an online download service than the US market was.
    • I really enjoy internet radio. Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real, et al, all have several nice feeds. Most, if not all, are FREE, too. Winamp also has internet TV with 'real' tv shows (CSI, Futurama, etc).

      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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The awesome thing about the $5.00/month subscription service is that you are paying that $60 per year rental fee for as long as you want to enjoy your music. If I buy a song from iTunes, I can listen to it for 10 years for $.99. If I want to continue to listen to a song I'm renting from Yahoo, it would cost $600 to rent it for 10 years.
    • I dunno.

      I guess if you like the idea of renting your music.

      m-

    • Re:Song prices (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bennomatic ( 691188 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:51PM (#13245486) Homepage
      Well, they usually portray it this way:

      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...

      • 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.
        Then you must really love the Yahoo model: you pay $4.99 to rent the entire catalogue and you can opt to purchase the songs you want to keep for $0.79.

    • I don't like the subscription model (Score:5, Informative)

      by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:53PM (#13245497) Homepage Journal
      I personally think the subscription model is superior.

      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.

    • Windows only... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      iTunes lets me listen to my purchased music on my Windows box, my Mac PowerBook, and my iPod.

      Anything besides iTunes is Windows only, non-iPod only.

      Apple is the only cross-platform solution, as weird as that may sound.
    • Comments?

      You asked for it!

      Seriously. Before I begin, allow me to make a small disclaimer: I am upset to see that my yen signs have become textual "yen" and pounds textual "pounds" in your quote. This may affect my judgement below. However...

      I'm not the only one to make this point, but it seems that your type enjoys pain and torture, otherwise you wouldn't be using Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Or any other subscription service for that matter. The argument has been made countless times before, but simply p
      • > But with Yahoo!, that's a whole fuckload of fees - I'll leave the maths to you.

        Yahoo offers the option of purchasing tracks for $0.79 in addition to the $4.99 supscription plan. So you can choose to spend $4.99 on one month of unlimited listening and purchase 69 songs with the remaining $55. Sounds like better value than the 60 songs from iTMS.
    • In a country where I pay $12-15 for a *single* I think I will suck up the "premium" on top of what they charge the American market.

  • First Post Wishful Thinking (Score:3, Funny)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@noSpAM.yahoo.com> on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:20PM (#13245244) Homepage Journal
    Where next? Here's the roadmap.

    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)

    by iomanip ( 775663 )
    japanese pop, here I come

    • Re:sweet (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CoolMoDee ( 683437 )
      I wish it was so - I tried to purchase some M-flo last night but couldn't because I am not in Japan. I wish we could buy music from other stores (if the artist wasn't in our own store - that way you can't play the currency conversion game).

  • A reminder... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Azadre ( 632442 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:21PM (#13245253)
    You need a credit card based in Japan to purchase from the Japanese iTMS... stupid licensing laws.

    • No you don't (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:31PM (#13245335)
      That's where CCP (credit card proxy) comes in to its own. You get a CC registered to any of 49 major countries (including Japan) - 'major' is defined as any country whose economy uses credit/debit cards for >5% of all transactions.

      A useful (if difficult to find) service.
    • For those of us in Japan, we can't buy from the Canadian/American/European stores either... and the selection of non-English foreign music in the Japanese store is fairly paltry.
    • Doesn't iTMS take paypal? Couldn't you just put some Yen in your paypal acct?

  • How about everywhere next? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sterno ( 16320 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:26PM (#13245287) Homepage
    THe problem that I really have with ITune's international support is that it doesn't allow you to go across borders. I can browse through music from the UK but as a US user I cannot buy any of it. That's kind of dumb consider I could buy the CD that way.

    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.
    • The blame here should be on the labels/artists, not ITunes. ITunes sends out seperate contracts for EACH area they serve. If the label/artist decides not to sign their EU contract, then their stuff won't be available there, and that's their fault.

    • Re:How about everywhere next? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:32PM (#13245763) Homepage Journal
      The issue is with the record companies. They have issue if you don't buy through the local distributor.

      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.
      • It's not JUST the record companies, but the distributors as well. Certain companies are licensed by the copyright holders to distribute in a certain geographic area. They don't like the idea of being cut out of the loop. If Apple got to globally-distribute songs without going through the regional distributors, it would throw their whole system to the wind.

        I'm not saying that's not an outcome I'd desire eventually, but trying to solve EVERY problem of the music industry all at once is a recipe for disaste

  • Music Store Opens in another Country... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:28PM (#13245308)
    Why can't this be universal? Why must "entertainment media" be regionalized? I mean I can sort of understand the supply and demand of physical media like DVDs but downloadable media files?
    • the question was asked:

      Why must "entertainment media" be regionalized?

      and the answer is simple:

      the plutocratic shitbags who run the music and entertainment biz are nothing but a bunch of greedy assholes.

      I hope that clears up that little mystery for you.

      cheers,

      HW

      • "and the answer is simple:

        the plutocratic shitbags who run the music and entertainment biz are nothing but a bunch of greedy assholes.

        I hope that clears up that little mystery for you. "

        Well actually, it doesn't, since consumers over here would also like to purchase things from this virtual store. Since there are no shipping or supply constraints it seems to me that they are in fact losing potential money.
        • Well actually, it doesn't, since consumers over here would also like to purchase things from this virtual store. Since there are no shipping or supply constraints it seems to me that they are in fact losing potential money.

          Er, the plutocratic shitbags still think it's the '50s... or rather, they think if they stick their fingers in their ears and hold their breath hard enough, they can make things be like the '50s.

    • Re:Music Store Opens in another Country... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by v1 ( 525388 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:19PM (#13245677) Homepage Journal
      It's called "price fixing", and when done within a single country is usually illegal. When done between different countries, no single country's law can apply, and even though it's illegal in BOTH countries, it's legal if done separately in each country.

      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.

  • And where is Sony? (Score:5, Informative)

    by curmi ( 205804 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:28PM (#13245309)
    Bigger news is that there are no Sony songs on iTMS Japan!

    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)

      by ickoonite ( 639305 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:02PM (#13245556) Homepage
      Bigger news is that there are no Sony songs on iTMS Japan!

      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...' :P). Sony, of course, has a lot of clout in Japan - the linked-to Asahi article notes that Sony Music Entertainment is Japan's biggest record company.

      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...

      ...unless you're Steve Jobs. :P

      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 :D
    • Would a mail campaign be any help...?

      If there were enough Aussie iPod'ers to bombard Sony/BMG with the petition, it might help sway their stubborn heads?
    • I thought Mushroom Records were the holdouts.

      Sony, hey. Bastards. I want my OzTMS and I want it now. And a vPod :-)

  • where next ? the backstreet markets of course ! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:29PM (#13245314)

    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
    • Wow!

      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-
      • Actually... yes. I don't know if you've been to Japan, but it's rarely more than an hour to a city with over a million people, with a technology district where you can indeed buy not only entire albums for a couple hundred yen, but singles CDs for less. Many, many more tracks off an album are released as singles in Japan than are here - same with the UK.
        • I taught for a year in Kamaishi (in Iwate), and it was a good couple of hours (by train) to the nearest large city.

          The only places locally you could buy music were shops with nearly no western/euro stuff, though there were places you could rent CDs, that had an ok selection of j-pop.

          This was a couple years ago, but I doubt much has changed. Of course, I relied on public transportation, so that made a service like this even more desirable.

          m-
    • iTunes+iPod is a platform with serious momentum now. It is 1) popular, 2) affordable to the market (not cheap though), and 3) convenient.

      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
    • I'd love to know where these magical backstreet markets are where I can get songs for under 200 yen! You see, every shop I've gone to charges between 3000 and 4000 yen per CD, so a whole disc for "much less" than 2000 would be amazing.

      Let me know... I'm waiting! Shibuya-ku or Meguro-ku would be ideal, but really anywhere in Tokyo would be ok.

      Note: if these "backstreet markets" which I have never seen or heard of are in fact real, I'll be forever grateful ;)
  • The iTunes Music Store has finally come to the Land of the Rising Sun!

    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)

    by Approaching.sanity ( 889047 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:40PM (#13245409) Homepage
    How about one universal store with all the music from every band availible for sale from them and not their record companies.

    /idealism

    • Re:Where next? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MadMacSkillz ( 648319 )
      Technically, any band or artist can already do this with iTunes. Any artist can get their music posted on iTunes, no matter what their name is. It's the "evil record companies" that are to blame, or perhaps the fact that the artists signed the contracts with them. I am an independent artist on iTunes and I make 66 cents out of 99 cents per song, after Apple and CDBaby take their cuts. I think that's more than fair. I'm making more per song than any hit artist. Granted, my sales don't match up. But st

  • international next (Score:3)

    by a7244270 ( 592043 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:41PM (#13245417) Homepage Journal
    I can currently open iTunes and pick any store in any country. However, I cannot actually BUY anything from music stores in other countries. The next logical step is to allow people to buy music from other countries, making the iTMS actually international, unlike the way it is now, "choose country" button notwithstanding.

    • Re:international next (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Microlith ( 54737 )
      No kidding.

      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)

      by shawnce ( 146129 )
      1) talk to your governmental representatives, labor unions, etc. and get them to remove legal barriers, tariffs, etc. that block such a thing.

      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
    • Why can't they, at least, make all the music available in one region available in all the rest?

      There's some Japanese music I wouldn't mind being able to buy (particularly some soundtracks from animes - I'm an anime junkie, I admit it! - but some other things, as well), but, until they get all the music in all the regions, I'm going to be stuck using Bittorrent to get the music I want...

      And don't mention importing to me, please... ;/ It's a bit too expensive for me.
      • Why can't they, at least, make all the music available in one region available in all the rest?

        Copyright law. Pick any song. Let's call it Song A. Song A can have many different copyright holders in different countries. In the US, Joe may hold Song A's license. In Japan, Takeshi may hold it. If you license it from Joe, you can sell copies of it in the US, but if you sell copies in Japan, you've just violated Takeshi's copyright, and he can sue you into next year. To sell a song universally, Apple would ne
  • How many songs are there? From the beginning of recording (say, Edison tubes in 1900, for convenience), how many unique tracks have been recorded? That includes multiple versions, but not reissues/compilations, that have been released to the public? 10 million? 20 million? 50? 100? 500? Who knows?

  • The Moon (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hopews ( 450546 )
    Where next? The Moon of course, and then Mars.

    What better DRM hegemony is there than the ability to turn off their air when they don't obey the corporate masters?

  • iTunes Mars! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @05:59PM (#13245539)
    But seriously, the Ulan Bator area is in serious need of some tunage.

    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)

    by no_opinion ( 148098 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:00PM (#13245550)
    The Land Down Under doesn't have an iTunes store, yet, but they have lots of iPod users.

    • Re:Prediction: Australia (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And the amusing thing is that it's actually illegal in Australia to put music on that iPod, unless you happen to be the copyright owner. I'm serious: the law in Australia forbids the transferral of music from one media to another. Your baby likes chewing on CDs? Well, you're just going to have to buy another copy of your favourite CD when the baby gets to it. No, you can't burn a copy to protect yourself; that's against the law. You can't rip CDs legally; you can't legally record all your old LPs onto CD; e

  • I stopped using iTunes (Score:3, Informative)

    by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:01PM (#13245552)
    I really wanted to do things legal and pay for all my downloads, so I started using iTunes. Where I live (Netherlands), 90% of the songs I was looking for just missed. I expected there to be few Dutch songs, and there were. But, also many international songs that are there in the US version just miss. New albums are often not available in the local version, but are in the US. I switched back to eMule a few weeks ago, I just missed too many songs.

    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)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:13PM (#13245632)
    According to AnimeNN [animenewsnetwork.com], Apple's US iTunes Music Store has expanded their collection of Japanese J-pop and anime soundtrack downloads at the same time the Japanese store was opened. I'm hard-pressed to find any additions, but then again, I'm not much of a fan.
    • I was hoping this would be the case. But sadly, I can't find much.

      Cowboy Bebop, for instance, only has one "CDs'" length (13 songs) of music on iTunes where I know there any many more songs. I've searched for Robotech and Macross - nada. I'd love to get the Kenshin (OVA) soundtrack off iTunes but its not there - and its well over $40.

      Overall, though, I'm more interested in getting some J-POP stuff. Interestingly, a friend of mine who recently stayed in Japan for a year tells me that you can rent CDs (full l
    • Switch to Browse view- there are new Anime, J-Pop, and Kayokyoku (what is this?) genres. Something's wrong with the store though, so I'm unable to see the music in them.

  • Dude. The question isn't "where next?" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cherrycoke ( 146050 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:27PM (#13245733) Homepage
    ...the question is, when will the studios open up their gi-normous back catalogs for digital download? Decades of out-of-press, cool-ass music which could be a source of free revenue for the labels are languishing in magnetic-tape form in what I hope are climate-controlled vault conditions.

    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)

    by koreth ( 409849 ) * on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:20PM (#13246285)
    iTMS in Japan is great! If you're in Japan. Which I'm not, so thanks to the record companies' annoying and self-defeating marketing strategies (I know! Let's make it impossible to buy artist X's work in country Y! We'll make tons more money that way!) this does me about as much good as the US iTMS did for people in Japan.

    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.

  • One thing I'd be curious to find out is the amount of piracy that goes on in individual foreign nations, and how that affects the availability of legal music download services.

    While I don't have any hard figures, if I had to guess there would be a strong one. In other words, music services like iTunes sees a particular country start to dive into to the illegal swapping of regional music on a P2P service, and uses that to gauge the market.

    I can't help but wonder if p2p services, while fostering illegal dist

  • J-List's Take (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alexburke ( 119254 ) <alex+slashdotNO@SPAMalexburke.ca> on Thursday August 04, 2005 @10:46PM (#13246945)

    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)"

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